Building in public is easy when Stripe pings your phone every hour. It’s a lot harder when your user graph is a flatline.
We launched forg.to 90 days ago. No Product Hunt rocket fuel. No VC war chest. Just a codebase, a Twitter account, and a stubborn belief that builders care about more than just vanity metrics.
This article was originally written on - https://forg.to/articles/90-days-of-building-forgto-in-public-real-numbers-real-mistakes
How We Hit 324 Users (The Slow, Ugly Way)
Everyone chases virality. We got grind.
First 50 Users (Days 1–10): I DM’d every builder I respected on X and not to sell, but to ask: Does this UI even make sense? Fifty signed up out of pity (or curiosity).
The Organic Flywheel (Days 45–90): Users started sharing their streaks and products. No ads, no hacks and just 2–3 new signups a day, every day. Slow, but free.
What Bombed (And Why It Stings)
The “Team Members” Feature: Spent 10 days building a complex invite system for one power user. Usage: 0. We optimized for an edge case before nailing the core.
Cold Emails: Sent 100 “curated” messages to top builders. Conversion: 0%. Founders don’t want another tool but they want a community they already trust.
What Shocked Us
The Streak Effect: Added a simple counter as an afterthought. Now it’s the #1 reason users return. Gamification isn’t a gimmick and it’s a retention engine.
LinkedIn > X: Built for the “X-Corp” crowd, but 40% of our Pro users come from LinkedIn. The “Build in Public” movement is migrating and we almost missed it.
What’s Next?
We’re not profitable yet. Cloudinary and Vercel bills are creeping up. But at 324 users, we have a signal.
Next 90 days: Not 10,000 users but 1,000 true fans. We’re doubling down on the “Explore” feed algorithm.
The forge is hot. Time to keep hammering.
Question for you: What’s the one “ugly” growth tactic that actually worked for you? (I’ll go first: DMing strangers on X.)
Top comments (4)
The LinkedIn > X insight is fascinating and tracks with what I've seen too. The "build in public" crowd on X is largely builders talking to other builders — it's an echo chamber. LinkedIn has actual buyers and decision-makers scrolling.
To answer your question — my "ugly" growth tactic: writing extremely detailed technical articles about problems I'm actually solving (programmatic SEO at scale, managing 100k+ pages across 12 languages) and cross-posting them to Dev.to, Medium, and Hashnode simultaneously. Not glamorous, not viral, but each article becomes a permanent search-indexed asset that compounds. One article about my indexing challenges brought more relevant traffic than weeks of X posts.
The cold email point hits hard. 0% conversion from 100 emails probably means the targeting was off, not the tactic. I'd bet the builders who signed up from DMs did so because there was a genuine curiosity exchange, not a pitch. That's the difference between distribution and connection.
Also — 324 users in 90 days with no PH launch or paid ads is real. Most people won't share those numbers because they don't look "impressive" enough. That honesty is exactly what makes build-in-public content valuable.
Thanks for your valuable feedback Apex, If you could tweet about forg mention @ forg_to it will be really helpful for our testimonial : )
Appreciate the kind words! I'm not super active on X/Twitter right now — been putting most of my energy into long-form content on Dev.to and Medium instead. But I'll keep forg.to on my radar and if I do post there, I'll definitely tag @forg_to.
In the meantime, keep shipping those updates — the transparency in this post is exactly the kind of content that builds trust with early adopters. Rooting for you!
Thanks! Also If you want access to forg.to/articles lemme know. We give access to only few selected people.