Why you should build in public?

You must have seen the progress of Tesla and SpaceX in the past few years. We all have seen both of the companies going through ups and downs but what I found more interesting is the way Elon Musk decided to be open about both of the products with the media and customers.

Lesson?

He is building a brand where you and I can call ourselves a part of new inventions.

Elon Musk is a big name, let’s talk about something we all use and have fun while using it. At least, it is my favorite. Yes, Tailwind CSS by Adam Wathan. He also built the framework in public and shared the updates, use cases, and zero to one of the products with the community. I am following his journal to stay updated with all the new releases.

Lesson?

He wanted to share what he was building to get fast feedback, get fast users, and testers, and he did make a good community around the product too.

These are two examples I am mentioning from the thousands I see every day and I believe everyone should leverage the existing community they have or even build the community around the product they are building.

“Build in silence, shine in public” is now an outdated concept, and the new golden rule is “Build in public, Shine in public”.

7 reasons to build in public

1. Feedback:

You get constant feedback to improve the existing features, strategies, and designs, to do better overall.
You see what the audience likes, what you can do to retain the users, and how you can make it more about the user.
Once you are in build mode, you sometimes get stuck and don’t think out of the box. That’s where feedback helps. You see the problem and even the solution from a different mindset.
- Your cloudy judgments need a few eager tester products and building in public allow having that.

2. Personal Brand:

People see what you are building and you differentiate yourself as a unique brand.
Your hardships, challenges, and success become personal to the people around you - you stand out from everyone else.

3. Accountability:

Since, now, people are waiting and keeping tabs on you, it gets a little easy to be on track.
It pushes you to focus on the right things.
It pushes you to the work that needs to get done than the easy work you are doing because you are scared of the outcome.

4. Networking:

Your project and its progress attract the right kind of people, like, investors, recruiters, etc.
Your open journey gives different communities, investors, etc an opportunity to see your graph and a chance to trust you.
People like transparency and that’s how you network easily and more.
You meet people in the same & different fields, become friends & even find partners for future projects.

5. Hiring:

Talented folks come forward to work with you.
Hiring gets easy for your project.
You get plenty of options and a pool of talent to choose select.

6. Opportunities:

You open doors to opportunities when you take the step to connect with people globally.
You must have heard this - “there is a sort of luck you get when you put a lot of work into something”.
You get attention which means folks around you will talk about what you are building. Hence, more opportunities.

7. Documentation:

You get a good habit of documentation.
As developers, we all know, how important documentation is. From reading documentation to writing comments to understand better what the code is about. Documentation holds an important role.

There are plenty more reasons why you should build in public. However, above mentioned seven convinced me to share whatever I do professionally with the community.