A practical playbook, not theory — everything here is what actually happened (and didn’t) while shipping VNotes from zero to its first users.

Why build in public at all

Building in public forces two good habits: you ship on a cadence because people are watching, and you get feedback while it’s still cheap to act on. For a solo builder with no audience and no budget, it’s also the only realistic distribution engine. Here’s how I’d run it.

1. Pick your channels — and be honest about what works

I spread myself across LinkedIn, X, TikTok, and Reddit. The results were not equal:

  • Reddit — clear winner. One post in r/ProductivityApps got ~6 pre-registers in a day. The r/saas “share your project” threads were my single best source of early users. Start here.
  • X (Twitter) — slow burn. Follower growth came from genuinely engaging with the builder community, not from broadcasting. It compounds, but slowly — I hit ~100 followers after about two months of consistent posting.
  • TikTok — little effect. Demos didn’t land without a stronger engagement strategy.
  • Launch directories (TinyLaunch, PeerPush, Product Hunt) are worth queuing up, but time them deliberately rather than firing them off randomly.

The lesson: don’t assume every channel deserves equal effort. Find the one that returns users and double down.

2. Make the landing page earn the click

A few things I learned the hard way:

  • Put the signup CTA at the top. If pre-registration is your goal, it should be the first thing a visitor sees — not something they scroll to find.
  • A hero image matters. My early version shipped without one; it’s a credibility and clarity gap.
  • Follow a proven structure: identity → headline → sub-headline → hero → CTA → proof → live demo → steps to value → key features → FAQ.
  • Watch your load speed. Slow-loading landing-page images hurt SEO and first impressions. Optimize them and don’t host them somewhere flaky.

3. Capture signups without building plumbing

Don’t reinvent infrastructure:

  • Skip the custom email script. I started writing one; services like resend.com do it better, for free, and integrate cleanly.
  • Google Forms is a starting point, not a system. It’s fine for the first few signups but wasn’t the right long-term tool — I pivoted off it.
  • Keep a simple record of each signup (email, date, source) so you know which channel is actually working.

4. Show up consistently

The single highest-leverage habit: post something, and move the product forward, every day — even a little. My follower growth and install numbers both tracked directly with consistency, not with any one clever post. Momentum is the whole game.

A demo video helps here — I edited one and put it on YouTube, then re-recorded a better version as the product improved. Re-recording as you polish is worth it.

5. Give early fans somewhere to gather

Spin up a Discord or Telegram early and link it in both the app and the landing page. It won’t be big at first (mine had four people), but it turns anonymous installs into a group you can actually talk to.

The uncomfortable truth

Building in public won’t save a product nobody wants, and it won’t compensate for zero distribution planning. But done consistently, on the right channel, with a landing page that converts — it’s how a solo builder with no audience gets the first 40 users. Which is exactly what it did for VNotes.