What is building in public?

Building in public, explained

Building in public means working on a product or business openly and sharing the process as it happens. Instead of announcing a finished product, the builder posts the journey: what they are making, what they tried, what failed, how many users or customers they have, and what they plan next.

It is most common among indie hackers, solo founders, and small startup teams, and it shows up on platforms such as Twitter or X, Reddit, Indie Hackers, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Some builders post daily. Others share a monthly update.

What builders share

The content varies, but most posts fall into a few familiar types.

• Progress updates that describe what shipped this week.
• Metrics such as signups, active users, monthly revenue, and churn.
• Launch announcements for new products, features, and pricing.
• Lessons learned from mistakes, pivots, and failed experiments.
• Requests for feedback on a design, an idea, or a landing page.
• Behind the scenes decisions about hiring, tools, and strategy.

Why founders do it

Public building creates accountability. Saying out loud what you will ship this week makes it harder to quietly skip it. It also gathers feedback early, when changing direction is cheap, and it builds an audience that may become the first customers.

Many builders also use it to attract advice, partners, contractors, and sometimes investors. For a founder without a large network, a steady public record can do the work that a network would otherwise do.

Why other people watch it

Builders are not the only audience. Marketers read these posts to learn what a market cares about. Sales teams look for builders who mention a pain point or ask for tools. Researchers follow categories to see which ideas are getting traction. Agencies find founders who say they need help with design, growth, or engineering. Investors and journalists watch for early signs of products worth covering.

Because the posts are public and timestamped, they form a running record of what a part of the market is doing. That record is what makes building in public useful for market research and not only for the people doing it.

How to read building in public posts

These posts are valuable, but they need careful reading.

• Treat numbers as claims. Builders choose what to share, and results are sometimes rounded up or taken out of context.
• Watch for survivorship bias. People who succeed post more than people who quietly stop.
• Separate promotion from information. A launch post is partly an advertisement, so look for details such as pricing, users, and feedback in the replies.
• Check consistency over time. A builder who posts steady, specific updates is more informative than one who posts a single dramatic milestone.
• Read the replies. Questions and criticism in the comments often hold the real signal.

How to follow building in public by topic

The easiest way to make sense of the volume is to follow a topic instead of individual people. Choose a category such as AI tools, developer tools, or no code, then collect posts from builders in that category and look for repeated themes: the same pain point, the same pricing experiment, the same kind of launch.

Following a topic also reveals who is most active. Builders who post often and specifically are easier to learn from than those who post rarely, and they are usually the best candidates to follow, partner with, or sell to.

What a useful update looks like

The best updates are specific and short. A simple shape works well: what you shipped, one number that changed, one thing that surprised you, and what comes next. For example, a builder might post that they launched a pricing page, that trial signups rose, that most visitors asked about one feature, and that they will build it next. The details matter more than the polish.

Vague posts such as working hard on big things carry almost no information. Posts with a concrete decision and a reason behind it are the ones other people learn from and the ones that make good research material.

How each platform shapes the posts

The same builder writes differently depending on where they post.

• Twitter or X favors short, frequent updates and threads that tell a story in steps.
• Reddit favors longer posts that follow each community's rules, and many communities limit self promotion.
• Indie Hackers favors milestone posts and open discussion of revenue and growth.
• LinkedIn favors a professional tone and announcements aimed at a business audience.
• Hacker News favors technical launches through Show HN posts and rewards detail.
• YouTube and podcasts carry longer build logs for builders who prefer video or audio.

Risks and tradeoffs

Building in public has costs, and honest builders weigh them.

• Copycats can see your ideas and move faster than you.
• Public criticism can be harsh, and early projects are fragile.
• The pressure to post can pull time away from building.
• Sharing numbers can set expectations you later struggle to meet.
• Confidential customer information and partner details must stay private.

Getting started if you want to build in public

If you are a founder rather than an observer, start small. Pick one platform where your audience already is. Post a short update on a regular schedule, include one concrete detail such as a number or a screenshot, and reply to people who respond. Share failures as well as wins, because honest posts earn more trust than polished ones.

Be clear about what you will not share. Customer data, private conversations, and anything covered by an agreement should stay private.

How Posts Finder helps

Posts Finder collects building in public posts from startup communities into a single dashboard. It ranks builders by recent activity and signal quality, lets you filter by topic, platform, and intent, and keeps the original post one click away so you can check context. Trend views show which topics are gaining attention, and saved searches can alert you by email when new matching posts appear. You can export the results as CSV or JSON.