I've seen the other side of this, which is zero organic growth and enormous strain on founders to become salespeople and customer support for customers that perpetually keep your software in a trial period. Depending on where you want to allocate your resources that may or may not make sense compared to building in public.

That said, the bigger risk is building products for hobbyists/students/tourists because it won't have the ability to "cross the chasm" as you put it. At least with the hacker scene you have a few legit people to drive development forward.

Selling stuff and growing is hard.