HACKER Q&A
📣 tr1ll10nb1ll

What do you think of open-sourcing and building in public as a startup?


I've seen a lot of startups these days building in public, posting regular updates ( even when there's not a release ) about what they are up to on Twitter, blogs, etc.

What are your thoughts on building in public? Tried it? If so, did it change anything? Did it help you grow in terms of accountability and/or outreach?

Another thing is being open-source as a startup. Wondering how people's experience and thought-process varies on starting as an open-source startup.

P.S I'm not referring to deep tech being open-source ( comma.ai for example ), I'm referring to more innovative software-related startups/apps that started open-source.


  👤 tofukid Accepted Answer ✓
When building a company, all that matters is acquiring paying customers, and serving them well.

If customers are on Twitter, then tweeting can be a channel for customer acquisition, as long as it's not at the expense of more effective marketing channels.

It is the same with open-source. If open-source code is part of the product or customer acquisition then it makes sense. For example, a paid analytics service may provide an open-source self-hosted version which acts as a customer acquisition channel for the hosted, paid version.

There is a community of "makers" who spend seemingly all day every day tweeting about what they're doing. I think most of them are distracting themselves from the real work of building a business. And I think the rest are selling courses and tools to "makers" using Twitter as their customer acquisition channel (dvassallo, shl, etc.). A small minority built successful businesses, then spend their days Tweeting (levelsio, dhh, etc.).