Aren't you afraid of people copying you if you're building in public?

I am terrified. Plain and simple.

I have learned to cope with it, here's how:

But before I tell you, let me first give you some context.

I'm building a SaaS in public, posting progress every day today is day 17.

I'm adding lessons from my mistakes and learning from current events.

I'm live-sharing as I build holding nothing back.

If you're interested, you can binge-read all the past updates in my newsletter.

Back to the copycats.

We're all afraid of someone copying us. But that is not the whole picture.

I'm terrified of somebody using everything I'm sharing to build a much more successful product than mine.

The kindest amongst you will say supportive things like:

"No need to be afraid, it's all in the execution."

"You did it first"

"We're rooting for you"

Every time I see a comment like that makes me feel loads better, but doesn't fix the root problem.

The "What if they are better/more successful than me" is still in the back of my head every time I hit "post".

I have learned how to cope with it and I'm sure that today it'll be a little easier to press the "post" button.

It got much better thanks to two things:

- Failure

- a mental breakthrough

Failure

I have failed my previous SaaS. I didn't make it take off and I had to shut it down.

I took all the lessons and poured them into this new SaaS. If somebody decides to copy it, will use second-hand knowledge of the failures I've been through. The hard-learned lessons are much more powerful when you experience them than when you read about them.

The breakthrough

I was listening to a podcast, I think My First Million. They mentioned a quote from Paul Grahm "Startups don't take off, founders make them take off".

This has been playing in my head for a few days. When I was in the gym yesterday it hit me:

If somebody will copy my product, they didn't do all the leg work to get where the product is right now. That also means they will not do more legwork, learn from users, and iterate with user feedback.

They will not go looking for answers, they will expect answers to fall on their laps.

In other words: a copycat won't put the same amount of effort that a founder would into a product.

Effort is how a startup succeeds. Founders make startups take off.

All hail Paul Grahm and his infinite wisdom!

I would recommend anybody building in public to not shy away from their fears. Confront them. Competition is good. Competition is how we innovate. If somebody copies you treat them as competition and learn from them.

I saw somebody posting on Reddit that their product was ripped off after they posted in public about it. The awesome thing was the community rallying in supporting this person.

Since that day I started thinking about copycats and how to deal with them.

This post is mostly for me, confronting my fears and putting them out there for others to see. Now that is in the open will much easier to deal with this fear.

Now back at building an awesome product!

Progress update

- I have a goal to have a production-ready page by the end of the week, there are 3 areas to work on:

- making progress on all of them a bit at a time. I am behind schedule as I booked more user interviews than I could handle

I will double down my effort and get a couple of good caffeine-infused coding sessions

Celebrations

Did you know that 30 is the most beautiful number ever?

That's because there are 30 legends subscribed to the [newsletter](https://welldoitlive.beehiiv.com/). Cannot believe 30 people signed up.

The LinkedIn newsletter is exploding too. The are 137 subscribers now! that's INSANE!

I also post more hot takes on X and talk about my workouts. The best thing about X is that you can post as much as you want and your reach is not capped.

I cannot thank you all enough for your help and support, you're all legends!