Building Ventures in Public

A conversation I recently had with someone about my latest ventures brought up an interesting point around building in stealth vs. building in public.

Building in stealth: not launching any public information, branding, etc about your venture until you have launched.

Building in public: being open about what you're building right from the point of deciding to start.

Being in "stealth mode" became a bit of a startup cliche, particularly during times when you could raise a lot of money on an idea/pitch deck, and then have to go away and build your first product. It was often the way you would operate if you were working on something groundbreaking and didn't want to tip off competitors, or if you wanted to be solely focused on the work without distraction of public discourse on your idea.

Over time I think things have shifted to where, for the most part, this isn't as much of an advantage anymore.

Tech (especially SaaS) is more commoditised and easier to build than ever before. Distribution is your defence, and public discourse can be harnessed more powerfully for validation and distribution development.

Building your venture while being open in public about your plans and progress has a number of benefits that I've seen used to advantage, especially in areas that are not operational or technical.

For me, I've been fairly public about the things that I'm building, and how I'm building them. This has been for a few reasons; none of which I really thought heavily about at the beginning, but that I've been leaning into as things have started moving.

1. Getting outside my head. Writing about, sharing and talking through ideas is how I've evolved my thinking on certain topics and aspects of what I'm doing. I spent a few months at the start of this year sitting in slide decks, "designing" the next phase of activity, but that only took me so far and I had to get outside my own head to start to see things from different perspectives.
2. Accountability. A lot of people say they're going to do things, but fewer actually go and do them. I wanted to give myself some level of accountability to ultimately take action on the things I'd spent a lot of time talking to people about.
3. Truth in action. Not everything works out, and although I've been far more intentional than the "throwing mud at the wall to see what sticks" analogy would suggest, I have erred on the side of action before I have everything planned out. I'm not defined by the things that I start and that DON'T work for whatever reason, but rather by starting them in the first place, being honest about why they didn't work (even if that makes me look foolish), and moving on to new things.

Building in public is not appropriate for every new venture, but in the process of working out "what's next" for me in my career, it's been a useful tool.

Onwards.