Build in Public

Building in public is a marketing and community strategy where founders, makers, or teams share their product development process, business metrics, failures, and milestones transparently—usually on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, or dedicated blogs. It turns the act of building into an ongoing content series. The appeal is genuine: it builds an audience before launch, creates accountability, generates feedback from potential customers, and humanizes the company. When Pieter Levels built Nomad List and publicly shared revenue milestones, he turned transparency into distribution. Many indie hackers and SaaS founders have built audiences of tens of thousands by documenting their journey. Build in public works because it aligns with what people find inherently interesting—the struggle, the pivots, the honest numbers. 'We launched and made $0' gets more engagement than 'our product is amazing.' Authenticity drives shares, which drives discovery, which drives signups. The tradeoff: it requires consistency and vulnerability. Sharing real metrics means sharing when things go badly. It also has a shelf life—once you're a $10M ARR company, 'building in public' becomes less authentic and more performative. Most effective in the 0-to-1 phase when the founder's story and product are genuinely intertwined.

• 1Founder tweeted weekly revenue updates from $0 to $10K MRR, building 25,000 followers in the process
• 2Sharing a post-mortem of a failed product launch drove more signups for the next product than any ad campaign