Build in public : Yes or No?
Some of the most inspiring startup journeys of the last few years happened in plain sight.
@levelsio built Nomad List and Remote OK live on Twitter sharing revenue numbers, failures, and pivots in real time. @marclou does the same, shipping products publicly and turning his audience into his distribution. Both have built massive followings and real businesses partly because of how openly they build.
The case for build in public is strong. You get distribution before you have a product. You attract early users, feedback, and sometimes investors. Just from sharing the journey honestly.
But there's a real downside that doesn't get talked about enough.
When you share too early, you hand your roadmap to every competitor watching. And in 2026, with AI lowering the cost of building dramatically, a competitor can take your exact idea, your positioning, even your messaging and ship a version of it in days.
What used to take effort to copy now takes a prompt.
So the question isn't really "should I build in public?" It's "what should I share and when?"
There's a difference between sharing your journey and sharing your playbook. The best builders seem to know that line instinctively.
So I'm curious:
Are you currently building in public: and has it helped or hurt you?
Have you ever had an idea copied because you shared it too early?
And where do you draw the line between transparency and giving too much away?
Replies
minimalist phone: creating folders
Honestly, I am trying to build in public just to make myself committed and accountable.
It has two sides:
– You can e.g. meet a lot of supportive people
But also:
– I was a witness of cases when someone product was copied 1 : 1
And let's not forget the patents. It may sound easier than it actually is, but if you patent it, make it public, and someone steal the idea, you might sue the thief and earn more money out of it, in theory... In practice, I guess it is much more difficult...
minimalist phone: creating folders
@stoyan_minchev yes, good approach, but the first, need to earn money for that patent, because they are pricy :D
@byalexai I have the same question, and thank you for articulating it so well. Now that someone else is asking it, I have the advantage of looking at it from a more third-party perspective.
I think the fear of competitors taking ideas is real, but probably not something we need to worry about too much. There is no easy path to product success, and it is very rare for people to succeed simply by copying something. Especially in the beginning, nobody really knows whether an idea is actually going to work. If you are the original person behind the idea and you are the one truly building a startup around it, I do not think a competitor can easily match that level of commitment.
And if someone else is just as committed as you are, then you probably would not be able to hide the idea anyway. At that point, they may simply have their own strong idea and their own path. So, speaking again as a third party, I think this is probably something we should worry about less than we do. Just my 2cents.
ProdShort
I am trying to build in public, and building tools around it. I want someday @ProdShort to be the agent that share on your behalf and document your journey while you are building.
My previous company @Mailwarm got copied multiple times, and I find that's OK. Unless someone is using our own name or content (which also happened). It's how products get better, by copying each other to some extend. But we didn't get copied because we shared it too early. But because at some point your product is public and the first to check what you built are your competitors.
So as you said, now that building is fast and copying become more accessible. So better build in public, the loudest you can. Because you will be copied when you launch it anyway! So better people hear about you before your copies.
The limit for me is to share whatever can serve as marketing, when it's already Live, so you don't show your roadmap.
Murror
Building in public has been really valuable for me, mostly because of the real conversations it starts. I've had people reach out who are dealing with the exact problem I'm building for, and that feedback loop early on is hard to replicate any other way.
On the copying thing, I think it's real but maybe overstated? If someone can copy your idea in a few days, the moat was never the idea to begin with. What you actually build over time, the relationships, the trust with your users, that's harder to clone.
The line I try to hold is: share the journey and the thinking, hold back the specific execution details until they're already shipped.
Admittedly, I did not build in public but am open to sharing out painpoints I encountered along the way or new ideas/approaches to anyone. In today's age, building in public may mean something completely different than it was in the past. A general framework and tools to build around it are great conversation pieces. Giving a general framework, though, is not same as giving everyone the source code ( there are so many open source success stories).
Depends on the problem being solved, timing, and target audience I would say.
Honestly building in public has definitely helped with distribution and feedback. Some of the most useful insights I’ve gotten came from people reacting to rough and unclear ideas. It also forces you to stay consistent because people are watching the journey.
Where I’ve landed is sharing learnings and thinking, but being more careful with specifics. I’ll talk about the problem, the patterns I’m seeing, even early results, but I avoid sharing exact flows or how something works under the hood until it’s harder to replicate.
Feels like the edge isn’t just the idea anymore, it’s how fast you execute and how well you understand the user. Sharing helps with that, but you still have to protect the parts that actually give you leverage.