Building In Public Is Dead

In the late '90s, a college kid named Shawn Fanning built a dorm-room app to trade music with friends. The idea was simple: create a peer-to-peer network where people could share MP3 files directly with each other, bypassing traditional distribution channels entirely.

Back then, music still lived on physical CDs. Getting a new album meant scraping together gas money, finding a blank disc, and hoping you had a friend who had the hookup. The music industry operated on scarcity. Albums were physical objects. Distribution was controlled. Access was gated.

Then Napster launched, and everything changed overnight.

One MP3 flew across the internet. Then a million. Then hundreds of millions. Every file was a perfect clone, indistinguishable from the original. Record labels blinked, scrambled to understand what was happening, and by the time they reacted, the industry was already toast. The entire foundation of music distribution had crumbled in a matter of months.

That's exactly what building in public feels like now in the age of AI and rapid development cycles.

You post an early demo on Twitter or LinkedIn. Maybe it's a Loom walkthrough, maybe a Figma prototype, maybe just a screenshot of your dashboard. You're excited about your progress. You want to share your journey. You believe in the power of transparency and community feedback.

Then someone with better distribution, faster fingers, or deeper pockets grabs the idea and launches first. They reverse-engineer your concept, improve on your execution, and beat you to market with your own innovation.

When you build in public now, you're not just telling an inspiring story about your entrepreneurial journey. You're uploading your entire roadmap to the collective hive mind. You're giving away your competitive advantage to anyone who's paying attention. Someone with faster fingers, better tools, more resources, or simply more time can swipe your ideas, launch ahead of you, and beat you at your own game.

The democratization of development tools has made this problem exponentially worse. What used to require months of development and a full engineering team can now be accomplished in a weekend with the right AI tools and a basic understanding of web development.

So, here's what I want to break down today:

I got into a little back-and-forth on X recently with someone who thinks building in public is the only way to prove you're a "real builder." The exchange perfectly encapsulated the flawed thinking that's become prevalent in the indie hacker and startup community.

Here's what went down:

X user Yung Perf Papi posted: "So wild everyone's a 10x engineer now but I'm not seeing 10x app quality or 10x innovation in any space other than slop and bullshit."

I quote posted with: "People say that because real builders aren't publicly sharing what they build. Building in public is idiotic in this era."

I still stand by that statement, and I'll explain why throughout this piece.

He fired back: "Then ship and prove me wrong."

I replied: "Don't need to. I'm making $$$ in peace lol."

He said: "No you aren't lmfao."

I answered: "Ok lol."

Beyond the childish tone of the exchange, it got me thinking about a deeper issue that's plaguing the startup and indie maker community.

There's a growing, almost religious belief that if you're not online sharing everything—every feature, every pivot, every line of code, every strategic decision—you're not really building. You're not a legitimate entrepreneur. You're not contributing to the community. You're not "authentic."

This is a fundamentally flawed mindset, especially with the proliferation of AI tools that are erasing traditional competitive moats left and right. The barriers to entry have never been lower, and the speed of replication has never been higher.

Why would I post, for free, the exact strategies, features, and insights that are generating my income, just to let someone copy them and erase my competitive edge? It makes absolutely no sense from a business perspective.

Today, anyone with a keyboard, basic technical literacy, and a $20 OpenAI subscription can accomplish what used to require a full development team and months of work:

You used to need a team of developers, designers, and product managers. Now you need a good prompt, a few bucks for API credits, and the willingness to execute quickly.

The speed of replication has fundamentally changed the game. A Reddit user captured this perfectly: "AI made it so easy to reverse engineer features. If you post your roadmap, expect to see it in a competitor's product next week."

Exactly. I couldn't agree more with this assessment.

Traditional competitive advantages have been completely flattened. Execution is no longer a sustainable moat. Speed is no longer your primary edge. Strategic silence is.

The companies that are winning in this new landscape understand this principle intuitively. They're not tweeting every brainstorm or sharing every strategic decision. They're building quietly, launching strategically, and speaking only when they have something significant to show.

Don’t get me wrong. 

It feels good to share your progress. It creates a sense of accountability. It generates engagement and validation from your audience. It makes you feel like you're part of a community of builders.

But this feeling can be deceptive. The dopamine hit from social media engagement can become a substitute for actual progress. You start optimizing for tweets instead of metrics. You focus on crafting the perfect update instead of solving customer problems.

Building in public can become a form of procrastination disguised as productivity. You're "working on your business" by posting about it, but you're actually just feeding the content machine instead of building something valuable.

The attention economy rewards frequency and engagement, not depth and quality. This creates a perverse incentive structure where builders feel pressure to constantly share updates, even when they don't have meaningful progress to report.

But to be absolutely clear, building in silence doesn't mean being completely invisible to your market or potential customers.

This isn't a call to ghost your audience entirely. You still need traction. You still need users. You still need feedback and validation. You still need to build relationships and establish credibility in your space.

But you don't need to tweet every brainstorm session. You don't need to open the kitchen and show everyone how the sausage is made. You don't need to share your roadmap, your pivot decisions, or your strategic insights with the entire internet.

Here's a smarter, more strategic approach to maintaining visibility while protecting your competitive advantage:

Teach the tool, not the build. Share how Cursor helps you debug more efficiently, but don't reveal the specific logic behind your application. Discuss productivity techniques, development workflows, and general best practices without exposing your secret sauce.

Run closed betas with high-signal users. Invite carefully selected users who can provide valuable feedback without broadcasting your features (or product) to the world. Gate access behind applications or referrals. Create exclusive communities around your product.

Post outcomes, not blueprints. Talk about what improved—retention rates, revenue growth, user engagement, onboarding conversion—without explaining exactly how you achieved those improvements. Share the results without revealing the methodology.

Focus on thought leadership, not product updates. Position yourself as an expert in your domain by sharing insights about industry trends, customer behavior, and market dynamics. Build authority without giving away your competitive advantages.

You don't have to go completely dark or abandon your audience entirely. But you need a clear filter for what you share and what you keep private.

Before you post anything about your product, strategy, or business, ask yourself this simple question: "Would this information help someone clone me or compete with me more effectively?"

If the answer is yes, don't post it. It's that simple.

As AI tools become more sophisticated and development cycles become faster, the importance of strategic silence will only increase. The companies that thrive will be those that understand when to speak and when to stay quiet.

Building in public made sense in an era when execution was difficult and replication was slow. In today's world, where ideas can be copied in days and products can be built in weeks, silence has become a competitive advantage.

This doesn't mean abandoning community, transparency, or authentic connection with your audience. It means being more strategic about what you share and more protective of what gives you an edge.

The builders who win in this new landscape won't be the loudest or the most visible. They'll be the ones who understand that sometimes the best way to build a lasting business is to build it quietly, strategically, and with purpose.

Your audience will be there when you're ready to share something meaningful. Your competitors will be watching either way. The question is whether you want to give them a head start or keep your advantages to yourself until you're ready to compete.

The choice is yours, but the stakes have never been higher.

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Until next time - 

Jelani