Building in Public: The Transparent Path to Startup Success

6 min read

The Rise of Radical Transparency in Startups

Ten years ago, the idea of sharing your startup's revenue numbers, product failures, and strategic decisions with the entire world would have seemed crazy. Today, it's become one of the most powerful growth strategies for early-stage founders.

Building in Public (BIP) consists of building a company or product and transparently sharing the behind scenes of how you do it. Founders generally share their wins, struggles, learnings, anecdotes, and business metrics. It's the opposite of operating in stealth mode, and while the number of founders using this strategy has increased over the last few years, and it has therefore become a more competitive channel, it still generates really attractive returns on the investment of time/money.

For founders navigating a path where only one in ten startups survive in the long term, building in public offers a counterintuitive advantage: vulnerability becomes your competitive edge.

Why Founders Are Choosing Transparency Over Secrecy

The startup world is experiencing a fundamental shift. In January 2023, just 15% of Atlas founders told us they were building AI startups. By 2024, that rose to 33%. In 2025, it hit 42%. As competition intensifies, founders are discovering that openness creates opportunities that traditional marketing can't match.

Building Trust Through Authenticity

Most startup gurus would agree that consumers crave authenticity. When you share your journey transparently, you're not just marketing a product—you're inviting people into your story. This kind of transparency helps build trust and authenticity. These qualities are crucial for creating a loyal customer base.

Joel Gascoigne, co-founder and CEO at Buffer, was one of the pioneers. In 2013, Buffer published their culture deck, in which they claimed "Default to Transparency" to be their second value. They started working towards radical transparency, and over the years, they became public about their revenue and users numbers, employees' salaries, employee equity options, etc. The result? Today, Buffer is pulling in over $20 million in annual revenue with a user base of over 70,000 paying customers.

Getting Feedback Before You Fail

Building in public allows a startup to optimize product-market fit. Product-market fit refers to the degree to which a new product meets public demand. By building a product in public view, a startup can allow users to engage with the product, collect feedback, and tweak the product to meet market demands. This will ultimately make for a more successful product launch and better engagement from consumers for the long-term.

Take Superhuman, the email application that commands $30 per month. It's because Superhuman founder and CEO, Rahul Vohra, utilized the build in public model to find out how he could rework existing email processes to meet consumer demands. By constantly engaging with users during their public beta phase, they turned feedback into features that users actually wanted.

Real Founder Stories: Lessons from the Transparency Trenches

Nathan Barry: From $0 to $3M Monthly Revenue

In the early 2010s, designer Nathan Barry was encouraged by the public's response to his work, but he didn't want to continue endlessly chasing one-time purchases, so he set out to create a subscription-based SaaS company. His intentions, announced in a well-publicized blog post, were to create a tool (one yet to be determined) that would generate $5,000 of revenue within the first six months. He was going to blog through the entire process, sharing details about everything. That tool became ConvertKit, which is now generating nearly $3 million in monthly revenue.

Pieter Levels: The Ultimate Transparency Test

Indie hacker Pieter Levels took building in public to its extreme with Nomad List. Pieter Levels' Nomad List is a fully transparent company that even makes its revenue and P&L statement public in a dashboard that anyone can see. This radical transparency didn't hurt his business—it created a loyal community that felt personally invested in his success.

Webflow's Pivot to Success

Webflow, a no-code platform for building responsive websites, is one of the most well-known companies that built in public. The company's co-founder, Vlad Magdalin, has been exceptionally open about Webflow's journey. From their early struggles to several business pivots, Webflow regularly shared updates, challenges, and behind-the-scenes stories of how they were developing the platform. Their transparency during difficult periods actually strengthened their community's commitment to the product.

The Strategic Benefits: Why Building in Public Works

Instant Distribution Without Ad Spend

One of the biggest advantages is distribution. Building in public is a way for young startups to generate interest well before launch, since sharing progress gives people a reason to follow along before you have a finished product. Over time, that audience can turn into early users, partners, or advocates.

Consider that between 2017 and 2024, the median Atlas startup sold to customers in one country during its first six months. In 2025, that doubled to 2 countries, and at the 90th percentile, startups reached 15 countries—up from 12 last year. Building in public accelerates this global reach by creating word-of-mouth momentum.

Accountability as Your Secret Weapon

For some founders, public accountability is motivating. Knowing others are watching can help maintain momentum during the slow, uncertain early phases. When you announce your goals publicly, you create psychological pressure to deliver—turning your audience into accountability partners.

Free Market Research

You're building a channel through which you can communicate with support groups and customers who will be happy to provide you with feedback on your feature ideas, designs, strategies, etc. Instead of expensive user research, you get real-time feedback from people who care about your success.

How to Build in Public: Actionable Strategies

Choose Your Platforms Wisely

"Build in public" is a strategy where founders, developers, or creators share their process of creating a SaaS with the public - typically through social media like Youtube, Twitter, or LinkedIn. This approach allows creators to engage with their audience, get feedback, generate demand, and build a community around their project - before even launching it.

Different platforms serve different purposes:

What to Share (and What to Keep Private)

Importantly, this approach does not require sharing everything. Some of the strongest build-in-public examples emphasize decision-making and lessons over wins. This approach keeps the conversation grounded in insight, not optics, and helps you avoid turning progress into a performance.

Share:

Keep private:

Consistency Over Perfection

Consistency matters more than volume. It is better to share occasionally and thoughtfully than to burn out by posting constantly, especially during periods when your attention should be focused on building your product or offering.

It's important that you put out content that (1) feels authentic, (2) resonate with your ICP (ideal customer profile), and that you (3) stay consistent. Tip: Don't focus on the numbers. Focus on the process. Set a sustainable schedule—whether that's three tweets per week or one long-form post per month.

The Risks: When Transparency Can Backfire

Sharing Your Playbook with Competitors

The same openness that makes founders want to build in public can also introduce risk. Sharing too much too early can expose strategic thinking to competitors, especially in crowded markets. Even if others cannot copy your team's execution perfectly, you may unintentionally give away positioning or timing advantages.

However, what no other entrepreneur can copy is the product's execution and the connection the business has with its audience. And sometimes, competition can actually benefit all the companies in a given space, as it helps to validate the need for that service.

The Emotional Toll of Public Scrutiny

When progress is slow or messy, founders may feel compelled to project consistency or confidence that doesn't match reality. Over time, that mismatch can become emotionally draining and might come off as inauthentic.

Interestingly, Mooney says one of the unexpected benefits of building in public was to his mental health, since he no longer felt compelled to keep negative thoughts bottled up. The founder's journey can be filled with both disappointments and successes—by sharing both, Mooney says he was able to clear his mind and help others avoid his mistakes.

Sharing Bad News Builds Deeper Trust

Open startups are all about being real and showing both the good and the bad. Oftentimes the audience is more sympathetic when they observe that a company is serious about fostering an open startup culture, that an existing problem is acknowledged, and something is being done to make things right. In essence, an open attitude can lead to more trust. People might be more engaged in following a company's journey to see how it managed to overcome a big challenge and how the product and team are maturing.

The Founder's Journey: Your Most Valuable Asset

In today's startup landscape, where AI startups attracted nearly $19 billion in Q2 2025, representing 28% of all venture capital funding, standing out requires more than just a great product. It requires a story that people want to follow.

Countless startup founders have embraced the power of building in public, openly sharing their journeys and inspiring others along the way. These individuals, through their transparency and willingness to share both their successes and failures, have not only built successful businesses but have also fostered thriving communities around their brands. Their stories serve as a testament to the power of authenticity and vulnerability in connecting with audiences, generating genuine interest, and fostering trust.

Building in public isn't about revealing trade secrets or oversharing every detail. It's about bringing your audience along for the ride, learning from their feedback, and creating genuine connections that turn followers into customers and customers into advocates.

Revisit the decision regularly. What makes sense at Day 0 may not make sense at Day 180, so be gentle and give yourself permission to evolve. Your transparency strategy should grow with your company.

The question isn't whether building in public works—the success stories prove it does. The question is whether you're willing to embrace the vulnerability that comes with sharing your journey. For founders ready to take that leap, the rewards extend far beyond revenue numbers. You'll build trust, accelerate product-market fit, and create a community that's invested in your success from day one.

Start small. Share one authentic update this week about what you're building and why. Your future customers are waiting to hear your story.