Building in Public: What I Share, What I Don't

"Building in public" has become one of the most misunderstood trends in the indie developer community. On Twitter and LinkedIn, it often degenerates into endless threads about "top 10 AI tools" or performative hustle culture rather than actual product engineering.

As a solo builder from India running FinishAI and shipping multiple side projects, building in public for indie developers has been my primary growth engine. But it only works if you set strict personal boundaries. Here are my rules.

1. What I Share Publicly

• Raw Work-In-Progress (WIP) Screenshots: Unfiltered video recordings of apps running on local localhost servers before they are polished.
• Honest Revenue & Metrics: Exact numbers, MRR milestones, active users, and marketing drop-offs.
• Technical Mistakes & Failures: Post-mortems of bad stack choices, database migration headaches, or marketing launches that flopped.

2. The Golden Rule: Ship First, Share Second

My rule is simple: Never tweet about a feature until it is pushed to production or running on a live staging URL. Proof of work speaks louder than any announcement thread.