<story><title>Farewell, Building in Public</title><url>https://www.coryzue.com/writing/building-in-private/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>berjin</author><text>I empathise with the comments about copycats. 
I made a web game and initially put it up on github pages. It was inspired by a similar web game which had been abandoned and I wanted to add features etc so I re-created it from scratch.&lt;p&gt;Within a week it was cloned and put up on a nice domain with a different logo and the copycat was impersonating me on social media and ranking quite well on Google. It&amp;#x27;s no longer open source. The copy cat site now has adverts up and links to a network of copycat web games. Many copy cat sites are now embedding my site proxied (to avoid CORS) and surrounded with adverts. These sites rank really well on Google because the copy cat sites link to each other. The game is at &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;redactle-unlimited.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;redactle-unlimited.com&lt;/a&gt; if you want to check it out. I haven&amp;#x27;t made a life changing amount from donations but it actually might be a significant amount for people in poorer economies.&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that you need to have a moat by having a trusted brand or database&amp;#x2F;codebase that can&amp;#x27;t be imitated.</text></comment>
<story><title>Farewell, Building in Public</title><url>https://www.coryzue.com/writing/building-in-private/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>buf</author><text>I build in public and think about these two things often.&lt;p&gt;As an indie dev, I make around $800k per year on my two saas companies.&lt;p&gt;Copycats: There have been some, but the saas companies that I&amp;#x27;ve build have such a hard cold start problem (they&amp;#x27;re social marketplaces), that all the ones I&amp;#x27;ve seen pop-up flatline. If you have a product that has no moat, sure, don&amp;#x27;t build in public.&lt;p&gt;Bragging: In fact, it&amp;#x27;s the opposite. When I post something, and the comments start rolling in, it&amp;#x27;s only then that I realize mistakes I&amp;#x27;ve made or things I could&amp;#x27;ve done better.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;I think building in public is still a decent way to build an audience and to get free insights.</text></comment>