One Benefit of Building In Public
By: Elliot Koss
Tags: Startup, Twitter, Founders, Building In Public, Personal Growth

This past week was my 3rd sprint building in public for PluFin, a personal finance tool (the Sprint 4 write-up is coming shortly). I’m launching a public Beta on Jan 1, and I’ve been trying to generate interest by building in public.

I spent Friday evening building out the new landing page that I was planning to launch on Jan 1, but I had gut-feeling change of heart and decided to roll out the new version as soon as it was ready on Friday. This was motivated by watching FullStorys of users landing on the very basic waitlist that had been in place for a few months (an ugly background image of dollar bills with a input box for your email so that you’re email when the Beta launches). It looked like people abandoned the page without taking anything away from it. Unfortunately, the Google Analytics tracking had been screwed up so I wasn’t able to look at useful data. I was trying to keep the marketing website separate from the core product website, but I had used the same GA tracking ID for both, despite setting up 2 distinct tracking IDs.

Since I’ve been doing a lot more promotion on Twitter (follow me), and because I’m embracing this Build In Public notion, it seemed wrong for me to build something and then not show it.

And honestly, immediately after posting the site, it wound up proving to be the right decision. I shared the URL on Twitter, responding to someone I follow, and they immediately got back to me with useful feedback that was 100% accurate. BTW, if you aren’t following Nichole and you’re building in the SaaS space, I highly recommend you do — they are very smart and thoughtful.

Twitter exchange with Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré

Truth be told, I didn’t spend much time articulating the value proposition since I started building PluFin (I have something in mind but I haven’t put it in words yet), and I still need to spend time on it. But Nichole’s recommendation made it super clear that its absence was immediately noticed by someone who knows best practices. I’m thankful for the fast feedback, because it’s already gotten me thinking a lot more about the value proposition.

It wound up being prescient, too. Because less than 24 hours later I was scrolling on Facebook when I saw a competitor’s ad. This competitor (Monarch) has already built a lot of what I have in mind for PluFin. Granted, given how far along they are, they have also missed more than a few use cases that I believe will be key differentiators for PluFin (but why should I explain to my competition what they’ve missed?).

Anyway, there were 2 comments on the ad, with two distinct questions.

Facebook comments on an ad for a competitor, questioning the value proposition

#1: “How does this compare to personal capital?” (Personal Capital is another competitor in the space that is focused more on investments.)

#2: “Not sure what this service offers that others don’t — for free” (Not really a question, but it’s a statement that deserves an answer.)

Question #1 should be answered with a comparison page. This is something I had thought about building, but just haven’t had the time yet (plus I’m still pre-launch). With that said, I’m realizing how useful it will be — even though it will basically show that the competition is better than PluFin (for now). Why would this be useful if it shows the competition is better? Because right now, I need to build out the basic infrastructure for a financial product. This is like building a house and needing plumbing. The plumbing is not where you differentiate the value proposition. But as I continue to build, over time, what is created will look very different than the end product of my competitors, in ways that I believe ALL of my competition will be copying PluFin in 2022. So as I add new features, I’ll update the comparison page. And I can even use these feature differentiators to help guide prioritization since it makes no sense to simply achieve feature parity with an entrenched competitor.

But Question #2 was the one that struck me the most. There was zero differentiation between Monarch (which costs similar to PluFin) and the competition of Mint, Personal Capital, and the other free platforms. Despite the language on Monarch’s website that they don’t sell users’ data or profit off selling credit cards (whether or not they’re helpful), these 2 users on Facebook didn’t get that message in whatever time they spent with Monarch. This specific rationale (incentive alignment around not selling users data) is basically the SAME language and rationale I’ve been using for why I charge for PluFin. So it was painfully obvious that despite their longer time in market and a more complete product that the value proposition was simply not accessible to the end user.

Which brings me back to Nichole. In maybe 5 minutes, they looked at my website (which has similarities to Monarch and Mint), and they correctly identified something that was lacking. It was NOT obvious to everyone, otherwise, Monarch wouldn’t be in the same boat. But Nichole knew. And they told me. Because I built in public and shared it with a smart person who was willing to spend a couple minutes helping others (tons of good people in the world).

If anyone is questioning the power of sharing your work in public, please take this as an example for WHY you should do it. I’d probably waste AT LEAST 3 months without tackling this head on (and very likely longer) without the astute and direct feedback from Nichole. Hell, in 11 words, they conveyed something that so many others have missed.

And there are so many other people out there who could help your idea and business succeed. You just have to be open and vulnerable about what you’re doing. Build In Public. Save time. Iterate better. Grow a community. And whether your idea fails or succeeds, you will level up faster and be ready to take on whatever challenges are ahead — potentially with more support around you than you ever imagined.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.