Over the last few years, "building in public" became standard advice in the indie hacker community: post your MRR charts, share your Stripe screenshots and wireframes, and customers will follow.
Many founders then look at their analytics and find an uncomfortable truth: other makers love liking your posts, but they're often not the people who buy your product.
The Audience Illusion
When you build in public on X or LinkedIn, your audience is mostly other developers and designers working on their own projects. That's great for support and advice, but it may have little to do with who your customers are.
If you're building accounting software for real estate agents in Ohio, few if any of your followers are likely to be real estate agents in Ohio. Hours spent on threads about your MRR may entertain your peers without reaching a single buyer.
Where Paying Customers Actually Find Tools
Bootstrapped businesses usually find customers through a few unglamorous channels:
- High-intent search: people typing an exact problem into Google ("export stripe invoices to quickbooks desktop"). Our guide to getting traffic to a new website covers how to show up there.
- Launch boards and directories: places where people browse for new tools. See our list of places to launch your startup.
- Direct one-to-one outreach: contacting business owners who have the exact problem your app solves and asking for honest feedback. Our cold email guide shows how.
Building in public isn't wasted: it can bring friends, feedback and the occasional customer. Just don't mistake it for your sales channel. You don't need a big following to build a profitable SaaS. You need enough customers whose work you genuinely improved.