Day 32 – Expanding the Circle

By this stage of the journey, something had shifted. Up until now, most of what we were doing was internal. We had made SWAIN work. We had generated real endpoints. But now came the question of reach. Who else could this matter to? Who might shape what it becomes?

On Day 32, we started opening the door a little wider. We shared our involvement with TVCA, encouraged people to pop by, jump on a webinar, or just see what we were building. It was not a polished sales moment. It was a genuine invitation — not for attention, but for insight.

Up to that point, everything we had done was about reducing the build burden for developers. But the more we talked to people outside our immediate network, the more we saw a new angle: teams and local governments trying to do more with less, wasting time on backend work, repeating the same boilerplate again and again. SWAIN had relevance beyond just tech startups. It could serve public sector tech teams, local innovators, and agencies operating with limited time and budget.

The key learning wasn’t just about the product. It was about visibility. By involving others, even casually, we gained fresh perspectives and built early interest without any push. That’s the benefit of building in public — not just for marketing, but for shaping the right thing, with the right people, in mind.

Key takeaway

Opening the door early invites better questions, not just more noise. Every product benefits from outside eyes before it thinks it’s ready.