Build in public is the worst psyop in the world

Build in public is the worst psyop in the world.

I mean the version where you spend more time making sure people know you are building than actually building. The daily update. The screenshot of a dashboard. The thread about what you learned. Eventually, you start choosing work because it will make a good post. A hard problem that takes three quiet weeks begins to feel like a bad investment.

That is a ridiculous way to get good at anything. You can become excellent at looking like a builder without developing the ability to build much.

I still want to learn in public. If I figure something out, I want to explain it. If I get something wrong, I want someone who understands it better to tell me. A technical write-up can start a conversation I would never have had otherwise. Publishing the work has a real purpose.

The order matters, though. I want the work to determine what I publish, not a posting schedule to determine what I work on.

The uncomfortable part is that attention does matter. A good project can introduce me to a collaborator, a mentor, or someone who will back a more ambitious idea later. Pretending distribution is beneath me is just another way to avoid doing something difficult.

So I need a better rule than “build in public.” Build quickly, learn something real, and use the finished work to find people worth building with. This is the thesis I want to operate from.

Use attention as infrastructure

The mission is to become prepared and resourced to start a generational company as quickly as possible.

That means becoming capable enough to build it and finding people who would want to build it with me. Attention is useful when it helps those two things happen. An audience on its own is not progress; it is just a number I can look at.

Get technical. Find our people.

Identify the next technology wave and learn the stacks that let me work on it. Get past the demo. Understand what breaks, what costs too much, and what is suddenly possible that was not possible a year ago.

Find exceptional builders and mentors. Make something worth showing them. Ask specific questions, follow through on the advice, and come back with results. The fastest way to get close to good people is to do useful work with them.

Maintain those relationships actively. Remember what people are working on. Send something useful. Help when I can. I do not want a contact list full of people I only message when I need something.

The project cycle

1. Pick an idea that is genuinely interesting, forces me to get more technical, and might travel. It has to interest me and give somebody else a reason to care.

2. Build it quickly. Make the central idea work. Skip cosmetic fine-tuning that delays finding out whether anyone wants it.

3. Put the actual thing in front of people. Treat the response as an early signal, then watch whether people use it, return to it, or ask for more. A viral post is a distribution win; it is not enough to prove demand. If it takes off, make a video that shows why it is interesting.

4. Write a technical post. Explain the decisions, the failures, and what I learned. Send it to people who would have something useful to say. Stay in touch.

Given 200 days, a seven-day cycle gives me 28 complete projects. A ten-day cycle gives me 20. A fourteen-day cycle gives me 14, before allowing time between projects. The point is to make more serious attempts, not to produce a graveyard of rushed demos.

If something works unusually well, stay with it. The schedule should help me find that thing, not force me to abandon it for the next launch.

What the attention is for

Would I rather cash out early for less than $1 million, or earn enough trust with exceptional people to raise more than $1 million for something much bigger a year later? If the mission is a generational company, I need to think beyond the immediate payout. Neither outcome is guaranteed, and I should not pretend that ambition makes it so.

Social capital matters because people decide whether to work with me, introduce me, or take a chance on an idea before it looks obvious. I want that trust to come from evidence that I can do the work.

The external branding can stay simple: “I just want to build cool stuff.” Then I need to make things that justify the sentence.

The attention of a few exceptional builders can matter more than approval from a large crowd. I do not need to win every argument or make everyone like me. But making strangers angry is not a strategy either. It can consume the same time I am trying to protect.

Keep the work in charge

I only need one thing to work out really well. Speed gives me more chances to find it, provided each attempt leaves me more capable and better connected than before.

I want to measure a cycle by what I can now build, what I learned about demand, and who I would want to work with again. The post is part of the process. It cannot become the whole process.

Learn in public when there is something worth teaching. Show the work when there is something worth seeing. Then close the tab and get back to it.