What are some good ways to start out building in public?

start way smaller than feels worth posting. "shipped the login page today, here's what broke" does better than some polished monthly recap, people follow the struggle not the highlight reel. main thing is don't treat it like marketing, it only works when it's an honest log. pick one place, post most days, reply to other people more than you post.

One thing I'd suggest: don't just build in public, learn in public.

Most founders share milestones like launches, revenue, and feature releases. The more valuable content is often the messy stuff: customer interviews, failed experiments, positioning changes, pricing decisions, and lessons from features nobody used.

If you're planning to launch an MVP every month, I'd document the entire journey:
• What problem you're solving
• Why you chose it
• What assumptions you're testing
• Feedback from early users
• What you changed after launch

That creates accountability, attracts early adopters, and helps you validate ideas faster.

It's also something we emphasize at foundersbar.com. The founders who move fastest are usually the ones getting feedback early and often, instead of building in isolation and hoping they're right.

Build in public. Learn in public. Iterate in public. That's where the real value comes from.

Document the process, not just the launches.

The MVPs people remember are usually the ones where founders openly shared the mistakes, pivots, user feedback, and decisions along the way...

One thing that helped us a lot: start by documenting decisions, not just results.

When we launched Native Options (a Shopify app), our most-engaged posts weren't "we got X installs" — they were things like "here's why we chose server-side rendering over JS injection, and what we had to give up to do it." Technical tradeoff posts attract the right kind of audience: people who understand why the decision matters.

For a thinktank model specifically, I'd suggest picking one "decision log" format and being consistent about it — even if the decision seems mundane. Readers build a mental model of how you think, which is what creates trust over time.

Love the idea of a thinktank launching an MVP every month — that kind of fast iteration only works well if you build strong “build in public” habits early, otherwise it becomes noise instead of learning.

A good foundation is usually less about platforms and more about consistency: sharing what you’re building, why you made decisions, and what failed each week so people can actually follow the evolution of your AI / SaaS ideas.

This might sound interesting 👇
You have an idea
$19 entry
🏆 Tokyo trip + hotel
💰 $500
Round just opened 👉 tokyolore.com

Prize pool just opened at $0. Your odds are the best right now.

the best foundation i've found is just starting before you feel ready. i launched my first post on indie hackers today after months of building in silence — 0 users, launching tuesday, and i just told the honest story of why i built it including the hard personal stuff.
what i'd say practically: pick one platform and be consistent there first. don't try to be everywhere. and talk about the journey not the product nobody cares about features but people do care about a real person figuring things out in public

Great question — one thing I’ve noticed is that early transparency works best when it’s tied to a learning cycle instead of just output. Posting “what didn’t work and why” often gets more engagement than just milestones because people feel invited into your thinking rather than shown a progress report.

A simple way to start is to share one hypothesis → one action → one outcome in each update: what you expected, what you did, and what you learned. That gives readers something concrete to respond to and a clear reason to follow your journey.

Curious — when you think about your first building-in-public update, are you planning to share a decision you struggled with or a metric you’re targeting first? Those shape how your audience connects with your story.

Twitter is always a great place to start.

You could start by sharing a weekly or monthly update about the progress of your products.

It's always a great way to build and audience along the way and keep yourself accountable.

Love the idea of launching an MVP every month! For building in public, I’d start small:

• Pick 1–2 channels and stick to them.
• Share lessons learned for each product, even failures.
• Keep posts short and actionable so readers feel involved.

Over time, these small updates add up and create a public track record. How detailed do you plan your updates to be?

I use YouTube personally. I find social media to be very moment-based tools with less "evergreen" focus. This means unless you're posting all the time, visibility will be tough (assuming your subscriber base is small). In terms of accountability you can't go wrong with those tools though.

Ultimately, any route of building in public takes a while to catch on so enjoy the journey most of all.

That’s awesome — a product a month is ambitious! 🚀

From what I’ve seen, the best foundation for building in public is:

Pick 1–2 channels where your target users actually hang out (don’t spread too thin).

Be consistent — weekly updates work better than sporadic big ones.

Share the messy middle (not just polished launches) — people connect with struggles more than highlights.

Curious — will you be documenting each MVP separately or sharing the bigger “thinktank journey” as a whole?

It was my first time building in public the entire September. It was really fun and I'm glad I made the decision. @8am

I basically leverage Twitter and other community to showcase all my crappy screenshots, tools I used and try to get as much feedback as possible before I launch the product.

Some example: https://twitter.com/felix12777/status/1307691440391114752

And the product is now live: https://ventureslist.com/

Twitter is a very good place to start building in public because you have access to materials like taglines and so much more

I've recently started building in public and one of the greatest video I've seen so far it's --> "55 Minutes of Social Media Content Strategy for Entrepreneurs" by Alex Hormozi

In short:

1. Start with “My journey and what works for me” = value-based report, instead of expertise. What works for you it does not mean that it will work for others, so you have no proven arguments, you can just share what works for you, so use always "How I" instead of "How to"
2. You do stuff, then you talk about what you did, you won't be interested if you just write and don't do stuff.
3. Choose your sweet spot = niche of content, and try to specialize as much as possible to differentiate
4. Use storytelling
5. Don't use any ghostwriters, do it yourself, no one will do it better than you

I share some of the same fears, but honestly I think you've done about 90% of the hard work by getting started. I think of the unsung benefits of building in public is that you actually have to think about what you are doing and write it down. It's a good point of reflection.

Inspired by @justalever 's answer, which I relate to as well - just stated today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o5Pe3Ke10g

The best way to start (if you haven't already) is to talk to your friends about it. Especially people who show interest in it. Notice what interests them and what questions they ask you.

Then start sharing the interesting content online via Twitter or short blog posts. Do the same thing, look for what content people find interesting and also which groups/communities find your content more interesting.

Maybe too unspecific, but that's how I have wrapped my head around it!

That’s an awesome goal! Building in public really helps with accountability and getting early feedback.

One tip I’ve learned is to share your progress regularly — even the small wins or challenges. It helps build an engaged community. Also, don’t be afraid to show the messy parts of the process; people appreciate the transparency.

Good luck with launching your MVPs! Would love to follow along on your journey.

Check Make.rs https://make.rs . It's a place where makers show the world what they've done to document their journey. (disclaimer: I built it)

I'd stream on Twitch every day

Is building in public helpful to drive traffic?

I am waiting to hear the experiences. Thank you for the thread

Thank you for making this thread, just what I was wondering about :)

Hey Daniel this sounds really interesting and also like it might be high stress long-term. How are you incorporating personal wellness into this think tank?

Hey! I'm starting to build in public an AI tool to analyze customer insights and make product decisions based on them. I'd love some insights on where to start! In my past startup, I used Facebook as that's where the audience was. But for this one, I'm a bit more scattered as targeting Product Managers, and founders (or IndieHackers!)

Any thoughts are welcome!

Also... Do you share everything? The good, the bad, the uncertainty? Could this detract from future fundraising?

Thanks!

How do you start with very few followers on social media?

As @marclou posted recently, a YouTube live screensharing is a new way of share your business development!

I let you the post here:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/a-weird-productivity-hack-that-worked-d4ed45215b

Twitter and Podcast ?
I was listening for a while, to a podcast that tracked the creation of a SaaS every month. He was creating one SaaS per month, it was a very interesting format

Blogging then building a user base with it:

You can start with a blog and to building out the retention and base of like-minded people you can convert your blog's visitors into your FB group members/a subreddit subscriber or in a slack channel.

Hi, I would like to know how is your thinktank going?

I'm gearing up to start building an agency in public and will be using Clubhouse for a weekly standup. It may just be me at first, but I'll also be recording this content to publish to additional social platforms.