Building in Public: Validating Ideas Before You Code

The Shift in Founder Mindset

The era of stealth startups is fading. Building in public—sharing your journey, wins, and losses—creates a feedback loop with your potential customers. It builds trust and an audience before you have a product.

Reddit as a Launchpad

Subreddits like r/startups, r/SaaS, and r/indiehackers are supportive communities for building in public. By sharing your analysis of pain points and your proposed solution, you get immediate, often brutal, but incredibly useful feedback.

Pre-Selling the Solution

The ultimate validation is payment. If you can get people to sign up for a waitlist or pre-order based on your analysis and proposed solution (shared in public), you have green light to build. If not, you've saved months of development time.