Is Building in Public Actually Worth It? An Honest Look

Building in public is one of those ideas that gets sold to you with a lot of confidence and very little nuance. Share your journey, the pitch goes, and an audience will appear, and that audience will buy your stuff. Some people get rich. Most people post into the void and quietly stop.

So is it actually worth it? I build in public for a living, I ship a new business every week and post the real numbers including the zeros, so I have skin in this. And my honest answer is: yes, but not for the reason most people sell it, and not in the way most people do it. Let me give you the real case for and against, and then how to do it so it actually helps.

The honest case for building in public

There are three real benefits, and none of them is "go viral."

Accountability. When you say publicly that you will ship this week, you ship this week. A private goal is a wish. A public one has teeth. For a solo builder with no boss and no deadline, this alone can be the difference between finishing and drifting. It is the most underrated reason to build in public and the one that helped me most.

Feedback before you waste months. Building in silence means you find out if anyone wants the thing on launch day, which is the most expensive possible time to find out. Building in public means you get reactions while you build, so you can course-correct before you have sunk three months into something nobody wanted.

Distribution you accumulate in advance. Every post while you build is a small deposit into an audience. By the time you launch, there are people who know your story and want to see how it ends. That is why build-in-public launches convert and silent launches echo. You are not creating an audience on launch day, you are cashing in one you built over weeks.

Those three are real, and they are enough to make it worth doing.

The honest case against

Now the other side, because the hype skips it.

It is slow and it is work. An audience does not appear because you posted twice. It comes from showing up consistently for a long time, often with very little response early on. If you are not willing to post through the silence for months, building in public will feel like shouting into a canyon.

It can become procrastination. There is a failure mode where people spend more time posting about building than building. Tweeting your roadmap is not shipping your roadmap. If the public part starts replacing the work, it has become a very sophisticated way to avoid the work.

Not everyone should share everything. Some people are genuinely uncomfortable being public, and forcing it produces stiff, joyless content that helps no one. And some things, exact revenue, personal details, half-baked strategy, are fine to keep private. Building in public does not mean building with no clothes on.

The trap nobody warns you about

Here is the single most important thing to understand, and the lesson experienced builders repeat after learning it the hard way: your build-in-public audience is not your market.

The people who follow your building journey are, mostly, other builders. They love your progress posts, they cheer your launches, they are wonderful. And they are usually not the customers for your product, because your product is probably for a completely different kind of person. A following of fellow founders does not automatically become a customer base.

This trips up so many people. They build an audience of a few thousand builders, launch a product for, say, dentists, and are shocked when the builders do not buy dental software. The audience did its job, it gave accountability and feedback and cheerleading, but it was never going to be the market. If you confuse the two, you will build the wrong thing for the wrong people and call building in public a scam when it was your expectation that was wrong.

What to share, and what to keep private

Share the journey, the decisions, and the lessons. Share your numbers if you can stomach it, honestly, including the flops, because honesty is the entire currency of building in public and fake numbers get sniffed out instantly. Share what you are unsure about, because that is where the useful feedback comes from.

Keep private anything that would put you at real risk, and skip the stuff that is just noise. You do not owe the internet a running commentary on every decision. Share what teaches or connects. Cut the rest.

Metrics that actually mean something

Do not measure building in public by follower count. Followers are a vanity number, and, as we covered, they are usually not your market anyway. Measure it by the things that matter: are you shipping more because of the accountability? Are you getting feedback that changes what you build? When you launch, do real people show up because they knew your story? Those are the returns that count. A small, engaged group who trust you beats a big pile of followers who will never buy.

How I do it

For what it is worth, here is my version. SideRoad is one honest build in public. Every week I ship a business and publish exactly what it made, which right now is often nothing, and I do not hide the zeros. The point is not to look impressive. It is to be trustworthy, to hold myself accountable to a weekly cadence, and to build a small audience of people who value the honesty. The real numbers are the whole product.

That is what building in public looks like when it is done for the right reasons: not a growth hack, but accountability, feedback, and trust, compounded over time.

So, is it worth it?

Yes, if you go in with the right expectations. It is worth it for accountability, feedback, and slow-building distribution. It is not worth it as a get-rich shortcut, and it will disappoint you if you expect an audience of builders to be your customers. Do it consistently, do it honestly, keep the private things private, and measure the right outcomes. Done that way, it is one of the best things a solo builder can do.

How to start if you hate being visible

A lot of people read all of this, agree with it, and still do not start, because the honest truth is they find being visible uncomfortable. If that is you, you are not broken and you are not disqualified. Plenty of quiet people build in public well. You just need to start in a way that fits you rather than copying the loudest person on your feed.

First, drop the idea that building in public means performing. It does not. It means sharing, on your own schedule, in writing, whenever you are ready. There is no live camera, no forced enthusiasm, no obligation to be entertaining. A plain, honest sentence about what you worked on and what you learned is a perfectly good build-in-public post. The loud, high-energy style you see from some people is one way to do it, not the way.

Second, start smaller than feels significant. Your first post does not need an audience or a strategy. Write one honest update about what you are building and post it somewhere, anywhere. The goal of the first post is just to break the seal, to prove to yourself that sharing does not hurt. Almost nobody will see it, which is exactly why it is safe to practice on.

Third, lean into the thing quiet people are often better at: honesty and substance over hype. You do not have to be charismatic to build a following, you have to be useful and real. Sharing a genuine lesson, an honest number, or a real struggle connects with people far more than energy does, and it is a style that suits someone who would rather be truthful than loud. Some of the most respected builders are not performers at all, they are just consistently honest.

Start quiet, start small, and let consistency do the work that charisma does for other people. You will find that the version of building in public that fits you is the one you can actually sustain, and sustainability beats intensity every time.

FAQ

Does building in public actually help you get customers?

Indirectly. It builds accountability, gives you feedback, and creates an audience who will show up at launch. But that audience is often other builders, not your end market, so do not expect them to be your buyers.

Is building in public just for people who are already influencers?

No. The main benefits, accountability and feedback, work even with a tiny audience. You do not need to be famous for it to change how much you ship.

What should I actually share?

The journey, the decisions, the lessons, and your honest numbers if you can. Keep private anything risky or purely noise. Honesty is the whole point, so do not fake it.

Can introverts build in public?

Yes. It is writing and sharing on your own schedule, not performing live. Plenty of quiet people do it well by being consistent and honest rather than loud.