You're Not "Building in Public" – You're Just Procrastinating with an Audience

Let's talk about the newest excuse for not actually shipping anything: "building in public."
Everyone's doing it now. Tweeting their daily progress. Sharing revenue numbers. Posting screenshots of their code. Documenting every single decision like they're Christopher Columbus discovering the New World.
And you know what most of them have in common? They never actually finish anything.
"Building in public" has become the socially acceptable way to work on something forever without ever launching. It's procrastination disguised as transparency. It's the perfect excuse to stay in perpetual motion without ever facing the market's judgment.
Let me show you why this trend is probably destroying your productivity, why your "community" isn't helping you build better products, and why the best builders barely talk about what they're working on until it's done.
The Validation Trap
Here's how it usually goes: You have an idea. You post about it. People like it. They comment with encouragement. "This is genius!" "Can't wait to try this!" "Let me know when it launches!"
That feels good. Really good. You got validation without doing any real work. Your brain just got a hit of dopamine from those likes and comments. You feel productive. You feel supported.
But here's the trap: You just got the reward without completing the task.
Psychologically, you've already experienced some of the satisfaction that should come from actually finishing and launching the product. Your brain thinks, "Great, we're making progress!" when you haven't actually made any meaningful progress at all.
So what happens? You post updates. You share mockups. You ask for feedback. You engage with everyone who comments. And weeks go by. Then months. And you still haven't shipped anything.
Meanwhile, someone else who shut up and worked just launched their version and is getting actual customers. But hey, at least you have 47 Twitter threads documenting your journey, right?
Your "Community" Is Lying to You
When you build in public, you attract an audience. And here's the uncomfortable truth about that audience: they're not your customers.
They're other builders. Other entrepreneurs. Other people who are also "building in public" and procrastinating in the same way you are.
When you share your idea, they'll tell you it's great. They'll offer suggestions. They'll engage with your posts. But they're not going to buy your product when you launch. They never were.
You know who will buy your product? People with the actual problem you're solving who have never heard of you, don't follow your journey, and just want a solution that works.
But you're not talking to those people. You're talking to other builders who are fundamentally not your target market. So all that "feedback" you're getting? It's worthless. Worse than worthless—it's actively misleading you about what the market actually wants.
The real test: Take the last 10 pieces of feedback or suggestions you got from your "community." How many came from people who have already paid you money or committed to paying you money when you launch?
If the answer is zero, you're not getting market validation. You're getting social validation. And those are completely different things.
Accountability Theater
"But building in public keeps me accountable!"
Does it though?
Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you've been "accountable" for six months and still haven't launched. You're posting updates religiously. You're sharing your progress. Everyone's cheering you on.
But accountability without consequences isn't accountability. It's performance.
Real accountability looks like this: You tell five potential customers that you'll have a working product in their hands by a specific date. You take their payment upfront. Now you HAVE to ship, or you have to refund them and face the embarrassment of failing to deliver.
That's accountability. That's pressure that actually makes you move.
Posting "Day 47 of building my SaaS" on Twitter? That's not accountability. That's a diary with spectators.
The Feedback Loop from Hell
Let's talk about what happens when you actually do ask your audience for feedback.
You post a mockup. Twenty people comment with their opinions. Five people want feature A. Seven people want feature B. Three people suggest a completely different direction. Two people tell you the whole idea is wrong. Three people just post "🔥" emoji.
Now what?
You've got conflicting feedback from people who aren't customers. Do you implement feature A or B? Do you pivot based on those three people's suggestions? Do you ignore everyone and stick with your original vision?
You're paralyzed. So you post another poll. More opinions. More confusion. More time passes.
Here's what actually works: Build a simple version. Ship it. Let real users with real problems vote with their wallets. That's the only feedback that matters.
Steve Jobs didn't build in public. He didn't crowdsource the iPhone's features. He built what he knew the market needed, even when they didn't know they needed it yet. Then he shipped it and let the market decide.
You're not Steve Jobs? Fair enough. But you're definitely not going to become a better builder by letting your Twitter followers design your product by committee.
The Comparison Spiral
Building in public means you're constantly exposed to everyone else who's also building in public. And guess what? Some of them are crushing it. They're hitting revenue milestones, growing their user base, shipping features faster than you.
So now, on top of actually building your product, you're also dealing with the psychological weight of watching other people succeed while you're still stuck on the same feature you've been working on for three weeks.
This is motivating for about 2% of people. For the other 98%, it's demoralizing and distracting.
You start second-guessing your approach. Maybe you should use their tech stack instead. Maybe you should pivot to their niche. Maybe you should try their marketing strategy.
So you're not just building your product anymore. You're also consuming everyone else's content about building their products. You're comparing. You're adjusting. You're optimizing based on what's working for other people in completely different markets with completely different products.
And your actual product? Still not shipped.
The Attention Drain
Building in public requires content creation. And content creation requires time and energy.
Time you're spending writing tweets is time you're not spending building. Energy you're using to craft the perfect LinkedIn post about your journey is energy you're not putting into solving that gnarly technical problem.
"But posting only takes five minutes!"
Sure. Five minutes to write the post. Ten minutes to respond to comments. Twenty minutes scrolling through other people's posts for "research." Another fifteen minutes feeling bad about yourself because someone else shipped while you didn't.
That's not five minutes. That's 50 minutes. Multiply that by every day, and you've just lost 20+ hours per month to what's essentially performance art.
Some of you are spending more time talking about building than actually building. The ratio is completely inverted. And you wonder why you're not making progress.
The People Who Actually Win Stay Quiet
Look at the builders who consistently ship successful products. The ones generating real revenue. The ones with actual, paying customers.
How many of them are posting daily updates about their journey? Not many.
Pieter Levels built 12 startups in 12 months largely in silence, then shared the results after. He documented the outcome, not every painful step along the way.
Daniel Vassallo built his products, validated them with real customers, and only started sharing his journey after he had proven models that worked.
Sahil Lavingia built Gumroad for years before it became the darling of indie hackers. The "building in public" content came after the hard work was done.
Notice the pattern? They built first, shared second. The sharing came after they had something real to show, not before.
But everyone wants to reverse that order. They want the community, the audience, the validation BEFORE they've built anything worth validating. It's backward, and it doesn't work.
When Building in Public Actually Works
Okay, I'll be fair. Building in public isn't always bad. There are specific scenarios where it actually makes sense:

1. You're building something where the community IS the product. If you're building a platform, a marketplace, or something that requires a network effect, then yes, building an audience as you build the product makes sense.
2. You've already shipped multiple successful products. If you have a track record of execution, then documenting your process for your next thing is fine. You've proven you can ship. Sharing the journey adds value for others without derailing your progress.
3. You're building something that requires pre-launch validation or early access users. If you need beta testers or early adopters, then being public about what you're building can help recruit them.
4. You've set hard deadlines and have real consequences for missing them. If you're building in public with actual stakes—money on the line, commitments to customers, legally binding obligations—then the accountability might actually work. But here's the thing: for most of you, none of these conditions are true. You're just posting because you've been told it's what you're "supposed" to do. It's cargo culting. You're mimicking the behavior of successful people without understanding why they're doing it or whether it actually applies to your situation. What You Should Do Instead If you actually want to ship products and build a real business, here's what works:
5. Build in private until you have something real to show. Don't announce your idea. Don't share mockups. Don't ask for feedback on your logo. Put your head down and build a working version.
6. Get five paying customers before you tell anyone else. Not people who say they'll buy it. People who have actually given you money. That's validation. Everything else is noise.
7. Limit your "building in public" to weekly or monthly updates, not daily. If you must share your journey, do it in condensed retrospectives. "Here's what I shipped this month" is valuable. "Day 73 of coding" is not.
8. Focus your content on what you learned, not what you're doing. Share insights after you've figured something out, not while you're still figuring it out. Actual lessons learned are valuable. Live-tweeting your confusion helps nobody.
9. Curate your feed ruthlessly. Unfollow other people who are building in public if it's making you compare yourself constantly. You don't need to see everyone else's progress. You need to make your own.
10. Set launch deadlines with real consequences. Tell real potential customers you'll have the product ready by X date. Better yet, take pre-orders. Now you have actual pressure to ship, not just social pressure to post. The Harsh Reality Most of you reading this are building in public because it's easier than actually building. It's easier to tweet about your idea than to write the code. It's easier to design a logo than to acquire your first customer. It's easier to engage with your "community" than to face the terrifying possibility that your product might suck and nobody will want it. Building in public gives you the feeling of progress without the risk of failure. Because you can always say you're "still building." You're "iterating." You're "getting feedback." But the market doesn't care about your process. It cares about results. It cares whether you solved a real problem well enough that people will pay you money for it. And you won't know if you did that until you actually ship and face the market's judgment. The Exception: Building an Audience-First Business Now, there IS one scenario where building in public makes total sense: if your business model is literally to build an audience first, then monetize that audience. If you're going to sell courses, coaching, or info products, then yes, document everything. Your product IS the documentation. The audience IS the business. But be honest with yourself: is that actually your business model? Or did you start with a different idea and then pivot to "building in public" as a way to avoid shipping the actual product? Because I see a lot of people who started building a SaaS or an app or a tool, couldn't get traction, and then pivoted to "teaching others how to build SaaS/apps/tools" without ever having successfully built one themselves. That's not building a business. That's grifting. Stop Performing, Start Shipping Here's my challenge to you: Go dark for 30 days. No tweets about your progress. No LinkedIn posts about your journey. No Instagram stories from your "founder life." Just build. Heads down, focused work on actually finishing something. Set a deadline. Ship a working version. Get real users. Get real feedback from people who are actually using your product and paying you money. Then, if you want, come back and share what you learned. Share the results. Share the validated insights. But stop sharing the process before you've completed it. Stop asking for permission to build something. Stop seeking validation from people who will never be your customers. The only validation that matters is whether people pay you money for what you built. Everything else is a distraction. The Bottom Line Building in public works for a tiny percentage of people who have the discipline to not let it become a substitute for actual work. For everyone else, it's a trap. It feels productive. It feels like you're making progress. It feels like you're part of a community. But feelings don't ship products. Feelings don't acquire customers. Feelings don't generate revenue. Work does. Execution does. Shipping does. So stop talking about what you're going to build and go build it. Stop asking for feedback from people who aren't your customers. Stop comparing your day 12 to someone else's day 347. Put your head down. Do the work. Ship the product. Then come back and tell us what happened. Read more : https://merabt.com/digital-marketing-company-in-trivandrum