If you’re a developer or SaaS founder, chances are high that you love building stuff. It’s where you feel in control, creative, and energized. There’s a unique satisfaction in shipping new features, fixing bugs, improving your product, and tackling challenging tasks.
But while you’re deep in code, the outside world has no idea what you’re building.
And that’s a problem.
The hard truth is: no matter how great your product is, if no one hears about it, it doesn’t matter. Marketing often feels like a distraction from “real work,” but it’s not. It’s what connects your work to the people it’s meant to help.
So why do developers avoid marketing?
First, building is safe. It’s our comfort zone. It’s measurable and logical. Marketing, on the other hand, feels fuzzy, unpredictable, and often awkward—especially if you’re not used to promoting yourself.
Second, we fear rejection. Putting something out there means facing the possibility that people won’t care, or worse, will criticize it. We tell ourselves the product’s not quite ready, that we’ll promote it “after the next feature.” But perfectionism is just a way of hiding.
Third, we often over-identify with our products. If someone says they don’t like it, it feels like they don’t like us. That’s not true—but it takes experience to separate yourself from your work and not take feedback personally.
Fourth, marketing gets a bad rap. It’s seen as hype, exaggeration, or manipulation. But that’s not what real marketing is. Real marketing is just helping people understand what your product does and why it might be useful to them. It’s storytelling. It’s education. It’s connection.
Fifth, the results take some time to show up. You’re in the dark doing things without getting that immediate feedback with building. You create something nice but another thing breaks and you fix it and the cycle continues.
Done is better than perfect. A product out in the world – no matter how imperfect, a little messy, still evolving – is always better than something stuck in dev mode forever. When you launch, you learn. When you get feedback, you grow as a person and as a professional. You don’t need to nail it from day one. You just need to show up.
Sharing your product—even when it’s not polished—helps you build resilience. Over time, you’ll learn to accept feedback (even the harshest criticism) with less emotional weight. It might bruise the ego a bit at first, but eventually it leads to more confidence and better decisions.
Now, let’s be real: there is a risk to building in public. When you share openly, others might take your idea and run with it. Competitors might emerge, especially if other builders are following you closely. But that risk is part of the game. Competition is inevitable—whether you market early or not. So you might as well build momentum now, with your audience, instead of staying invisible.
When people know what you’re working on and that you ship and you have experience in a given domain, certain unexpected opportunities will popup as well.
Jon Yongfook has a great short article on the topic: 3 Reasons Why I Think 50% Coding 50% Marketing is the Best Framework for Solo Tech Founders.
So he suggest one of the week to build and the 2nd week to do marketing.
In the end, you don’t have to choose between building and marketing. But if you’ve been stuck in code for too long, maybe it’s time to switch gears and start sharing and promoting but don’t be super aggressive like a spammer. By sharing what you’re building you improve the world we all live in.