Most businesses hide their process and reveal their product. Building in public flips that: you share the process and let the product reveal itself naturally.
This approach has become one of the most effective marketing strategies for small businesses and solo founders, and I’ve seen it work firsthand — both in my own work and with startups I’ve advised. The reason it works isn’t complicated: people trust what they can see being built. And trust is the most valuable currency in business.
What Building in Public Means
Building in public means sharing the real, unfiltered process of creating your business. Not just the wins — the struggles, the decisions, the numbers, the mistakes.
This includes:
- Revenue updates (what you’re earning)
- Product decisions (what you’re building and why)
- Customer conversations (what you’re learning)
- Failures (what went wrong and what you learned)
- Behind-the-scenes process (how things actually work)
The key word is “real.” Building in public isn’t content marketing with an authentic veneer. It’s genuine transparency about the messy reality of building something from nothing.
If you’ve been through the employee-to-founder identity shift, you know how uncomfortable this level of exposure can feel. That discomfort is actually the signal that you’re being genuine enough for this to work.
Why Transparency Creates Trust
Traditional marketing says: “Here’s our polished product. Trust us, it’s great.” This requires the customer to take a leap of faith.
Building in public says: “Here’s how we made the product. Watch us figure it out. See the effort. Understand the decisions.” This lets the customer arrive at trust through observation rather than persuasion.
The psychology is straightforward: people trust what they understand, and they understand what they can see. When a customer has watched you build, iterate, struggle, and improve over months, they don’t need a sales pitch. They already know who you are and what you stand for.
At Vulpine Creations, the magic community watched us develop products, saw our quality standards, and understood our commitment to craftsmanship. By the time we released a new product, the trust was already built. We didn’t have to convince anyone of our quality — they’d seen it in process.
The Five Pillars of Building in Public
Pillar 1: Share Your Numbers
Revenue, expenses, customer count, conversion rates — the numbers that people typically guard. Sharing them accomplishes two things: it builds credibility (you’re honest about your situation) and it creates a narrative arc (people follow along as the numbers grow or change).
You don’t need to share everything. Some numbers are genuinely sensitive. But sharing enough to give people a real picture of your business’s health creates a level of trust that no testimonial page can match.
Pillar 2: Show Your Decision-Making
When you make a significant decision — choosing a pricing model, pivoting your approach, dropping a feature, changing your target market — explain why. Share the reasoning, the alternatives you considered, and the data that informed the choice.
This is incredibly valuable for two audiences. Potential customers see thoughtful leadership. Fellow builders learn from your experience. Both groups become advocates.
Pillar 3: Admit Mistakes
When something goes wrong — and it will — share what happened and what you learned. “We launched a feature that nobody used. Here’s what we got wrong and what we’re doing differently” is more powerful marketing than any success story.
Admitting mistakes is terrifying for most founders because it feels like it should damage credibility. In practice, it does the opposite. People respect honesty more than they respect a flawless facade, especially because everyone knows the facade isn’t real.
Pillar 4: Include the Audience
Ask your followers for input on real decisions. “We’re considering two pricing models. Which makes more sense to you?” This creates investment — people who participated in a decision feel ownership over the outcome.
It also produces free market research. Your audience is full of potential customers. Their opinions on your decisions are directly relevant data.
Pillar 5: Celebrate Others
Building in public isn’t only about you. Share what you’re learning from others, recommend tools and resources, and highlight customers who’ve achieved results with your product. Generosity compounds. The more you elevate others, the more they’ll elevate you.
Where to Build in Public
Choose the platform where your target customers already spend time. There’s no point building in public on Twitter/X if your customers are on LinkedIn, or vice versa.
Twitter/X: Good for tech, SaaS, and creator economy audiences. Thread format works well for storytelling.
LinkedIn: Good for B2B, professional services, and consulting. Post format favors shorter insights with clear takeaways.
Newsletter: Good for deep, long-form updates to a committed audience. This is one-channel mastery at its best — one platform, consistent publishing, compounding audience.
Blog: Good for SEO and permanent content. Less immediate engagement but more long-term discovery.
YouTube/Video: Good for demonstration-heavy products and for founders who communicate well visually.
Pick one primary channel. Publish consistently on that channel for at least six months before considering adding another.
The Content Framework: What to Post Each Week
To make building in public sustainable, you need a simple framework. Here’s one that works:
Monday: What you’re working on this week and why (forward-looking) Wednesday: A lesson or insight from recent experience (teaching) Friday: Results from the week — what worked, what didn’t (retrospective)
Three posts per week. Each takes 15-30 minutes to write. That’s 1-2 hours per week of content creation that doubles as marketing, audience building, and personal reflection.
The retrospective posts are the most valuable because they demonstrate validated learning in real time. People can literally watch you get smarter about your market, your product, and your customers. That’s compelling.
The Risks and How to Manage Them
Risk: Competitors Copying You
Concern: “If I share my strategies and numbers, competitors will copy me.”
Reality: Competitors can already see your product, your pricing, and your marketing. Sharing your process doesn’t give them significantly more information than they already have. And they can’t copy your execution, your relationships, or the audience loyalty that building in public creates.
Risk: Vulnerability Fatigue
Concern: “Sharing failures and struggles is exhausting.”
Reality: You don’t have to share everything. Share what’s useful and instructive. Keep what’s purely personal to yourself. There’s a line between transparency (useful for the audience) and therapy (useful for you but not for them).
Risk: Creating Expectations
Concern: “If I share my numbers, people will expect them to always go up.”
Reality: Numbers fluctuate. That’s business. Sharing a bad month and what you’re doing about it creates more trust than an unbroken string of good months (which nobody believes anyway).
Risk: FOPO
Concern: “What will people think if they see how small/struggling/early-stage I am?”
This is FOPO — and it’s the biggest real barrier to building in public. The antidote is starting before you feel ready and letting the positive feedback loops build your confidence over time. The first post is the hardest. The twentieth is routine.
Measuring the Impact
Building in public produces results that are partially measurable and partially intangible.
Measurable: Follower growth, email subscriber growth, website traffic from social media, direct sales from content, number of inbound leads.
Intangible but real: Brand reputation, customer trust, community goodwill, opportunities that come to you (partnerships, speaking invitations, collaborations), and the personal benefit of reflecting on your work regularly.
Track the measurables monthly. Trust that the intangibles are compounding in the background. The full impact of building in public typically becomes visible 6-12 months in, which is why consistency matters more than any individual post.
Takeaways
- Transparency builds trust faster than marketing. Customers who’ve watched you build don’t need to be convinced. They arrive pre-sold.
- Share the real numbers, real decisions, and real mistakes. Authenticity is the mechanism. Curated perfection undermines it.
- Choose one platform and publish consistently. Three posts per week: what you’re doing, what you’ve learned, what happened.
- Include your audience in decisions. Participation creates investment. Their input is also free market research.
- The biggest risk is FOPO, not competitors. Competitors can already see your product. They can’t replicate your transparency, your relationships, or your audience’s trust.
