Essay

Should You Have a Public Product Roadmap?

Eric Hoppe · canny.io Free Beginner

This tackles the exact question head-on: should you expose the roadmap at all, and what do you actually risk. It is honest about the real downsides (competitors watching, entitled requests, losing the surprise) while making the case that transparency usually builds more trust than it costs. Read it as a starting point to decide, then keep in mind it comes from a roadmap-tool vendor, so it naturally leans toward yes.

  • Transparency tends to build customer loyalty and cuts down on repetitive "is this coming?" support questions.
  • The honest cons are real: competitors can watch, users can feel entitled, and you forfeit the surprise of a launch.
  • For most early-stage products the trust you gain outweighs the risk, but you get to choose what stays private and what goes public.
Open on canny.io ↗

The question it answers

  1. Should I share a public roadmap with my early users, or does that just create pressure and expectations I cannot meet?

Read with it

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  3. Arvid Kahl built and sold a company on radical transparency, sharing his real revenue numbers publicly, so this is not a... The Bootstrapped Founder Essay · ~10 min read The Increasing Risk of Building in Public Arvid Kahl
  4. This is the tool most teams reach for when they want a public roadmap that customers can actually vote on, not just a static... canny.io Tool Canny: Public Roadmap Canny
  5. This is the direct answer to the pressure problem in the question: if a public roadmap scares you because of dates you cannot... prodpad.com Article Why I Invented the Now-Next-Later Roadmap Janna Bastow
  6. A balanced walkthrough of when building in public helps and when staying quiet is smarter, without pushing you either way. It... Mercury Article · ~10 min read Building in public: Is this the right approach for your startup? Mercury
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