Founder Twitter is a landlord economy and most of you are paying rent in screenshots
I made a founder account on Twitter a few months ago. No following, didn't know anyone, just wanted to see what "build in public" actually looks like from the inside.
So I read. A lot. Probably more founder posts than is healthy. And somewhere around week two I noticed I could predict a post from the first four words, which is never a good sign for a platform that's supposedly full of people building original things.
Here's what I keep seeing.
The slop, sorted
"What are you building?"
That's the whole post. Four words. Then 400 replies from people pitching into a void, because the poster isn't reading them and the people replying aren't reading each other. It's a vending machine that only takes your time and never drops anything.
"Drop your product below and I'll review it"
Same trick wearing a nicer jacket. Now it sounds generous. Go read the reviews that actually get posted though. "Nice landing page, maybe make the CTA bigger." That's not a review. That's the receipt for the reply you just paid with.
The statement that can't be wrong
"Founders waste time on the wrong things. Focus on what matters." Sure. Also true for every person who has ever been alive. My test: cover the name and ask if the sentence fits literally any founder on the planet. If yes, it wasn't written for a person, it was written for the feed.
The dashboard screenshot
MRR curve, customer names blurred, "we did it 🚀". The number is probably real. But the post skips the only part that would've been worth reading, which is what they tried before this, what fell flat, and why the thing that worked actually worked. Without that it's just a trophy case, and you're not in the room.
The 6-months-ago thread
"6 months ago I had nothing. Today: X." Nine tweets of feelings. One tweet of tactics. The tactic is "post every day."
I want to be clear I've almost done all of these. Drafted at least two of them. Deleted them because I could hear how they sounded.
Why it happens
I don't think these are bad people. It's the incentive.
Early founders have no distribution and no money to buy it. Twitter is free and pays out in exactly one currency, engagement. The cheapest engagement comes from replies. The cheapest replies come from questions that cost nothing to answer.
So "what are you building" is not lazy. It's efficient. It's the shortest line from zero to a number that looks like momentum.
The cost lands on the reader. Every one of those posts teaches a few thousand founders that this is a place where nothing is said. And then the handful of people posting something real get scrolled past with everyone else.
The good ones
They exist. In the same few weeks I found maybe a dozen accounts I'd actually miss if they went quiet. A couple of founders who post one specific thing they did, with the number and the mistake attached. A designer who posts the before, the after, and the paragraph in between about why. One operator who basically only shows up in other people's replies and is right most of the time.
None of them ask what you're building. They tell you what they built and let you figure out if it applies to you.
That's the difference I keep coming back to. One kind of post takes. The other kind gives something you can use.
So, my oath
I'm a product designer and an early founder with a following small enough that this costs me nothing to say and would cost me everything to break. Writing it down so you can hold me to it.
- Every post has one specific thing I actually did. A screen I redesigned, a flow I cut, a call I got wrong. A case, not a principle.
- I don't post about a problem I haven't personally run into. If I'm guessing at what founders struggle with, I'm noise.
- If there's a number, there's a method next to it.
- I will never ask you what you're building. If I want to know I'll read your bio and DM you like a normal person.
- No "after" screenshot without the "before" and the reason for the change.
If I break one of these, quote tweet me (@AyushShakya). I'd rather get corrected in public than trusted by default.
What I've actually learned (small sample, honestly reported)
Read the replies, not the posts. The best people on founder Twitter are often quiet in their own feed and sharp in someone else's thread. Nobody performs in the replies, so that's where the true thing gets said.
Narrow questions get real answers. "How do you handle onboarding?" gets you platitudes. "Did anyone move the signup form from step 1 to step 3 and watch completion go up or down?" gets you three strangers with actual numbers. I've tested this exactly twice and it worked both times, so take that for what it's worth.
Design posts work when they show the decision, not the pixels. Nobody cares that your button has rounded corners. They care why you deleted the second button. The reasoning is the post. The screenshot is just evidence.
Posting daily isn't a strategy, it's a calendar. If the daily post is a reworded principle, it compounds into nothing. One thing a week someone can actually go do beats seven things nobody can.
Your first 100 followers should be able to say what you're working on. If they can't, you've been posting about being a founder instead of about the thing you're founding. I checked mine. Some of them couldn't. Fixing that.
That's it. No link, no "what are you building."
If you've found accounts that give instead of take, drop them below. I'm keeping a list and it's short.
This hit hard because it describes exactly what so much of founder Twitter feels like in practice. I have seen how easy it is to slip into posts that create activity but say very little, while the actually useful stuff is usually the specific lesson, mistake, or decision behind the result. That is what makes a feed worth following.
This matches what I've seen as a reader. The posts that actually teach me something all have the same shape: a specific number, a specific thing that failed, and what changed after. "Post every day" as the only tactic is why so many founders burn out: consistency only works if you have a system for turning real work into posts, otherwise you end up performing momentum instead of building it. After reading that many founder posts, what separated the few genuinely useful accounts from the rest?
"Read the replies, not the posts" hit different lol. Honestly this whole oath should be pinned somewhere every founder can see it before they open Twitter. Following.
"Posting daily isn't a strategy, it's a calendar"—that line hit home. Great breakdown of why low-effort engagement tricks ruin the feed for people actually building real stuff.