Re:The golden era of being an open startup is gone
by link_108 on Friday February 03, 2023 @06:51PM
(#34649559)
Totally agree, it is odd that the author of the article labeled "open startups" as a movement. I can see why they did so, labeling it as a movement improves the story, makes you a "thought leader", etc, which all leads to better marketing / sales.
It’s silly to label “open startups” as a movement when it’s more a technique which may or may not be useful to you.
By being open ,people can follow your story, which can translate to marketing/sales/feedback.
There’s also an aspect of idea exchange and psychological motivation by being part of an entrepreneurial community.
I think it’s silly to consider it a movement rather than a tactic. Whether it’s applicable depends a lot on whether it will help you reach potential customers. If you’re trying to sell fintech to big banks, probably not, if you’re selling no-code landing page builders, it probably will.
It’s also a bit of a pendulum where the business default is secrecy, new school thought says build in public, now people are realizing it’s just trade offs .
This has been a key part of many successful products such as Stack Overflow (Jeff Atwood’s blog), Basecamp (Signal V Noise blog). Convertkit is another one and has a really good interview on Indie Hackers about it.