Build in Public
The single highest-leverage organic strategy for founders.
5.1 Why it works
Build in public is not a content strategy. It is a business strategy.
It creates infinite content. When every day of building is content, you never run out. The struggle is content. The win is content. The boring week where nothing happened is content.
It creates a genuine reason to follow. “Follow me for social media tips” competes with millions of accounts. “Follow me while I build SocialLead from $1K to $10K MRR and document every step” gives people a specific, ongoing reason to come back every day.
It attracts your exact customer. Who follows a founder building a social media scheduling tool? People who care about social media and might need a scheduling tool. Your audience self-selects.
It builds trust faster than anything else. When you share a failure before you know how it ends, you demonstrate something rare: honesty that is not strategic. That honesty is worth more than a hundred polished success posts.
5.2 The build-in-public post types
The progress update
Raw numbers. No spin.
SocialLead update: $1,247 MRR. Up from $890 last month. Churn is at 28% and that is the number keeping me up at night. Here is what I am doing about it.
The failure post
Something that went wrong, shared before you know how it ends.
Spent 3 weeks building a feature nobody asked for. Zero usage after 2 weeks. Killing it tomorrow. What I should have done instead:
The behind-the-scenes post
The reality of building that polished content never shows.
What my Sunday morning actually looks like: coffee, SocialLead analytics open, 90-minute batching session. Done for the week. No team. No agency. Just this system.
The lesson post
The insight extracted from a specific, named experience.
I learned more about content strategy from 6 months of posting than from any course I have ever taken. The 5 things that actually moved the needle:
The reaction post
A DM, comment, or moment your audience will find relatable.
Woke up to this DM: “I have been posting manually for 3 years. Set up SocialLead yesterday. Scheduled a full week in 12 minutes. I feel stupid for waiting this long.” This is why.
The milestone post
Specific numbers. Real emotion.
SocialLead just crossed $1K MRR. 9.5 months of every single day. Not every day felt like progress. But showing up consistently is what got here. The journey to $10K starts now.
5.3 What to share and what to keep private
The test: Would sharing this serve your audience (give them something useful or relatable) or would it primarily serve you? Share what serves your audience.
Share
- Revenue milestones and current MRR, even when small
- Specific product decisions and the reasoning behind them
- Failures and lessons, before you know how they end
- The emotional reality: anxiety, doubt, small wins, big moments
Keep private
- Customer information without their permission
- Sensitive negotiations or investor conversations
- Internal conflicts
- Anything that could harm specific individuals