Building in Public: What I've Learned

There's a strange vulnerability that comes with publishing work before it's ready. You're putting out something half-baked and asking people to care. Most of the time, they don't. That's fine — that's the point.

I've been building in public for about a year now. Here's what I actually learned.

Nobody is watching (at first)

The biggest lie about building in public is that there's an audience waiting for you. There isn't. You have to earn that, slowly, post by post, project by project.

This is actually liberating. When nobody's watching, you can iterate fast and break things without consequence. Ship the ugly version. Fix it later.

Accountability is real

Even if nobody's watching, you know. The act of writing "I'm going to ship this by Friday" changes how you treat your Friday. The public commitment is mostly for you.

Feedback is a gift — when you get it

Occasionally someone will reply. A question, a critique, a piece of advice you didn't ask for. Most of it is gold. People who engage with early, rough work tend to be serious people. Listen carefully.

What I'd do differently

Start smaller. My first few public projects were too ambitious to show quick progress. The projects that got traction were the ones I could ship in a weekend and post about on Monday.

Build the thing first. Then write about building it. Writing while building is great, but shipping the thing is what earns the right to write about it.

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Still learning. Still shipping. The loop keeps going.