What Is Build in Public?
Build in public means openly sharing the process of building your app, including progress, decisions, challenges, revenue, and even failures. Instead of working in stealth mode and launching with a big reveal, you bring your audience along for the entire journey.
People are naturally curious about how things are made. Following someone build a product from idea to launch creates a narrative arc that is far more engaging than any polished marketing campaign. By the time you launch, your audience feels invested in your success.
Why It Works
Pre-built audience at launch. Months of sharing accumulate followers genuinely interested in your product. They are not cold leads. They watched your app evolve, provided feedback, and feel personal connection. They become day-one users and evangelists.
Free feedback loop. Sharing mockups and decisions publicly invites responses. Your social followers become an unpaid advisory board catching issues internal testing misses.
SEO and content compounding. Every post, thread, and update creates searchable content. Someone Googling "how to build a fitness app" might find your build log and become a user.
Trust and authenticity. Transparency builds trust at a level polished marketing cannot match. Users forgive rough edges and actively root for improvement.
Network effects. Builders, journalists, and investors follow the build-in-public community. Your posts get amplified by people who appreciate the transparency, even if they are not your target users.
What to Share (and What Not To)
Share freely: Progress updates, metrics (revenue, downloads, retention), design decisions with screenshots, technical challenges and solutions, user feedback responses, revenue milestones, and failures with pivots.
Keep private: Specific user data or private conversations, security vulnerabilities, proprietary algorithms forming your core advantage, and contractual details.
Platform Strategy
X (Twitter): The primary platform. The indie hacker and maker community is deeply active here. Daily or weekly threads, screenshot shares, metric updates, polls. 3-7 posts per week.
LinkedIn: Underrated for B2B apps and professional tools. Build-in-public content gets surprisingly high engagement because most LinkedIn content is corporate.
YouTube: Monthly build vlogs or coding sessions attract developer audiences and rank in search for years.
Blog or Newsletter: Weekly build logs on your website create SEO value and give followers a reliable cadence. Substack, Ghost, or a simple blog.
Reddit and Indie Hackers: Community platforms for monthly milestone updates with real data. Great for early traction.
The Playbook
Phase 1: Pre-Development (Weeks 1-2)
Share the idea publicly. Post wireframes or rough mockups. Explain the problem. Ask "Would you use something like this?" to validate.
Phase 2: Active Development (Weeks 3-12)
Weekly update threads: what you built, what you learned, what is next. Screenshots and videos of new features. Technical decisions and trade-offs explained.
Phase 3: Beta and Launch (Weeks 12-16)
Invite followers to beta test. Share feedback and how you are acting on it. Count down to launch. On launch day, post across all platforms with a compelling summary of the journey.
Phase 4: Post-Launch (Ongoing)
Monthly metric updates. Feature releases with reasoning. User stories and testimonials. Revenue milestone celebrations.
Measuring Success
| Metric | Target |
|---|---|
| Follower growth | 10-20% monthly |
| Engagement rate | 2-5% on X |
| DMs and replies | Growing trend |
| Waitlist signups | 5-10% of followers |
| Launch installs from social | Track with UTM links |
Common Mistakes
- Only sharing wins: Share struggles too. People follow for authenticity
- Being too technical: Not everyone is a developer. Explain simply
- Inconsistency: Going silent kills momentum. Set a schedule and stick to it
- Ignoring engagement: Reply to every comment and DM, especially early on
- Oversharing sensitive data: Revenue is fine. Individual user data and security details are not