Founders

founders who don't build in public do a disservice to their company, team, and community.

no matter your team size or resources, failing to build in public comes at too high a cost -- and that cost is usually hidden, so you aren't even feeling it.

Was just having this discussion the other day and not sure I agree with building in public as a default.

I wonder if we conflate building in public with "talking to users" too much.  The main point of the discussion was that with AI and vibe coding on the rise, putting ideas out early before they are fleshed out could actually do some harm to your early efforts.

I've never built in stealth, that's just silly, historically speaking (if hearing what your building is enough to copy it then you're not building anything significantly meaningful to last long).  I've also built in public for my last startup and it had useful value, but this was 3-4 years ago and competition didn't prop up with a single prompt.

IMHO, you need to talk to customers as much as you can, build something of value, then, open up to get more oxygen on the process.

CTO @beelinesai, CPO @snickerdoodle, CEO Zealous. YC/TS Alum & Mentor

Largely agree, I wouldn't say folks who don't build in public aren't authentic, per se.  In crypto in particular, it's easy to be very skeptical if not cynical about what's really going on.

Building in public, to me, Is definitely a signal to your prospects and customers that you're invested in their success and ready to listen to their needs.  But it's a double-edged sword.  Customer expectations also rise when you give them your ear and its often read as you're not listening if you're not super responsive or grow less outwardly responsive as the project has more stakeholders and the project becomes more complex. 

Some of the things we did towards this end:

1. Weekly or Bi-weekly Town Halls: We took the time to share what we were able to push and take feedback and questions in realtime from our customers

2. Public Roadmap: We hosted our roadmap publicly and allowed customers to vote on features and provide feedback.

3.Quarterly Planning - We hosted a quarterly call with all customers to review roadmap

fair points, Gregarious - appreciate your thoughtful feedback!

agree, it depends case by case -- sometimes it's better to share/announce a product after shipping it (or at least a tangible form of it). personally, also find it encouraging seeing other builders share their story and learnings as they build/experiment -- not only after the fact of building something, but in the process of it.

building in public is about being authentic and genuinely aspiring to be valuable to others. part of this is opening up some 'behind the scenes' processes, so that the existing+upcoming generation of builders/creators can learn from it. it's in a way an act of service to your community and beyond -- by sharing and learning openly, and it aligns deeply with values of open source and blockchain space.

the serendipity aspect is also powerful -- you never know what it might lead to, incl some surprising opportunities that might open up to you.