Building in Public: Write for the Person Who Uses the Product

When you build in public, choose the reader’s job before choosing what to post. A potential user needs to understand a task the product helps with. A founder peer may want to examine the decision behind the work. The same evidence can serve both, but the opening, explanation and invitation should make the intended conversation clear.

You don’t need to stop talking to other founders. You need to stop treating every useful conversation as the same kind of evidence. A thoughtful engineering reply can improve a product without showing that its buyer wants it. A quiet response from someone with the actual problem may deserve more attention than a busy thread of general encouragement.

Start with a task, not a demographic label

Write one sentence describing what your intended reader is trying to do. Give it a trigger and a result: a workshop owner needs to find a replacement time when a customer cancels. That is more useful for an update than saying the audience is small businesses.

The GOV.UK guidance on learning about user needs starts with likely users, their goals, their existing methods and their frustrations. It also treats suggestions from people who aren’t users as assumptions to investigate. That is public-service guidance, not…