Building in Puiblic: What I learned in 30 days
Hi! I’m happy to share what I’ve learned in the last 30 days building a mental health app in public. I’m going to share the stats, the lessons learned and mistakes made.
Numbers & Stats
- 10 on the waitlist.
- 40 contributions on reddit
- +100 followers on X
- 152 unique visitors on the landing page
Website & SEO
I use self-hosted Umami for analytics. Umami is GDPR compliant and it works without cookies, which means I can get a bit of insight without having to pester the visitors with cookie banners. I call this a win win.
Luckily, I can also filter out all the traffic that I caused, which halves the number of views 😅.
Now I haven’t been the most active with writing blog posts, but I can tell it will take a lot more time to get people actually interested in them. I also can’t share them on Reddit, since most mental health/social anxiety subreddits are very strict about promoting. You aren’t even allowed to share a blog post if it is yours with the “intention of getting people for your product”.
TikTok
I originally got inspired by Jack Friks who was writing a growth guide to get started on TikTok.
Sadly, I wasn’t that lucky yet with TikTok. I got a few views here and there, no real engagement. But the most important take away is that I’m probably geoblocked 🥲.
I post English content but when I manage to get comments, they are all in German 😣.
Unless I start fiddling with VPNs and such, I don’t have much hopes for TikTok.
Social anxiety is a tricky topic. While I was able to get into some chats with people about their problems connecting with others, subreddits about mental health are very strict about promoting.
You can only very subtly hint at your product if at all. But I believe some of the people on the waitlist are coming from there.
X - the gamechanger?
From all the platforms I tried, X is really the best for getting feedback and building a following. It’s not geoblocked, and I can speak to theoretically everyone! It’s also very lovely to be part of the build in public community. The motivation I got from people rooting for me is priceless.
Since (almost) day 1, I shared videos on X about my journey and the app. A great side effect of that was also that I learnt to be more comfortable with speaking in front of a camera.
But while original posts get 20-200 views, most of the attention I got was from commenting on other people’s posts.
You see that spike on the 1st of December? That’s when I commented on a post about “movies that feel like therapy”. I mentioned my favorite movie “Soul” that always manages to make me cry 🥹. It’s not exactly the kind of content I’d expect to get “viral”, since it’s completely unrelated to my app, but it taught me something.
I hear it so often from everyone that being authentic, true and emotional is the best way to get people to engage with your content. And this comment was exactly that. It was genuinely coming from my heart.
I focused too much on marketing
While most builders on X will tell you that marketing and distribution is the single most important thing, I felt like I was focusing too much on it. I had nothing to show for my “progress”, other than views and a very slowly growing waitlist.
Watching all the other builders on X, I felt like I was falling behind.
You don’t have to be special
I thought I have to entertain people with unique content every single day. Which is why I was filming my videos from a different place every single day. I thought I can only share something when I have to show something. But I learnt from other builders, that you can post the same preview screenshot of your app every day and literally nobody will notice. You don’t have to visualize your progress every day. What’s important is your unique story and how you overcame your own struggles. At least that’s what I believe. 😂
Building in public is not about being special, it’s about being genuine. And I really hope I can show my more genuine side more often on X.
Let’s continue the journey!
If you liked this blog post, I’m happy to connect on X ! I’m happy to listen to your story and share more insights 😊.
If you want structured, bite-sized daily challenges that help you build genuine connections, join the list. I teach how you can overcome shyness and learn to live life fully.
It’s built for people who are tired of overthinking and finally want to see progress.