I see your point, but I would disagree with you somewhat.
Every new startup needs to navigate the transition from early adopters to bigger names and/or more mainstream users who give you credibility and higher revenue potential. But it’s almost always done as a stepping stone approach. You need to get the early adopters first or else none of the rest matters.
Doing this is not easy so any conceivable advantage is worth considering. Of course targeting build in public and indiehackers are not the only possible strategies for getting early users, but if it’s working for you, don’t underestimate how valuable that is.
Of course I do agree about going into it with both eyes open and knowing that if you’re successful enough, you will likely have to evolve somehow toward another customer segment. But again, this is almost always the case no matter what your early adopter channels are.
Definitely agree that startups have to find a foothold somewhere, and basically land and expand from there.
If we take B2B products for example, it's super common to niche down into a specific industry and then expand out to adjacent ones, and so on.
But the build-in-public industry/niche is unique in that those customers aren't "real" businesses with "real" problems. Most of the followers are wantreprenuers with imagined problems.
So the risk is, instead of building a solid foundation to expand from, you might just be building the wrong thing altogether and doing it on quicksand (those pyramid scheme dynamics I was talking about).
Every new startup needs to navigate the transition from early adopters to bigger names and/or more mainstream users who give you credibility and higher revenue potential. But it’s almost always done as a stepping stone approach. You need to get the early adopters first or else none of the rest matters.
Doing this is not easy so any conceivable advantage is worth considering. Of course targeting build in public and indiehackers are not the only possible strategies for getting early users, but if it’s working for you, don’t underestimate how valuable that is.
Of course I do agree about going into it with both eyes open and knowing that if you’re successful enough, you will likely have to evolve somehow toward another customer segment. But again, this is almost always the case no matter what your early adopter channels are.