Performativity and costs
Critiques of performative updates, vanity metrics, applause-seeking, and the attention or execution costs of documenting work publicly.
36%
Best tweets about Build in Public
50 Best Tweets About Build in Public (2026)
Browse the best tweets about building in public, from launch updates and revenue milestones to transparency, audience feedback, distribution, and lessons.
Genuine build-in-public updates with decisions, numbers, customer feedback, progress, failures, launches, and lessons rather than empty promotion.
- Creators
- 43
- Updated
Original Xholic analysis
What 50 top Build in Public posts reveal
The set contains both supportive and critical views of build-in-public. Recurring posts favor documentation of decisions, customer learning, numbers, and setbacks, while criticizing applause-seeking progress theater and debating the trade-offs among visibility, accountability, distribution, and execution cost.
- Dominant tone
- Positive
- Median score
- 8.76
- Leading format
- Opinion
- Recent posts
- 44%
46% of posts
All-time engagement
44% of posts
Published in 90 days
Conversation map
The themes creators return to
Honest failures and transparency
Sharing failures, churn, negative feedback, slow periods, wrong turns, pivots, and uncomfortable operational realities alongside wins.
32%
Metrics, traction, and outcomes
MRR, revenue, users, signups, traffic, growth milestones, acquisition channels, and other concrete business outcomes.
32%
Marketing, audience, and distribution
Using public building for audience growth, trust, launch demand, founder reputation, fundraising signals, and marketing—while questioning its distribution value.
24%
Accountability and execution
Build-in-public as accountability, visibility, momentum, and a forcing function for clearer execution and consistent shipping.
22%
Decision-making and customer learning
Explaining product, market, pricing, distribution, and roadmap decisions through customer evidence, experiments, and lessons learned.
22%
Progress and shipping updates
Day-by-day build logs, shipping updates, launches, feature changes, experiments, bugs, and early product progress.
22%
Transparency boundaries
Guidance on what to disclose versus protect: sharing lessons and completed work while withholding live strategy, leverage, sensitive customer data, and competitive details.
18%
Tone and stance
Sentiment Positive leads
Author posture Supportive leads
Performance benchmark
- Median likes
- 21
- Median reposts
- 0
- Median replies
- 9
- Median views
- 741
Posts with media make up 32% of this collection. Their median all-time score is 15.6, compared with 6.36 for text-only posts.
Format mix
- Opinion 44% · score 5.34
- Announcement 36% · score 10.7
- Tutorial 20% · score 13.6
Consensus and debate
Where creators agree, and where they do not
Shared view
Show the reasoning, not the highlight reel
A recurring editorial standard is usefulness: explain decisions, customer signals, failures, and specific artifacts—not merely milestones or polished progress.
Shared view
Honesty includes the down weeks
Several posts argue that credible public updates include slow weeks, churn, bugs, and zero-growth periods alongside wins; selective updates are criticized as performative or less trustworthy.
Shared view
Receipts make updates teachable
Posts favor specific evidence that makes an update teachable: changed user behavior, a failed assumption, painful reviews, acquisition sources, or an experiment’s visits and sign-ups.
Open debate
Marketing engine or weak distribution?
Some posts describe public building as free marketing and associate it with growth or revenue, while others call it a poor distribution channel or advise against using it primarily to grow an app.
Open debate
Accountability versus performance tax
Accountability is presented as a shipping and clarity mechanism, while critics argue that public documentation can turn execution into performance and consume attention.
Open debate
How much should founders disclose?
Posts differ on disclosure: some recommend revenue specifics, while others advise withholding roadmap, customer details, and active strategy.
What performs
Patterns behind standout posts
Outliers mix evidence, utility, and tension
The five supplied outliers include a claimed revenue outcome, a practical documentation tip, a concrete Day 1 log, early user numbers, and a critique of selective transparency.
Distribution and outcomes have the highest theme medians
Marketing, audience, and distribution has the highest theme median all-time score (15.81), followed by metrics, traction, and outcomes (14.26). These are the two highest-scoring theme medians in the supplied analysis.
Media posts have a higher median score
Media posts have a 15.64 median all-time score versus 6.36 for text-only posts. Media appeared in 16 of 50 tweets (32%).
Statistical standouts
- View standout post 1 Score 62.8 · 7.17× median
- View standout post 2 Score 58.2 · 6.65× median
- View standout post 3 Score 40.2 · 4.59× median
- View standout post 4 Score 34.6 · 3.96× median
- View standout post 5 Score 27.6 · 3.15× median
Creator landscape
Who shapes this conversation
The five most represented creators account for 20% of the selected posts.
-
1. Alexa | Startup founder
@alexabelonix
2 posts
-
2. Andrew Zacker
@andrewzacker
2 posts
-
3. David Ch
@chhddavid
2 posts
-
4. Germán Merlo 💻 🇦🇷
@elgermerlo
2 posts
-
5. Hardik Gohil
@GohilHardy
2 posts
-
6. Layton Gott
@Layton_Gott
2 posts
Alexa: publish judgment, protect leverage
Alexa’s posts advocate sharing judgment—such as customer patterns, failed offers, market choices, and changed beliefs—while protecting live leverage and sensitive commercial details.
Hardik Gohil models concrete build logs
Hardik Gohil’s Day 1 and Day 12 posts model concise build logs: stated product intent, completed setup, shipped changes, an analytics-tool switch, and a reported user source.
Layton Gott argues for consistency
Layton Gott pairs a numbers-and-failures playbook with a warning that accounts often go quiet when results worsen, framing consistency across good and bad periods as the test.
How this analysis was made
Themes, sentiment, stance, and post format are classified per tweet. All counts, shares, medians, creator concentration, freshness, and performance comparisons are then calculated directly from the published snapshot.
Xholic's all-time score compares engagement while accounting for reach, post age, and creator consistency. It is used for relative comparisons within this collection.
This report analyzes the exact 50-post snapshot shown below. AI identifies editorial categories and drafts explanations; all statistics are calculated from the snapshot, and every narrative claim is checked against cited posts before publication.
Best Build in Public tweets
Top Build in Public tweets from 43 creators
Ranked 01–50
- 01
@OnatAksaray ·
Building in public vs building in silence: Building in silence: - No accountability - No feedback - No connections - No opportunities - No one knows you exist Building in public: - Daily accountability - Real-time feedback - Friends in your niche - Random opportunities - People rooting for you I built in silence for a year. Went nowhere. Then a year of building in public? $10k-15k/mo and a business I love.
- 02
- 03
@GohilHardy ·
Building in Public: Day 1 🚀 Usually, I build things in silence. This time, I'm sharing the journey from day one. I'm building another launch platform, but with a different approach and no pay-to-win mechanics. The goal is simple: Help builders get their products seen. Today's progress: - Initial setup done - Authentication completed Day 1 of the journey. Let's see where it leads.
- 04
- 05
@joncphillips ·
The problem with building in public is that the interesting parts, the doubts, the wrong turns, the stuff that almost killed it, is exactly what nobody posts. We celebrate the follower counts, the MRR screenshots, etc… and that’s fine, but I’m not learning anything from that! I want to read the horror stories, the reasoning behind the decisions, the life events that made you decide to do X or Y, the pivots!
- 06
@Layton_Gott ·
Building in public is free marketing that most founders waste. Here's how to actually do it right: Share real numbers. "Great progress this week" gets ignored. "We hit 200 users, here's what we did" gets bookmarked. Show the lows. Everyone posts wins. The bug that took 6 hours to fix is what makes people trust you. Make it personal. Nobody follows a product. They follow the person building it. Be consistent. One post a month does nothing. Three a week builds an audience. My brother and I build Scribe entirely in public. Every win, every failure, every lesson. That alone has driven more growth than any ad ever could. If you're building something and not sharing the process, you're leaving your best marketing on the table.
- 07
@Layton_Gott ·
90% of "build in public" accounts will die in the next 6 months... And it's not because of the algorithm. It's because they only know how to post wins. So the moment things slow down, they stop posting. No MRR screenshot this month? No post. Rough user feedback? No post. Real building in public isn't just the highlights… It's a commitment to show up whether the numbers are up or down. The audiences that actually compound are built during the good AND bad weeks. Anyone can post a win not everyone can post a mistake.
- 08
- 09
- 10
@LoganTGott ·
LinkedIn system for B2B founders raising their first round: 1. Start posting 6 months before you open the round. Investors check your profile more than you think 2. Post weekly build-in-public content with real numbers because it creates a public track record of execution 3. Write weekly category-defining posts so you own the narrative in your space 4. Build a featured section with your traction post, product demo, and a one-pager investors can actually click 5. Repurpose every customer win, hire, and milestone into a post because investors screenshot these during diligence
- 11
@chhddavid ·
Day 228 of building in public I hit $10k MRR in 7 months, then $16k in 5 days... On my 2021 MacBook Air M1 w/ 8GB RAM. You don't need: - A maxed out $4k Mac - VC funding - $800/day in ad spend - Paid UGC - 30 employees - Openclaw or whatever All you need is 1 validated idea and motivation to keep going. For me the motivation was to make more money and to help non-technical ppl build their dreams. Seven months later I'm making it it big with @shipper_now in a very busy market where competitors raise HUNDREDS of MILLIONS and have teams of +100 people. I started with 1 goal in mind: I could become extremely successful by taking just 0.5% of what these other guys make... And now, completely unbiased, I've come to realise: - We've built this amazing app in public for 7 months straight - We've learned SOOOO many lessons - We've come to genuinely have a better product than our competitors - And we're starting to get recognition!! Reflecting... so crazy how far we've come - And as always, WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED.
- 12
- 13
- 14
@alexabelonix ·
“Build in public” does not mean leak your leverage. That part gets romanticized by people who are not negotiating with customers, investors, acquirers, or competitors. Some things should stay closed: revenue details customer names enterprise objections churn reasons roadmap bets weak spots competitors can use But you can still be valuable. Share: lessons frames mistakes decisions customer patterns market shifts taste standards You do not need to show the ledger to build trust. You need to show the judgment.
- 15
@YoannaJuille ·
Another week of building in public. Weekly Recap : - 7/7 daily posts on X. - One deep-dive LP audit done for a happy founder. - The Lutains landing page redesign is currently in the oven. - Taking it slow this weekend to stay fresh. - And we are 900 here !!! Next week, the strategy changes a little. We’re moving into outreach and finding our first customers. Have a nice Sunday :)
- 16
@alexabelonix ·
The best founder content does not say: “Look at me.” It says: “Look how I think.” That is why build-in-public can work. And why it can become cringe. Nobody serious needs 19 updates about your landing page button. But people do want to know: how you chose the market why the first offer failed what customers kept repeating what changed your mind what you stopped doing what metric fooled you what you now believe about distribution Share the decision-making. That is the valuable part.
- 17
- 18
- 19
@mahasr199 ·
Here are all the negative things that happen when you build in public *AND* you are an actually hyper profitable company 1. People pitch you complete dog shit services. 2. Ambulance chasing lawyers try to figure out how to take some of it. 3. Consumers get pissed cause no one likes the owner getting rich. 4. Your competitors get pissed cause they can't make money and start chriping. 5. Your competitors get inspired and they start copying. 6. Employees start to get full picture and get poached aggressively. 7. Target on your back from regulators in the inadvertent industry turn. 8. "Friends" get close because of clout but are actively stealing and will talk behind your back when any of the above happens. Positive things you get in return: 1. I guess some dudes follow you and engage with your posts? This is only applicable if your business is decently profitable (call it FCF 5mm+/annum). If you are in the fund raise game or unprofitable, build in public. No one is envious of that.
- 20
@andrewzacker ·
Day 1 of recording daily build in public video updates. - Why I need 800 000 impressions in 30 days - How I'm preparing for biggest event of the year -Hacker Residency - What product am I building to $1k MRR?
Watch video
- 21
- 22
- 23
@dominikmartinX ·
Building in public is free marketing. But most people share the wrong things. Here's what to post and what to keep private: SHARE: revenue numbers. "Made $340 this month from a $27 product" is more interesting than "crushing it." Real numbers build trust. Even small ones. People respect honest data from peers, not big claims from strangers. SHARE: mistakes and failures. "I launched to the wrong audience and got 2 sales" teaches more than "10 tips for a perfect launch." Failure content gets saved. Success content gets scrolled past. KEEP PRIVATE: your exact playbook in real-time. Share the strategy after you've tested it. Not while you're testing it. Share your pricing experiment while it's running and people's opinions mess up your data. KEEP PRIVATE: complaints about customers. Even anonymous complaints. Your audience reads between the lines. The founder who complains about customers is the founder customers avoid. SHARE: tools and costs. "My stack costs $50/month: Claude + Beehiiv + Gumroad" is the kind of post people bookmark. Specifics. Receipts. Let people copy your setup. What are you building right now?
- 24
@chhddavid ·
Day 232 of building in public MRR: $18k Goal: $50k Some people have asked me how I got my first MRR for @shipper_now, so here's my answer: - Launched (way too) soon: ProductHunt, Reddit, X, HackerNews etc - Planted SEO seeds - Started building in public on X + Reddit That's literally it! This is how we got our first $1 MRR → $5k MRR!
- 25
- 26
@marcos_placona ·
Most people build in public for the audience. The ones who actually benefit from it do it for the accountability. Here's the difference in practice: Building for the audience means you post the wins, the milestones, the "we just hit 1000 users" moments. You curate. You perform. And the moment growth slows down you go quiet - because there's nothing impressive to share. Building for accountability means you post the decision you made today and why. The feature you killed. The customer who churned and what they said on the way out. The week where nothing moved and what you're doing about it. The audience-first approach creates a weird trap - you start making product decisions that look good in posts rather than decisions that are good for the product. You optimise for the narrative instead of the outcome. I've seen founders delay a pivot by 3 months because they'd been publicly committed to a direction that wasn't working. The audience became a cage. The accountability-first approach does something different. It forces clarity. When you have to explain a decision publicly, you make better decisions. When you commit to shipping something next week in front of an audience, you ship it. The external pressure becomes a tool you use on yourself. The audience can smell the difference too. Posts that are built around "look what we did" feel like press releases. Posts built around "here's what we figured out" feel like conversation. Build in public by all means. Just be honest about who you're doing it for.
- 27
@JustRouzbeh ·
Started building a new SaaS today, Lighthouse, it’s the day 1. The idea came from seeing so many builders struggle after launch. Building the product is hard, but getting the first real users feels crazy harder sometimes. Lighthouse will focus on helping software builders find those first 100 users, and hopefully way more after that, no matter what kind of product they’re building. It will sit beside @Spaceport_build . Spaceport helps iOS builders skip weeks of setup with payments, auth, onboarding, AI, networking, and more already done for you. Lighthouse will focus on helping builders get people to actually use what they built. I’m tracking the entire journey inside @sprintKitApp, including releases, tasks, time tracking, income, and expenses. Created the first Lighthouse release today, 2026.22, targeting week 22 of 2026 For the setup, I used https://t.co/57hU00K0Ug by @marclou, and had the project structure ready in 27 minutes. Feels nice to spend time building instead of configuring things for days Now we start from zero and build in public Follow me along the journey #buildinpublic #IndieDev #SaaS #iOSDev
- 28
@andrewzacker ·
Day 13 of daily build in public video updates. • Our SaaS got stuck 😬 • What I'm doing about it • Shifting my entire content strategy
Watch video
- 29
- 30
@victor_bigfield ·
unpopular opinion: most "build in public" accounts are just posting stripe screenshots on the 1st of every month. i've done it too. feels good for 5 minutes. but nobody learns anything from your revenue going up. they learn from you saying "my churn is 15% and i have no idea how to fix it yet."
- 31
@TimoBuilds_ ·
[Day 196] building in public powered by movement Started at midday, back again in the evening. 2 projects. Same goal: move forward. 1️⃣ Project: Webdesign Customer ✔ final improvements after client meeting ✔ last steps before handover → finally back to app business 2️⃣ Project: FocusMap .pro ✔ fixed bug reported by @tim_neunzig (thx!) ✔ pushed 2 Reddit posts for the free roadmap feature ✔ started SEO again: → content marketing → keyword research (missed this…) Feels weirdly familiar. 1.5 years ago I was deep into SEO. No audience. No building in public. Just me, sites, and Google. Now I’m back. But this time, I don’t build in the dark. I build in public. Keep moving.
Watch video
- 32
- 33
@tiyajain_ ·
There are so many people who struggle to build in public. But the best way i have figured out to document my daily progress as a saas founder is through timelapses If you are a saas founder struggling to build in public, start shooting timelapses of yourself building your product: - It can be you developing the product - or building distribution for the product Also a great hack to keep yourself away from your phone
- 34
@jonahlau_ ·
Building in public has a performing tax that nobody mentions Documenting what you're doing, writing the thread, engaging with replies, turning every decision into content. It's useful for some people but it's also taking 30% of your capacity. That's time you're not spending building, closing deals, or thinking without an audience watching. For some people the trade is worth it. They're good at performing and the visibility pays back more than it costs. But for a lot of people it's just expensive signaling. If you're technical and you'd rather ship than explain, the performing tax is too high. You're better off building something people need and letting the dependency do the work. If you're relationship-driven and you'd rather be in rooms than writing threads, the tax is too high there too. You're better off being useful to the ten people who matter than visible to ten thousand who don't. Building in public works but it's not free. The cost is your attention and a chunk of your execution capacity, and most people don't realize they're paying it until they've been doing it for a year.
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
@asaio87 ·
Building an audience then launching a product is wrong but not because of the reasons you might think of. Its hard to build in public like before, get the followers and hope your product will be bought by thousands of people. i think that movement has died. here is what to do instead: - build the product right away - post on social media daily just to get better at it - show your face daily - use some of the best videos to run ads (meta, tiktok) - focus on SEO (create content, build backlinks) - create long-form YouTube (1 video a week) - scrape for email addresses to email people stop building in public for the sole purpose of growing your app this approach will fail build in public just to get used to social media and try things
- 40
@bilalpirzadaa ·
I think "Build in Public" accidentally trained founders to optimise for applause instead of evidence. We celebrate: • Shipping every day • Streaks • Screenshots • Revenue milestones We rarely celebrate: • Killing a bad feature after talking to 3 users. • Refunding someone because the product wasn't good enough. • Admitting an idea has no demand. • Spending a week doing customer interviews instead of writing code. The uncomfortable truth: You can look like you're winning on X while building something nobody actually wants. I'm going to document the boring decisions that make products survive, not just the exciting ones that get likes. If you're building for users instead of the algorithm, follow along.
- 41
@seraleev ·
One thing I rarely talk about here, but it’s something you should know if you’re building in public. Every couple of weeks, I find myself dealing with disputes over the use of my intellectual property. People copy app icons, app names, ad creatives, and sometimes even use videos featuring me and my kids to promote their own projects. Building in public helps you grow. But it comes with a price.
- 42
- 43
@adrien_brbr ·
90% of "building in public" is a diary with analytics screenshots. Same format every week. MRR update. "Here's what I learned." "The journey continues." That's not transparency. That's content marketing in a hoodie. Real BIP is posting the decision you're scared to share. The metric that embarrasses you. The strategy that might be completely wrong. If it doesn't make you uncomfortable to hit post, it's not building in public.
- 44
@sharyph_ ·
What Nobody Tells You About Building in Public Everyone says "build in public." Here's what they don't tell you: Most people don't care about your journey. They care about the results. What works: → Sharing specific lessons learned → Showing before/after transformations → Teaching what you just figured out → Providing proof that your system works What doesn't work: → Daily "just coded for 6 hours" updates → Vague "working on something big" posts → Complaining about how hard it is → Progress updates with no insights Building in public isn't a diary. It's strategic documentation that provides value. Every update should answer: "What can someone learn from this?" If the answer is nothing, don't post it. I share my systems, my numbers, my failures...but only when there's a lesson attached. That's the difference between building in public and performing your productivity.
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
@AdamFard_ ·
Building in public, in my opinion, is beautiful cuz it allows you to share actual data and be genuinely honest with the community. this week, my team and I looked at how ppl got to know about @uxpilotai and the number of new users. and if you think youtube, X, or another social media platform was at the top, you’re wrong the top 3 were: - SEO (~30%) - GEO - Co-worker/friend this shows that even though everyone says "SEO is dead", it’s still essential for many companies to grow. also, the purpose of GEO is to boost, not to replace, the SEO we are familiar with. and yes, talks among coworkers and friends are a major driver of our traffic, and the main reason is that we make it a point to turn our users into brand advocates through our quality and trustworthiness. so, don’t try to reinvent the wheel by spreading yourself across countless communication channels. Understand your position and invest in it.
- 49
- 50
Best Tweets by Topic