Build in Public

What is building in public?

Building in public means sharing how your startup is going, openly and regularly, while you build it: what you’re working on, what you learned from customers, what broke, and real numbers like sign-ups or revenue. You post on a platform where your future customers or peers already read, such as X, LinkedIn or Indie Hackers, a community site for founders of small, self-funded businesses.

The idea has a long track record. Buffer, the social media scheduling company, has published its full list of salaries and the formula behind them since 2013, and it became part of how people know the company. You don’t need to go that far. For a first-time founder, building in public is a slow, steady way to collect an audience that already trusts you by the day you ask them to sign up.

When should you use it?

• Good fit: software and digital products, creator businesses, templates, courses, community products and B2B tools sold to founders, marketers or freelancers. These buyers read founder posts.
• Works for physical products when the making is visual: packaging tests, factory samples, the first batch on your kitchen table.
• Think twice if your buyers are large companies with long sales cycles, or if copycats can rebuild your product from a few screenshots in a weekend.
• Skip it if you can’t commit to a weekly rhythm for at least 2 months. Three posts and silence looks like a project that died.

How do you do it, step by step?

1. Pick ONE main platform. Choose the place your buyers read, even if fewer founders hang out there. Selling to small-business owners? LinkedIn. Selling to developers or indie founders? X or Indie Hackers. Repost elsewhere if you like, but write for one place first.

2. Decide what you share and what stays private. Write two lists before your first post and keep them. Share: problems you heard in interviews (anonymised), decisions and why you made them, small wins and their numbers (sign-ups, first paying customer, weekly active users), mistakes and what they cost you, screenshots of work in progress. Keep private: customer names, quotes or data without written permission, security details, unsigned deals, investor conversations, team conflicts, and your personal finances. Anything you’d be uncomfortable seeing quoted in a newspaper stays in the private list too.

3. Set up a weekly post with a fixed shape. Same day, same structure, so readers know what to expect. Template: “Week 6 building [product]. Shipped: [one thing]. Learned: [one surprise from a customer]. Numbers: [2 or 3 numbers, with last week’s in brackets]. Stuck on: [one honest problem]. Next week: [one thing].” Keep it under 200 words.

4. Track the numbers you’ll share. A simple sheet with 3 to 5 weekly numbers is enough: visitors, sign-ups, active users, revenue, conversations with customers. Pick numbers that matter to your business and post them even in a bad week; the bad weeks are the ones people remember.

5. Add one story post a week. Between updates, post one lesson in more depth: a customer quote that changed your plan, a before-and-after of your landing page, a price test result. Open with the concrete thing that happened: “A bookkeeper told me my app saved her 20 minutes and cost her an hour of setup.”

6. Reply to everyone and follow your readers. Spend 15 minutes a day answering comments and commenting on posts by people in your target group. Building in public is a conversation; posts that nobody answers read as broadcasting.

7. Give followers a next step. Pin a post with one clear action: join the beta, book a call or join the waitlist. Mention it in every fourth or fifth post, never in every post. If you plan your work in a weekly founder cadence, tie your public update to the end of that week so writing it becomes part of the routine.

What does a worked example look like?

Say Zara is building a booking tool for independent yoga teachers who run classes in rented studios. Her buyers are on Instagram and LinkedIn, and her product is a web app, so she picks LinkedIn.

Week 1 she posts why she’s building it: she taught yoga for 4 years and lost 2 hours a week chasing payments on WhatsApp. Each Friday she posts her update. Week 3: “Shipped: payment links. Learned: teachers hate asking for money more than they hate the admin. Numbers: 14 teachers on the waitlist (8 last week), 3 interviews. Stuck on: studios want a cut.” Each Tuesday she posts one story, like a teacher who stopped offering drop-in classes because collecting cash was too awkward.

By week 10 she has 640 followers, most of them teachers and studio owners. Her waitlist sits at 96, and 22 people have messaged her to ask when they can try it. When she opens the beta, she has 30 testers in two days without a single ad.

Which free tools help?

What mistakes should you avoid?

• Only posting wins. A feed of victories reads like an ad. The posts that travel are the honest ones about what didn’t work.
• Writing for other founders when you sell to yoga teachers. Founder applause feels great and pays nothing. Check who follows you every month.
• Sharing what isn’t yours to share. A customer’s screenshot or complaint needs their permission, even when it makes a great post.
• Vanity numbers. Followers and likes say little. Share numbers that move your business, like sign-ups, paying customers and churn.
• Quitting at week 4. Audiences grow slowly at the start. Our rule of thumb: judge it after 8 to 12 weeks, never sooner.

How do you know it worked?

Look past likes. Count people from your target group who message you, waitlist or beta sign-ups that came from your posts (ask “how did you hear about us?” on the form) and customers who say they followed along. Our rule of thumb: after 8 to 12 weeks, 20 or more sign-ups and 5 or more direct conversations with target customers mean it’s working.

Go: your followers are mostly potential buyers, and they act when you ask. No-go: your audience is mostly other founders and nobody signs up. Switch platform, or move your effort to direct outreach to the people you sell to.

What should you do next?

Turn your best weekly update into a longer post with LinkedIn founder posts or X threads, and collect your followers’ emails with a referral waitlist so you don’t depend on one platform. Make your weekly numbers easy to pull with a weekly metrics dashboard. If you’d like to build your startup alongside other women who share their progress, the Fe/male Switch startup game gives you an AI co-founder and a step-by-step path from idea to first customers.

FAQ

Is building in public a good idea for a first-time founder?

Yes, if you can keep a weekly rhythm and your buyers read the platform you post on. It also forces you to think clearly about your progress every week, which helps even when few people read the posts.

Should I share revenue numbers when I build in public?

Only if you’re comfortable with them being public forever. You can share growth in percentages or ranges instead (“revenue up 40% this month”), which keeps the story honest without exposing exact figures.

Can someone steal my idea if I build in public?

They can copy what you show. What they can’t copy easily is your relationship with the customers who follow you and tell you what they need. Keep anything truly secret, like a special data source, in your private list.

Updated 26 October 2026 · Written by the Fe/male Switch team

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