Build only after customers have thrown money at you.
As it’s at that point you have enough clarity and specificity to build.
This advice is better if you have 10k twitter followers. For example I'm building something cool, a no-code visual regression tool. I don't have any real network. Besides cold outreach (and hn, ph), what else is there? Would love to know what you recommend.
If you want to make money (at least break even the opportunity cost of a programmer), you need to work backwards: build things that you will be comfortable to pitch to your connections. Selling home-made chilli sauce to friends&relatives is unironically a better business model than building an app for most people.
Stuff I build for fun, I generally just open source. If there is an audience, you can always build a commercial model later.
> For example I'm building something cool, a no-code visual regression tool.
Basically understand how your solution fits into that market and how you'll differentiate and make money.
I fully agree that you should try to sell the thing first, because a good chunk of the people who might want such a tool could already have the savvy required to bolt together the relevant open source and off the shelf building blocks.
some time ago i skimmed around notion of Wardley maps and bookmarked it but did not pay (enough) attention. The other day there was another post on the topic, now with some basic resources, and i got hooked.. and read half of that book [0]. But right now have nothing on my mind to play with. May be that is a way? Map-and-try-predict the battlefield (needs lots of reconnaissance and "feeling" of the "landscape" and what-else-is-there). Mail me if you want a sparing partner - i want to learn this technique. But Anyway, have fun.
[0] https://feststelltaste.github.io/wardley-maps-book/#_the_fir...
(IMO, read chapter 2+ then 3~4 first, then restart from beginning)
Customer don’t exist in hn, ph, twitter, they exist in their own offices, on Zoom, and your local coffee shops.
I've had 10ish face to face conversations with people, people who've sold significant companies / engineering managers at FAANG's.
My competitors all require code, mine doesn't.
I threw up a sign up page on https://shutr.app if you're interested. Maybe it goes somewhere, maybe it goes nowhere. But I believe in it, and it's useful for me.