Zoom Out | No more secret sauces, it is time to Build in Public

Note to readers: Zoom Out: The Future of Work is a series that chronicles macro changes, trends and real-life experiences that affect the workforce as we tread uncertain times. It is aimed to dig deeper and build a point-of-view around popular and contrarian topics around work.

Imagine a Michelin star chef sharing her secret recipe with you, a movie star revealing casting secrets or finding a note by Da Vinci decoding Mona Lisa's smile. There are some secrets we are all curious about but are better left unsaid, or are there?

Secrets are the classified weapons of most businesses. They intrigue and lure, though not any longer. Today, you merely ‘ship’ them. According to Seth Godin, author, serial entrepreneur and marketer, 50 years ago, you had to reach the entire audience before getting any feedback. Now, you can have 100 people read your book and find out what happens. Now, you can put something on YouTube for a day and then take it down. There are so many ways to engage with your market. Say “here it is” and then see what they do.

You do your best work and just put it out there. There is no longer a pursuit of perfection, if you want a great product, you work with your audience to get there. This concept of evolution with your audience or community is now coming to be known as “Build in Public (BIP)”.

5 reasons to Build in Public

1 Build an audience

According to KP (Karthik Puvvada), Program Director of On Deck and the ‘Build in Public’ guy on Twitter, while the concept of Build in Public has existed in various avatars, the current format is new. Technology is no longer the moat, your community is. As the internet becomes the city you live in, gaining trust of your audience is getting attention. If you want to reach an infinite number of people, you have to show your cards and be vulnerable. It helps you build an audience and with an audience you can do whatever you want.

2 Get the word out there

Vindhya C, Founder On That Job and Freelance Product Manager, has announced her first venture On That Job (OTJ) only on Twitter as it seemed better to share in public. She says 1) it helps keep the interest alive and  2) it reduces the number of people she has to individually respond to. The core of OTJ is to help people understand what the scope of a job is actually like, especially in the early stages of a startup, and she has already received a lot of feedback and has been able to garner mentors and interest for the first cohort.

3 Launches are overrated

Palak Zatakia, Founder Sublist (micro-newsletters for the next billion), has been sharing in public from Day 1, with his WhatsApp newsletter Read This Today (that has 67,000 subscribers). Only he did not know that he was “Building in Public”. “Our product approach from Day One was to build the MVP  (minimal viable product) first, take feedback and keep iterating. We started talking to a lot of people in public. I didn't know that we were building public, until I discovered this term. Then I realised we could document this journey. Launches are overrated! What really matters is real feedback from real users and the iterations you make based on that.”

4 Not a choice—the only way ‘for us’

Born and raised in Goa, Raj Kunkolienkar initially felt he was disadvantaged that he did not hail from a Metro. He made it his life’s mission to “unlock human potential through the internet”. His second education startup, Stoa School (12-week MBA bootcamp), has been Built in Public and has already assembled its first cohort of 25 students. This cohort came from Twitter.  Kunkolienkar believes that it is integral for an education venture to put out its vision, the change it wants to create and why in public. He also says that in the Indian landscape people are fed polished stories and in his case, he wanted to keep it raw, as he wanted to take his audience along on his journey and appreciate the entire process.

5 Serendipity

Dhrupad Karwa, Founder of HaikuJAM (a collaborative writing platform) and now INSPO, an AI inspiration platform, decided to fund raise in public. While they had raised $1.5 million, they decided to raise $250,000 in public by sharing their thesis and investment deck online. Says Karwa, “When you share your progress and write it down, it crystallises your own thinking.” Founders are protective about their secret sauce, however, sharing in public opens them up to serendipity. The internet is a serendipity and connection machine. Even for Karwa, Build in Public wasn't a conscious decision but it laid the ethos of the company to document what they were doing, sharing their thinking and challenges.

The pitfalls

1 It is always difficult to be vulnerable in public. People can be sceptical and cynical. Ultimately there will always be naysayers and BIP is about connecting with people who are sharing or helping in public.

2 It also creates a lot of expectations and it is easier to become a “failure in public”.

3 There are many lurkers who can also copy a unique idea and do the same thing.

4 With Build in Public, motivation and demotivation are associated with people talking about you. For a founder in the early stages, this can get quite stressful.

5 There is a risk in developing too big a brand image. Changing perceptions then becomes hard.

That said, the founders I spoke to agreed that the benefits far outnumber the pitfalls and therefore it is important to Build in Public with the right approach.

Investors are watching

“We have a mandate where Twitter is part of our sourcing strategy,” says Sathya Sampat, co-founder of WeKan, a future of work accelerator. Twitter is the new product hunt, however, with a more social format. Building a startup is tough and if a founder is able to talk to strangers and tell them why they are building something of value, I believe that requires confidence and as a VC we should adapt to the format that makes the Founder better.”

WeKan recently reached out to a company on Twitter and is taking this conversation forward, as with First Cheque, a fund that focuses on very early-stage startups. It has found three companies on Twitter and is in advanced conversations with two.

Says Kushal Bhagia,  Founder  of First Cheque, “BIP helps with three aspects 1) it validates the idea 2) finds people you didn't know earlier and 3) gets you investor attention.” He believes it helps founders jump the queue. However, adds that you do not land a cheque immediately. With BIP, the investor comes in knowing what you are building. The process is still the same after that: I would still like to understand your market size, growth and where your insights are coming from.

Investors (I spoke to) collectively believe that if founders are putting out great content, they have the ability to think clearly and are articulate.  Sajith Pai, Director, Blume Ventures, adds that BIP is still a phenomenon with first-time founders. Second-time founders have a large enough network and would not have to go down this route, he says.

Conclusion

Building anything is hard. It takes guts and clear articulation to share your vision and continuously hold yourself responsible. That too in public, on social media where cynicism and trolls thrive. Therefore, while BIP might be a great idea for some, it may not work for many. I endorse this only for the fact that it is concise storytelling and a window into someone’s world. It also creates online bonds in an otherwise lonely and isolated world.

(Nisha Ramchandani is Manager, Outreach, Axilor Ventures and a writer focussed on Future of Work)