GrowthJuly 30, 2026By Maarten Follaets

Build in public without turning your startup into a performance

Cover reading build in public without the performance, with a callout that building in public is distribution not applause, sourced to Mercury, and the Foxy mascot in the corner

Quick answer: Building in public means sharing the real journey of your startup as it happens, the decisions, the milestones, and the things that did not work, instead of appearing fully formed at launch. Done well it is a distribution and learning engine: you grow an audience before you have a product, and you get feedback early enough to change course. Done badly it turns into a performance that eats the hours you should spend talking to customers. The fix is simple to say and hard to do: share your assumptions and what you learned testing them, not a highlight reel.

Building in public has a marketing problem.

The phrase now mostly means posting a revenue chart and waiting for strangers to clap. Screenshot of MRR, a rocket, a thread about "the lessons". It looks like transparency. Often it is just an ad for yourself with the lights left on.

That is a shame, because the honest version of building in public is one of the best cheap tools a founder has. It is worth separating the tool from the theatre.

What it actually is

Building in public means inviting people into how your company is built from the start: product decisions, milestones, lessons learned, sometimes the mistakes and the numbers. Building in private keeps most of that internal until there is something more finished to show.

The useful framing, from Mercury, is that it is a spectrum rather than a single decision. High transparency at one end, sharing revenue and roadmap. At the other, just narrating your thinking without the sensitive details. You choose where to stand, and you can move.

The goal is not visibility for its own sake. It is a fit between how you build and what the business actually needs right now.

What it buys you

Three things, mostly.

Distribution. This is the big one. Sharing progress gives people a reason to follow you before there is anything to buy, and over months that audience becomes early users, introductions, and people who vouch for you. If you build in private, you still have to solve distribution later, from a cold start, usually the hard way.

Faster feedback. Saying out loud what you are building, and why, pulls in reactions sooner than you would get them otherwise. Some of it is noise. Some of it points at a blind spot you could not see from inside.

Trust. A young company that shows its work feels more human and more credible than one that only appears, polished, on launch day. People tend to trust builders who are willing to be seen mid-build.

None of that is magic. It is leverage, and only if you use it on purpose.

Where it quietly costs you

The same openness has a bill attached, and it is easy to miss.

You can hand competitors your positioning or your timing. They cannot copy your execution, but you might give away the plan.

You can feel pressure to perform. When the work is slow and messy, and it always is, a public account tempts you to project a confidence you do not have. That gap is draining, and readers can smell it.

You can get distracted. Keeping a narrative going takes real time. If it starts pulling you away from customer conversations and the product, the cost has outgrown the benefit.

And the feedback can mislead you. Public channels reward loud opinions, not informed ones. Without a filter for whose view actually matters, you will chase the wrong notes.

I have been a founder through a full cycle before, right up to selling the company. The trap I know best is the third one: posting felt like progress, so I did more of it, on days I should have been on the phone with someone who had the problem.

The version that is actually validation

Here is the line that separates the tool from the theatre: focus on learnings, not performance.

A highlight reel is marketing. A working notebook is validation done out loud. State the assumption. Run the test. Share what actually happened, including when the answer was no. That is the version people trust, because they can watch you reason instead of watching you announce.

It also keeps you honest with yourself. It is much harder to round a shrug up into a win when you have told a few hundred people what the test was supposed to prove. Applause is free. What you learned is the data. If you want the longer argument on why warm reactions are not demand, I wrote it in why people say they love your idea but do not pay.

And if you are doing this alone, the audience is not a nice-to-have, it is your only distribution engine, so it is worth building deliberately. There is more on that in how to validate a startup idea as a solo founder.

Where a second opinion helps

The problem with building your own narrative in public is that you are also the one grading it. Every ambiguous signal gets rounded up, because it is your story and you want it to be good.

That is the gap we are building Foxy to fill. It is an AI co-founder whose job is not to cheer your latest post but to read your customer evidence and tell you which assumption is still a guess and which "win" is thinner than it looked. If you want an objective second read before you take a victory lap, start here.

So before your next update goes out, ask yourself one thing. Are you sharing what you learned this week, or just what looked good?

Frequently asked questions

What does building in public actually mean?

Sharing parts of your startup's journey openly as you go: product decisions, milestones, lessons, sometimes metrics and mistakes. It is a spectrum, not a switch. Some founders post revenue and churn; others just narrate their thinking without the sensitive numbers. The opposite, building in private, keeps most of it internal until there is something more proven to show. Mercury has a good breakdown of where founders tend to land on that spectrum.

Does building in public actually help you get customers?

It can, because the real advantage is distribution. Sharing progress gives people a reason to follow along before you have a finished product, and that audience can turn into early users, partners, or advocates. But it is not automatic. An audience that watches you and never buys is a metric that flatters you and pays nothing. Treat attention as a top-of-funnel signal, not proof of demand.

What are the risks of building in public?

You can expose your positioning or timing to competitors, feel pressure to project confidence you do not have, and let posting quietly replace the real work of talking to customers and improving the product. Public channels also amplify loud opinions, not necessarily informed ones, so you need a filter for whose feedback actually counts.

Should a solo founder build in public?

Often yes, because founder-led distribution and community-driven growth pair well with it, and a solo founder has no brand machine to lean on. Just protect your time. If a week of posting crowded out your customer conversations, the audience you are building is the wrong kind. There is more on the solo case in our post on validating as a solo founder.

What should I share, and what should I keep private?

Share learnings and decisions rather than performance numbers. Decide up front which categories are always private (detailed financials, security, anything that would hand a competitor your plan) so you are not second-guessing every post. The strongest build-in-public accounts sound like a working notebook, not a victory lap.

Isn't building in public just marketing?

It becomes marketing the moment you only post wins. Kept honest, it is closer to validation done out loud: you state an assumption, run a test, and share what actually happened, including when you were wrong. That version earns trust because people can see you reasoning, not just announcing.