Building like Bruce Wayne

Of all the trends I’ve seen in the past year, “tech bros” building in public is in my opinion the most remarkable approach in product development. Startups and companies introducing new products into the market have endeavored to create a unique and personalized journey for their audience by involving the audience in the development of their products. Customers in turn tend to anticipate future releases and updates of such products.

Startups such as Bitsika and Clubhouse have adopted this approach and it’s quite interesting to see how strong a following they have amassed in a relatively short passage of time

Clubhouse, still in its beta testing stage, is redefining the online social experience through audio-only conversations. It is apparent that building in a silo for the foreseeable future will not be sustainable where users want to be part of the process. More recently Twitter has taken this approach in the run-up with Twitter spaces in an attempt to grapple with Clubhouse for market share.

In spite of the positive feedback, conversations with people unraveled skepticism on the approach. The primary reason being that founders and employees are subjected to immense mental pressure. Working under the spotlight, for many, is a daunting experience. Imagine balancing regular updates to your audience with running your startup and shipping amazing features. Talk of failure: if you fail then can you go through building another product or startup?

The tech ecosystem in Africa may need to adopt this strategy soon. I’d love to see a system where companies got out of the dark and take their users on a unique journey. There’s more appreciation with this approach and users don’t get ‘hit’ by a product they don’t require. But it’s not a perfect system, is it?

Maybe don’t build like Batman in stealth-mode but enjoy and publish the process!