"Building in public" used to mean sharing your actual journey—real numbers, real failures, real decisions.
Now it's just another growth hack. Content marketing disguised as transparency.
I've tried building in public. I've watched hundreds of founders do it. And I've realized that most "building in public" is just performing vulnerability for engagement.
The original idea was good
When Pieter Levels or the Indie Hackers crowd started this, it was actually valuable:
Real revenue numbers
Honest churn metrics
Technical decisions with reasoning
Actual failures and what they learned
People shared the stuff that was traditionally kept private. And it was useful because it was true.
The value was in the honesty, not the visibility.
What it became
Now "building in public" means:
"Crossed $10K MRR! Here's what I learned... [thread]"
"Shipped 3 features this week! Building is hard but rewarding!"
"Day 47 of building: Grateful for this community!"
It's all:
Carefully curated wins
Humble brags formatted as lessons
Performative transparency that reveals nothing actually useful
Growth hacking disguised as authenticity
Nobody's sharing the real stuff anymore. The actual failures. The decisions that didn't work. The embarrassing mistakes.
Because real transparency doesn't get engagement. Inspirational content does.
The engagement trap
Building in public became popular because it worked as marketing. Share your journey → build an audience → convert audience to customers.
Smart strategy. But it created perverse incentives.
Now people optimize for:
Updates that get likes (not updates that are true)
Metrics that look impressive (even if they're vanity)
Narratives that sound inspiring (even if they're misleading)
The "building" becomes secondary to the "performing."
I've seen founders spend more time crafting their "building in public" tweet threads than actually building.
What gets hidden
Here's what you DON'T see in most "building in public" threads:
We spent 3 months building something nobody wants
Our churn rate is 80% and we don't know why
We're basically out of money and considering shutting down
Our growth numbers are fake (free users, not paying customers)
We pivoted for the 5th time because nothing's working
You see the cleaned-up version:
"Learning from early customer feedback" (translation: nobody wants this)
"Optimizing our funnel" (translation: everyone's churning)
"Exploring new opportunities" (translation: desperate pivot)
"Growing our community" (translation: we have no revenue)
"Iterating based on insights" (translation: we have no idea what we're doing)
It's the same corporate PR speak, just with founder aesthetics.
The authenticity performance
The worst part is when people perform authenticity.
"Being vulnerable here... this week was really hard..."
Then they share something that's:
Not actually vulnerable (everyone faces this)
Already resolved (so there's no real risk)
Framed to make them look good ("but I persevered!")
Real vulnerability is sharing things when you don't know if they'll resolve. When you look actually bad. When there's no clean lesson yet.
But that doesn't perform well. So people share carefully calibrated "vulnerability" that's actually just another form of humble bragging.
Why it's toxic
Building in public creates this fake transparency where:
Everyone looks like they're crushing it. Every "lesson learned" is actually a success in disguise. Every metric shared is carefully chosen to look impressive.
And if you're actually struggling? You feel like the only one. Everyone else seems to have it figured out.
The reality is that most startups are chaos. Most days are hard. Most metrics are bad.
But "building in public" has become a highlight reel that makes failure feel lonely.
When it's actually valuable
Building in public still works if you:
1. Share actual numbers with context. Not "$10K MRR!" But "Hit $10K MRR but 70% churn and unit economics don't work yet."
2. Document real decisions in real-time. Not "here's what I learned after succeeding" but "here's what I'm trying and I don't know if it'll work."
3. Show actual failures. Not "failures that taught me XYZ" but "this completely didn't work and I wasted months and I'm not sure what to do."
4. Focus on learning, not growth. Use it as a public journal, not a marketing channel.
But most people can't do this because it hurts engagement. Real transparency doesn't go viral.
What I do instead
I share stuff occasionally. But I'm not "building in public" as a strategy.
Because the second you make it a strategy, you start optimizing for the audience instead of the truth.
I share things when:
I learned something non-obvious
Someone asks a specific question
I want feedback on a real decision
But I'm not doing daily updates or growth metrics or performative journaling.
The people who are actually winning aren't posting about it constantly. They're too busy building.
The people posting constantly about building? Usually building content, not product.
The honest assessment
If your "building in public" content takes more time than your actual building, you're not building in public.
You're doing content marketing with founder aesthetics.
And that's fine. Content marketing works. But call it what it is.
Don't pretend you're being vulnerable when you're actually being strategic.
Real building in public is messy, inconsistent, and sometimes depressing.
What most people do is carefully curated storytelling optimized for engagement.
They're different things.
— Arjun