This applies to social media posting, SEO, articles, you name it. AI has amplified the noise to the point where finding something useful is pretty hard now.
Building in public is and was always a fake trend. You see a few who made it a long time ago by posting their journey (personal choice), and then everyone jumps in to spam, which is back again to the noise, ending with a lack of value.
I feel for anyone trying to take a product to the market right now, while there are more tools to build, marketing has gotten a lot harder, consumers are struggling financially, and companies are trying to stay afloat due to a lack of growth.
1. can all tell
2. will not use your product
Please stop polluting the global commons
Signed everyone <3
The gambling site “Stake” was doing the same thing recently, they’d make posts on financial advice or gaming subreddits and edit in a link (as to be “oh btw I need advice because I made money betting”). Were even using Greek Unicode “a”s and “e”s to hide from the automod filters. Scumbags among scumbags
the reality is most users can't tell. you can see it under every ai post on reddit, unless it is creaming ai in every word.
You can still pay someone else to spam your product on social media at a fraction of the cost of paid ad campaigns (and a fraction of the results).
(The product flopped and I got lost on so many rabbit trails. YC took me out of the game with a side hustle forum!)
Unless your product or service is aimed at other founders, or a techie focused audience in general, that's not where your customers are. Advertising there is like a game developer marketing their game to other devs or a writer marketing their book towards other writers.
What you really want to do is figure out who your audience actually is, figure out where they hang out online, and promote it there. Niche specific forums, subreddits, Discord servers, social media communities, etc.
That said, there's no real harm in advertising in these places, and other founders can give you useful feedback.
Who's still going through these kinds of docs?
I know micro.so (I'm not affiliated with them) have documented how to build agentic B2B sales AI that you can download (if you give them your email address). https://www.micro.so/guides/sales
I’ve taken a break from building to try to find an audience, a real problem, and real users before building anything anymore.
I think this is the issue with the bulk of the saas spammers I see on reddit or whatever. They are just duplicating existing things that don't have a welcoming market anymore.
If you don't have an audience don't bother to build anything for anyone else, it literally doesn't matter how good it is or how much people need it, they'll never see it unless you directly spam them.
If you're a 10x builder with 0 followers on socials, sorry to say but you can get cucked by a noob with claude code and a big audience.
I also find that it's way more effective to live in the comment sections. Rarely does the "Hey, look at me, I'm selling a piece of software" post genuinely do well. It's always so tempting to do that too but It's way better to find someone asking specifically for a thing you're solving and respond to the individuals.
please approach marketing like a human being. i.e one marketing starts before selling - before you have a product
if you adopt the 'indiehacker / influenzer' tactics outlined in that repo - you will starve.
I would completely disagree with this (product dependent).
If your product is a consumer app - I would highly prioritize and understand SEO before even having a product complete. Develop a good understanding of SEO around your product domain and niche.
If it’s a B2B - then yes, I would agree.