How do you think your (paid) customers feel when they see you building in public?

But it feels weird talking about painpoints or the struggles of working on it, especially when paying customers have committed their time and money into getting what they think is a top tier service.

I absolutely agree.

I "build in public," but only share critical positive milestones.

No shows of weakness or vulnerability.

I used to have Stripe-verified revenue for my product in the very beginning, barely a month into my launch, but then a customer tweeted publicly that he decided not to proceed with upgrading because "they only make a measly $80/mo," so it can't be any good.

I just feel like there's a lot more to lose than to gain from sharing these milestones.

I was lurking around the building in public crowd for a while now and just started putting it into practice for the project I'm working on.

I was hesitant originally for the same reasons you mentioned and have landed on an approach that feels right to me:

• I've committed (in a blog post) to share revenues publicly once I hit $500 / month (currently at like $50, I might do a status report for a couple milestones up that point)
• I blog about challenges and lessons learned from bootstrapping a business in general
• I ask for feedback on Twitter and other places occasionally and try to contribute to others with my learnings
• But I don't publicly broadcast the daily ups and downs - imo this is just avoiding oversharing detail that won't be interesting to most and may put off customers like you said. I don't think there's anything disingenuous about not going there if it's not your style, it's not mine for sure

Hey Helen,

This is such a good question, thanks for asking!

1. You mentioned "completely honest". To me, #BuildingInPublic is not about 100% transparency. It is about having the mindset to be authentic & transparent, which means you can choose what to share. E.g. like @simplisticallysimple said, share a lesson that turns a struggle into a good outcome. You're in control of how far you want to go. Some people are super confident and have target customers that are more techy, then they even share revenue numbers. The only thing is don't share to destroy your own image/reputation.

2. I've been asked about this a lot "sharing my struggles will turn away my customers". If you've tried it, you'd find that it is actually the opposite. We are humans, and we love honesty and authenticity. We understand nothing is perfect. Yes, a business doesn't need to share "behind the scenes" to survive. It is only when you want to differentiate yourself using this. The more individual your target customer is, the more they'll like it. E.g. if you think about how those big corp companies handle crises, the only way to do it is to admit mistakes 100% and figure out a plan to recover. If the company just keeps lying, everyone knows.

Also agree with @jasraj it all depends on your audience. And you know them the best. If they're "aspiring techies", I'd think they're quite open haha I might be wrong.

I hope this helps a little bit - happy to share more too! Thanks @wellymulia for bringing me here :)

I think this is a great valid point that no one talks about (afaik).

@kevon have read your build in public guide and it's great! Can you share your thoughts on this?