How to share your innovations - without worrying about clones.
A quick take on how to build in public for open creators
👋 Hey, it’s Jaime. Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I share how thriving open-source projects grow their communities.
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Pre-S: Sorry about the long newsletter break. I didn’t realise how much time and energy a second son would, but it’s intense :) So I decided to take a good summer break, but he’ll be going to kindergarten next week, which will free up some space to write once again.
So now that you know, let’s look at this week’s newsletter, where I share what I learnt on how to show your work as you go along with your community, instead of allowing the perfectionist in you to share something only when it’s finally ready.
Hopefully you’ll also understand how, by sharing your work openly, paradoxically, you won’t have to fear other people from copying you.
We’ll cover:
An Introduction of the Building in Public method
Why it works
What it looks like with examples
And how to put it in practice
Read time: 8 minutes
If you're prone to feeling scared about sharing your ideas because others might steal them, there are some people sharing in public and making the most of it.
At some point on the journey, most innovators struggle to decide on the timing of sharing their idea in public.
Investors might be pushing for you to file a patent and keep everything under wraps.
Or you might be scared because there is competition with more resources and distribution that could take your idea and make it better.
The fact is, innovating is hard, and keeping funders happy and knockoffs away adds an extra layer of complexity to any project.
But, in case you haven't noticed yet, I chose to call my blog Bold and Open. So I'm kind of obsessed with openness.
And I've been researching for the last eleven years creators who have chosen to develop their projects, open source or not, by sharing openly their ideas and processes.
Here are some of their methods and how they benefit them to help you develop your product, even (especially) if it's imperfect.
Let's dive in.
Introducing Build in Public
Building in public is about sharing your journey as a founder, a creator or a researcher. It’s that simple… and that hard.
You share your progress on social media, you share your challenges and successes, or you live-stream your coding, design or drawing sessions.
Buffer, a social media management tool, is an example of an organisation that has been transparent about its journey right from the beginning.
On their blog and social media channels, they've shared everything from their company culture to revenue, salaries and funding strategies.
So it’s more about sharing your process than your product. But by sharing your process, you inevitably create the excuse to talk about your product or ideas.
Why Build in Public Works
The Build in Public method works because it creates a way for you to:
know what people want or don’t want.
create buzz and trust around your idea
create a brand and not just develop your idea
get fast feedback even if you have a small team and few resources
By starting to share your progress before launching, you create a two-way dialogue that allows you to foster community around your idea, validate it through lots of direct feedback, and increase its chances of success.
When your idea launches, sharing a relatable story and the challenges you face also gives your community the space where they can plug into your project and collaborate. But it also helps build a strong emotional connection and makes your idea memorable.
Sharing a nascent idea before its ready and letting people see it transform under their eyes helps develop a group of super fans who can spread the word about your work, which can then attract serendipitously people who can be interested or have something to contribute to push it forward.
And finally, building in public makes it possible to be held accountable, but also to enjoy the recognition for your best work.
What does it look like?
Here are some examples I really like from current creators:
Fiction Products
Friction Products develops satisfying pill containers, and its creator asks his audience on Youtube Shorts, TikTok or Instagram to help solve the challenges he faces to scale his company.
He might just share his progress on finding clever solutions to make his product even more satisfying:
He might share explanations of why he can’t scale fast enough to keep up with the audience’s demands and invite people to share their ideas on how to do better:
He might also honestly share how his products fare against a chinese knockoff, which is rather refreshing and goes on to share how he does to stay ahead of clones:
Or he might ask his audience to help him validate a new packaging that would be easier to its users:
So I’m not out there to get pill bottles, but as a creator and entrepreneur, I find it fascinating to see the challenges of someone creating a business around a 3D-printed product. And when a friend or family member goes looking for a pill bottle, I will definitely recommend this product.
Jon Paul’s Balls
Jon-Paul makes balls. And he documents his ball R&D experiments in public. On his social media channels, he explores new constructions, tests materials, designs balls around themes, and reverse engineers popular balls throughout history.
And through his channels, he has gathered tens of millions of views by only sharing about his experiments.
He first started sharing in public how he learnt how to make a ball. They were terrible at first. But he got better with each new ball.
And little by little, as he shared his documentation, people showed they were interested in them, and eventually asked if they could buy them.
This gave him the validation he needed to launch his own ball company. Now he shares a new ball design experiment every week.
If a ball gathers enough interest, it becomes available for sale for a limited release on the website. And most balls don’t resonate enough, but that’s ok.
Here’s a screenshot of the kinds of comments people submit, and how they are validated by the community by upvoting them:
So as he shared in the video above, his process is very straightforward:
Present Ball design
Incorporate Feedback
Repeat until you have an interesting ball
Loom Clothing
Loom is a french clothing brand which goal is to build long lasting clothes and help its industry be less polluting by producing less.
For that, they started a side blog where they share in public their learnings about their challenges, but also about the challenges of their industry.
One of my favourite articles from them is about their experiments to find why jeans keep having holes in the crotch.
They share their hypothesis for why the jeans always break there, and how they tested in a laboratory each one to find the culprit. Once they found the cause, they went on a quest to find a fabric factory that could create a more durable fabric that would last longer.
Another one of my favourite articles is about how they reacted to a bad review to their shirt, and how they used it to improve their product, but more importantly, to make sure they didn’t lie about the promises they made about their product
They cried for a little while, but then they candidly examined the merits of their bad review.
And the reviewer was right. Their shirts were far from what they thought they were delivering, which was in part their and their manufacturer’s fault.
Then they go on sharing everything they’ve changed (and it’s a lot) in their processes to explain what they did about solving that problem and how it also affected their inner journey.
So through their build in public and articles infused with humility, not only do they share their learnings and show their customers they can demand more from their clothing brands, but they also build a tonne of trust and a willingness to pay a little extra for a product well made.
Putting Build in Public in Practice
Ready to start using Build in Public in your work?
Here are a few simple questions to get you going:
Where are groups of creatives in the same space?
Pay attention to what they share
Take notes on what they’re not sharing so that you can fill out voids with your own efforts
Consider what you’re working on:
What do you do? What parts of your process can you share that are informative, educational, entertaining or promotional?
What are your recipes? Have you developed frameworks or templates that would inform the people you’re trying to reach?
What do you want to learn? Commit to learn in front of others and forget about being an expert. Enjoy being an amateur and share the journey with humility and humor.
What have you learnt that you can teach others? Have you learnt a craft, new techniques or ways to use a certain tool or material? What knowledge comes with your job?
What ideas did you believe that you have changed your mind about?
What challenges do you face where others might be able to contribute with their own insights? You could explore things like naming, manufacturing, community building, design, distribution, funding, an…
What ideas do you need to validate before working on them for weeks, months or years?
What communities can you participate in, and what channels can you put in place? These should be at intersection of your skills (writing, video making, audio editing) and where the people interested in your idea spend their time (A blog, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, podcasts, etc.)
Make stuff.
Document what you do: Write your thoughts in a notebook, keep a scrapbook, take photographs of your work at different stages, shoot videos of your working...
Share the byproducts of your work and ideas through any media: Articles, emails, video, audio, images, case studies, social proof, process, research, reference, drawings, plans, sketches, interviews, demos, drafts, diagrams, inspiration, scrapbooks, stories,…)
Share and invite people to participate
As Kathy Sierra says, “Make people better at something they want to be better at.”
And don’t worry, teaching your secrets won’t diminish your value, but add to it.
You’ll create more interest for what you do. People will feel closer to you and your work because you’re open to letting them into what you know.
But more importantly, you’ll also receive an education in return by getting the opinions from those who have the insights you need to make your idea better than anyone who will be copying you.
Make stuff you love, and talk about stuff you love from others as well, and you’ll attract your real peers attracted to and obsessed by the same mission and stuff you love.