Why I'm building in public
Accountability is underrated as a forcing function. When you've told people what you're building, you actually build it.
I’ve been doing this journal for three months now. The honest reason I started: accountability.
Founders who build in public ship more. Not because the audience cares — most of them don’t — but because having said publicly that you’re building something makes you build it. The activation energy of not doing what you said you would is higher than doing it.
The second benefit: thinking clearly. Writing these entries has clarified positions I’d held vaguely for years. When you have to say “here’s what happened and why it matters,” the “why it matters” forces you to have a view.
Third: the responses. People I’ve never met email with reactions, corrections, additions. One email last month came from a founder in Bucharest who had the exact opposite experience from mine on unit economics. He was right. I was partly wrong. I’ll update the essay.
The most useful thing this journal has been: a record of what I thought was true at a point in time. That’s more valuable than I expected.