Building in public has become an effective strategic move for founders. The strategy is less about building a personal brand but more about attracting early users and fostering trust. While it sounds easy, it isn’t.

It may not be suitable for your business or sometimes, it may be the only thing that could accelerate your product’s growth. How do you not overshare on social media and maintain authenticity? What’s the best way to ‘build in public’?

Let’s understand the concept of building in public in this guide.

What Does ‘Building in Public’ Mean?

Building in public is a calculated move to share the process of creating your product online. It’s a measured marketing step for founders and teams. Most founders share a mix of business growth, product updates, and milestones.

If done right, building in public can create an engaging community of active users. In addition, you may attract investors and even validate your product earlier than competitors.

Key Benefits of Building in Public

Building in public is a strategic move and has its advantages. It’s mainly helpful for early-stage founders who need to validate their product and scale. Let’s have a glance at the key benefits of it:

Build your brand

As you build in public, your everyday work turns into a means of engagement. Each product update, insight, and milestone has potential to get people’s attention. You can build trust and recognition for your brand over time.

In addition, a strategic post can lead to conversations, invites, and conversions. When you share your journey out there, you increase the chances of your brand being seen.

Grow a loyal community

When you share your product journey, people feel like they’re a part of the process too. It creates a sense of emotional investment. Thus, your audience becomes an active community that supports your work and stays loyal.

At the same time, building in public can keep you accountable and motivated. This makes it easier for you to stay on track, even during setbacks.

Validate your product

When you share ideas and gather user feedback, it can help you validate your product concept within the early stages. That’s the biggest advantage of building in public. It can save you from blind spots that may be costly to fix.

In addition, building in public needs transparency. When you share your struggles and successes, it fosters trust in your community. It’s essential when you’re still validating your product.

Attract investors and teammates

Building in public doesn’t only attract users, but also potential teammates and investors. When you post something, it also shows how you work, think, and lead. It attracts like-minded people who are already aligned with your vision.

Ideas for When Building in Public

Now that you know why building in public is a good strategy, how exactly do you make it work? Here are the most popular ideas that founders use to grow their brand.

Product updates and roadmaps

You can share regular updates such as new features, bug fixes, and general announcements. They can keep your audience engaged and informed. In addition, public roadmaps can encourage the audience to share feedback.

But note this — transparency is key when building in public. Instead of committing to strict deadlines, share your overall vision. Make sure to be upfront when plans change.

Behind-the-scenes culture

Behind-the-scenes are still one of the most humanizing content pieces out there. You can share a glimpse of development workflows, iterations, and how your team works on a day-to-day basis.

This type of content doesn’t need to be polished. You could share a messy whiteboard or a quick note on the progress. At the end, it’s meant to feel authentic and real.

Revenue milestones

In the early stages, sharing revenue milestones with your audience can build credibility. Even the simplest updates such as, “We scaled from $1K MRR to $5K MRR in 6 months” show that your product is worth paying for.

At the same time, it’s better to highlight trends and milestones than to share detailed financial breakdowns. Be strategically cautious by sharing rounded numbers or percentage metrics as your brand grows.

Customer support and feedback

Many product companies are poor at managing customer feedback. That’s where you can stand out by showing how you address user input.

You can share what you did when you got a feature request, a bug report, or a user insight as you build in public. These can be minor posts to show how closely you listen to your customers. It also encourages people to engage more with you.

Founder insights

Founders insights help your brand stand out as unique. A glimpse of your perspective can personalize your brand and shape how people view your brand.

For instance, you can share a lesson, a turning point, or a small win from your building journey. People remember stories more than huge numbers. The reason is: stories foster connection and trust.

When You Shouldn’t Build in Public

While building in public has countless benefits, it isn’t a great idea for everyone. Here are several circumstances when building in public can have a counter effect:

When your idea is replicable

Ideas are one piece of the cake; execution is what really matters. If your idea can be built over the weekend, or you’re relying on an integration, a specific strategy, or unconventional positioning, it may be better to keep the details to your team.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t build in public at all. You can still share your stories, progress, and growth without leading into the behind-the-scenes details. Staying intentional is key here.

When you’re scaling

Sharing growth metrics isn’t a huge deal in the early stages. But as your product gains traction, you need a balance between transparency and discretion. Otherwise, you may reveal a lot to your competitors — losing an edge.

In addition, your audience might stop relating to your new later-stage wins. That’s when you need to refine what you share and why.

When your product or market favors discretion

Some products and industries aren’t meant to for transparency. In case you’re operating in a highly regulated field and serving clients with strict confidentiality, building in public can do more harm than good.

You need to be very selective about what you share publicly. It’s difficult to avoid breaching confidentiality and overstepping regulatory guidelines. Therefore, building in public isn’t the best idea for such industries.

How to Build in Public: Best Practices

Even if you’ve got the best ideas to post, build in public may not work for you without a strategy. You need to consider the best practices for the results.

Define your goals clearly

The first step before you start posting is: define ‘why’ you want to build in public. Is it to grow your audience? Attract early users and get feedback? Build trust with investors?

The goal you choose will shape what you share and where you invest your energy. Clear goals lead to content that serves a purpose to you and your audience. It’s the first and most important of all steps.

Choose the right platform

When building in public, you also want to build on the platform where your audience is. Twitter/X is known for community-building and regular updates. On the other hand, LinkedIn is popular for B2B visibility and longer posts.

You want to choose your platform based on your audience. Prioritize your chosen platforms over everything else, even if they aren’t your personal favorites.

Stay consistent

As said earlier, you don’t need complete transparency to build your brand. Don’t try to do everything at once. Instead, start small with weekly recaps and product update threads and stay consistent with them.

Once you’ve found your rhythm, build momentum. Small, consistent efforts matter more than inconsistent, out-of-the-blue updates.

Be strategic with what you share

Transparency leads of the core of the ‘build in public’ concept. However, it doesn’t mean you should share everything online. The best leaders are selective about what they share — open to progress and milestones, but careful with sensitive information.

Make sure to avoid posting anything that could hurt your brand reputation or competitive edge. In addition, be cautious when sharing financial growth numbers.

Engage with your community

Building in public isn’t all about sharing but engaging too. When someone engages with your post, asks a question, or offers feedback, make an effort to reply thoughtfully. It’s an effective way to build a community that supports you actively.

Start Building with Natively

Before you curate a marketing strategy, you need an actual product. Natively’s no-code app generation platform lets you build intuitive, scalable native apps quickly.

If you’re building with Natively:

You don’t need to be a coder. Natively’s agent works on prompting for app generation and iterations.
Once you’ve built your app, you can preview it on Expo Go and gather feedback.
Add any feature your app needs — basic or advanced — effortlessly.

If you’re ready to turn your idea into something real, Natively is your go-to tool. Describe your idea now.