Build in Public
Build in Public is the practice of founders sharing real-time metrics, revenue numbers, product decisions, and setbacks openly on platforms like LinkedIn instead of waiting for a polished announcement. It's marketed as radical transparency, but it's really a content strategy with real exposure risk attached.
What it actually means
Build in public means posting the numbers most companies keep behind closed doors: MRR, churn, hiring struggles, failed launches, pricing changes, the works. Instead of a quarterly recap, the founder narrates the business as it happens.
On LinkedIn specifically, this works as an on-ramp because the audience you'd want watching (customers, investors, future hires) is already on the platform. You don't have to build distribution from zero the way you would with a newsletter or a podcast. You're posting into a room that already has the right people in it.
Why it matters for B2B selling
For a founder or a sales leader, build in public content does double duty. It functions as a trust signal for prospects who are used to sanitized case studies, and it functions as recruiting and fundraising material at the same time. A post about missing a revenue target reads as more credible than a post about hitting one, because everyone selling on LinkedIn already knows what a highlight reel looks like.
The misconception
The assumption is that more transparency always compounds into more trust. It doesn't. Real numbers are also intelligence. A competitor reading your churn rate, your CAC, or your close rate doesn't need to guess where you're vulnerable, you told them. A post about a rough month can look like honesty to a customer and look like weakness to an investor evaluating you against a competitor who's saying nothing at all.
The founders who do this well are selective about which numbers they share and when. The ones who get burned by it are usually the ones treating every internal number as content, without asking who else is reading and what they'll do with it.
How it's actually used
In practice, build in public content on LinkedIn gets judged less by engagement metrics and more by whether it changes behavior downstream: does it get referenced in a sales call, does it come up in an investor intro, does it get a former colleague to DM about a job. If a post's only outcome is likes, it wasn't really building anything, public or otherwise.
Related
Stop guessing what to post on LinkedIn.
SignalPosts turns your sales calls into posts that sound like the person sending them.
Get started