In early 2025, I started tracking 20 founders in the Inner Ping community who were actively building in public — sharing revenue numbers, product decisions, hiring challenges, and strategic pivots on X, LinkedIn, or personal blogs. A year later, the results are more nuanced than the 'build in public' evangelists suggest.
The Numbers
- ▸Of 20 founders, 8 reported direct revenue impact they could attribute to building in public (customer acquisition through content)
- ▸12 reported meaningful fundraising benefits (investors citing their public content as a reason for reaching out)
- ▸6 reported negative consequences — competitor intelligence, unwanted attention, or pressure to perform publicly
- ▸The median time investment was 4–6 hours per week on content creation and engagement
- ▸3 founders stopped building in public mid-year, citing burnout and diminishing returns
Who It Works For
The founders who got the most value from building in public shared two characteristics: they were in markets where their target customers were also active on social media (developer tools, creator economy, SaaS), and they had a genuinely distinctive point of view that went beyond sharing metrics.
“Sharing my MRR every month got me followers. Sharing the specific decision that led to our biggest churn event got me customers. People don't follow you for numbers — they follow you for the thinking behind the numbers.”
— Tom Marsden
The Dark Side Nobody Talks About
Three founders in our cohort reported that competitors directly used their public build logs to copy features, pricing strategies, or go-to-market approaches. One founder discovered a competitor was using their public customer research to target the same accounts. Building in public gives away real strategic intelligence.
Share the 'how' and 'why' generously. Be selective about the 'what' and 'who.' Your pricing experiments, product roadmap, and customer pipeline are the areas where transparency has the most risk and least upside.
The ROI Breakdown by Channel
Not all 'building in public' channels are equal. We tracked where the 20 founders posted and the outcomes by platform. X (Twitter) delivered the highest investor visibility — 10 of 12 founders who reported fundraising benefits were primarily active on X. LinkedIn produced the strongest enterprise customer acquisition — 5 of 8 founders with direct revenue impact were posting on LinkedIn to reach B2B buyers. Personal blogs had the longest half-life per piece of content but the slowest audience growth. Substack/newsletters created the deepest audience relationships but required the most consistent effort.
- ▸X: Best for investor visibility and tech community engagement. Median follower growth: 340% over 12 months for consistent posters. Risk: algorithm volatility and context collapse.
- ▸LinkedIn: Best for B2B SaaS and enterprise-focused founders. Lower engagement rates but higher conversion per impression. 3 founders attributed $100K+ in ARR directly to LinkedIn posts.
- ▸Personal blog/Substack: Best for thought leadership positioning. Slowest growth but highest trust per reader. One founder's blog post drove a $2M enterprise contract when the CTO shared it internally.
- ▸YouTube: Only 2 founders tried this. Both reported strong results but cited unsustainable time investment (8–12 hours per video vs. 1–2 hours per written post).
The Metrics That Surprised Us
The correlation between follower count and business outcomes was weaker than expected. The founder with the largest following (48K on X) reported zero direct revenue impact. Meanwhile, a founder with 2,800 followers generated $340K in attributed pipeline because every follower was a potential enterprise buyer in their niche. Audience quality crushed audience quantity in every metric we tracked.
Another surprise: the founders who shared failures and challenges got 2.7x more engagement than those sharing wins and milestones. But — and this is important — the failure posts attracted a fundamentally different audience. They drew sympathetic peers and media attention but rarely attracted paying customers. The founders who converted engagement to revenue were sharing how they solved problems, not just that they had them.
From our data, the highest-ROI content mix was: 70% tactical 'how we did it' posts (specific decisions, implementations, results), 20% market observations and industry insights (positions you as a thoughtful operator), 10% vulnerability and personal updates (builds human connection). Founders who over-indexed on vulnerability without the tactical substance burned out fastest and attracted the lowest-quality audience.
The Sustainable Approach
The founders who sustained building in public for the full year all had one thing in common: they treated it as a learning practice, not a marketing channel. Writing about decisions helped them think more clearly. The audience was a side benefit, not the goal.
One more non-obvious finding: the three founders who quit mid-year all had something in common — they were measuring success by follower growth rather than business outcomes. Once follower growth plateaued (which it always does around month 4–5), they lost motivation. The founders who stuck with it had tied their practice to internal metrics: quality of decision-making, clarity of thinking, candidate quality in recruiting.
If you're considering building in public in 2026, start with a question: what do you want to learn by articulating your decisions? If the answer is 'nothing, I just want followers,' you'll burn out. If the answer is genuine, the content will follow naturally.
Tom Marsden
Tom built SyncAI from a public build log to $4M ARR in 18 months. He now angel invests in developer tools and writes about the intersection of transparency and company building.