It depends entirely on whether your buyers and your community are actually on X — for some founders it’s one of the best platforms in existence, and for others it’s a genuine waste of time. X is real and valuable for tech, indie-hacker, dev-tool, and VC-adjacent founders; it’s near-useless for founders whose buyers live elsewhere. The “shouting into the void” feeling almost always means one of three fixable things, not that X is worthless.
When X is worth it
X’s strength is a specific set of communities and a uniquely open network. If you’re building in tech, developer tools, AI, indie SaaS, or anything the startup-and-investor crowd cares about, X is where those people congregate and talk in real time. It’s exceptional for building relationships with peers, investors, and early adopters, because you can go from stranger to conversation with almost anyone through a reply. For that world, X isn’t shouting into the void — it’s the town square.
When it’s the wrong room
If you sell to industries that don’t live on X — most traditional B2B, local services, many non-tech buyers — then posting there is talking where your customers aren’t. That’s the actual void: not that the platform is bad, but that your audience isn’t in it. For most B2B founders, LinkedIn is the higher-priority room, and X is optional at best. Expanding toward where your buyers already are always beats chasing whichever platform feels important.
Why it feels like a void even when it isn’t
If your buyers are on X and it still feels empty, the cause is usually one of three things. Too early: every account is quiet at the start; the void is the normal first phase, not a verdict. Wrong approach: broadcasting into the feed with no engagement rarely works on X, where replies and conversations drive everything — you have to be in it, not just posting at it. Wrong audience focus: chasing likes from peers instead of reaching the people who’d actually buy, the same trap that plagues engagement everywhere.
The honest opportunity-cost question
Your instinct — “I could be building” — is the right question to keep asking, because time on the wrong platform genuinely is time lost. The test is simple: are your actual buyers or your genuinely useful community on X? If yes, it’s building, not shouting. If no, that time belongs on the platform where they are. Don’t let “founders should be on X” pressure you onto a stage your audience never walks past.
The DIY version if it does fit: commit to real engagement — replying, conversing, building relationships — not just posting, and give it a few months before deciding. If sustaining presence across X and your primary platform is the constraint, Dopameme runs founder content across the channels that fit your audience, so you’re not choosing between visibility and building. The principle holds: X matters if and only if your people are on it.
Bottom line
X is important for founders whose buyers and community live there — tech, indie, dev, VC-adjacent — and a distraction for those whose don’t. The void feeling usually means too early, wrong approach, or wrong audience. Answer one question honestly: are your buyers on X? Let that decide, not the hype.
Based on real discussions across founder communities. Read the original thread.