You built a product, launched it, and heard very little back. Without an ad budget or a marketing team, getting the word out is hard.

One approach that grew out of the indie hacker community is building in public: sharing the process of creating your product as you go, so the work itself becomes your marketing. This guide covers why it works, what to share, where to post, and how to keep it sustainable.

What building in public means

Building in public is the practice of openly sharing the journey of creating a product or company. It goes beyond posting monthly revenue. It means sharing wins, losses, lessons and the day-to-day reality of being a founder, like a running documentary of your startup.

Why it works

  • It builds trust. People connect with people more readily than with faceless brands. Sharing struggles as well as successes makes you relatable, and that makes it easier for early customers to take a chance on you.
  • It creates early supporters. People who follow along from the start often feel invested in your success and become your first advocates.
  • It gives you a feedback loop. Unsure whether a feature is worth building or which pricing model to pick? Share your thinking and see how people react. It is cheap, informal market research. Pair it with real customer interviews, because followers are not always buyers.
  • It attracts opportunities. Potential co-founders, partners and customers can find you through your public updates.
  • It costs time, not money. That makes it a fit for founders with no ad budget.

What to share (and what to keep private)

You don't have to share everything. Choose a level of transparency you are comfortable with.

Good to share

  • Product updates: new features and the reasoning behind them.
  • Wins: your first customer, a feature launch, a kind review, milestones like your first 10 users.
  • Losses and challenges: a bug that took days to fix, a marketing experiment that failed, a feature you removed because nobody used it, a tough decision.
  • Lessons learned: what you discovered about your customers, your market or your own productivity.
  • Metrics, if you want to: MRR, user counts, traffic, churn.
  • Your stack and experiments: tech choices, tools you tried, marketing tests.

Stories about setbacks are often more engaging than a plain success announcement, so don't limit yourself to the highlight reel.

Be careful with

  • Exact revenue numbers: if you are not comfortable, share growth in relative terms instead.
  • Customer data: never share it.
  • Personal information you wouldn't want permanently public.

Where to share

Pick one or two channels where your audience already spends time, and be consistent there.

  • X / Twitter: a long-standing home for building in public. Suited to short updates, questions and conversations with other founders.
  • LinkedIn: better for a professional audience, especially B2B SaaS, and slightly longer posts.
  • Indie Hackers: a community built around this idea. Share milestones and take part in the forums.
  • A personal blog or newsletter: good for longer stories, and you own the audience directly.
  • BuildVoyage: if your product is listed, you can log milestones on its page so its timeline tells the story.

A simple routine to get started

  1. Commit to a cadence. Once a day or once a week, whichever you can sustain. A weekly update is enough to build momentum.
  2. Set a small, concrete goal. For example: "Every Friday I'll share one thing I learned this week."
  3. Share progress, not just wins. Show the reality, not a polished version of it.
  4. Engage, don't broadcast. Reply to comments, ask questions, thank people for feedback, and support other founders.
  5. Provide value beyond your product. Share what you are learning, useful tools you found, or takeaways from something you read. People pay more attention to your product when you have been useful to them.

Weekly checklist

  • Posted at your chosen cadence
  • Shared at least one lesson or challenge, not only a win
  • Replied to comments and questions
  • Engaged with a few other founders' posts
  • Logged any real milestone where you track them

Trade-offs and pitfalls

  • Competitors are watching too. Sharing details publicly shows others what is working. Decide in advance what stays private.
  • It takes time away from building. Building in public is not a substitute for building a product people want. That remains the main job.
  • Vanity metrics. Likes, reposts and follower counts are easy to chase. Focus on genuine conversations and on whether the right people are paying attention.
  • Comparison. Other founders' highlights can be discouraging. Everyone's path is different; measure against your own progress.

Every few months, review whether the effort is paying off in feedback, users or opportunities, and adjust what and where you share.

Keep going

Building in public can feel intimidating at first, and its payoff in trust, community and growth builds slowly. Done consistently, it helps you build a product and an audience at the same time. For turning that audience into your first users, see From 0 to 100 users.

When you launch, you can add your product to BuildVoyage and keep its milestones up to date as you go.