I posted product metrics publicly for 3 months. It made me build for the wrong people.

For 3 months I shared weekly progress updates publicly. Numbers, learnings, screenshots, full transparency. Then I noticed something: I was choosing what to build based on what would look good in the update not what users needed. "Impressive" features got priority over "useful" ones and a dashboard screenshot performed better than a boring fix that actually mattered.

I stopped posting metrics publicly after that. The transparency didn't keep me honest it made me perform.

So for those who build in public: have you caught yourself optimizing for the audience instead of the user? And the harder question: if you removed the audience tomorrow would you still build the same things?