Build in public
Build in public, daily, without editing a video.
Underway is a daily build-in-public diary on video: it interviews you every evening and turns your answers into a numbered episode.
What building in public is
Building in public means documenting the making of a company while it is being made: what you decided, what broke, what the numbers did, in the order it happened. It is the opposite of a launch post. The audience is not strangers scrolling past a hook; it is people who watched yesterday and want to know what happened today. Retention is serial, like a show, not viral.
Why most people stop
Not for lack of wanting to. The bottleneck is daily overhead: working out what to say, setting up, filming, editing, posting. Each step is small and together they are a second job. People forget, skip a day, skip a week, and the habit dies, usually around week three, before anyone is watching. Staring at a camera with nothing to answer produces bad footage, and bad footage is the last thing anyone posts twice.
The way that holds
Answer questions instead of performing. Every evening Underway asks you a few, out loud, about the day you actually had, because it has read what you shipped and who you met. After each answer it decides whether to dig into what you said, move on, or stop, and it stops while you still have something to say. About three minutes of answers. In the morning the episode is cut, captioned and numbered: episode 47 is simply your 47th, honest whatever the gaps.
- Count episodes, not days. Day counts punish you for a missed week; episode counts just go up.
- Never reorder for a hook. Chronology is the honest structure, and honesty is the whole aesthetic.
- Record in private if you must. The footage of the early part cannot be made later; publishing can wait.
- Set the look once. Consistency is a stronger brand than variety.
People doing it right now
Every series in the underway directory is a business being built in public, unfinished and still moving, with each episode dated and transcribed.
Questions
What does build in public mean?
Sharing the making of something while it is being made: the decisions, the numbers, the things that broke, in the order they happened, rather than a launch announcement at the end. The audience follows a story that is still open.
Why do most people stop building in public?
The overhead. Deciding what to say, setting up, filming, editing. Each one is small; together they are a second job, and the habit dies around week three when the novelty wears off and nobody is watching yet.
Do I need an audience to build in public?
No, and the archive is the point even if nobody watches. Every founder who has built something wishes they had footage of the early part, and it cannot be made later. An audience, if it comes, comes from consistency, not from the first post.
Video, text, or audio?
Video, if you can bear it, because a face is what people follow and it is the strongest asset in the frame. Audio when you can't face a camera. Text as the layer around either, not instead of them.
How is Underway different from a clip tool?
Clip tools start from footage you already recorded. Underway starts from nothing: it interviews you about your day, out loud, reads what you shipped and who you met so the questions are specific, and cuts the answers into an episode in the morning. Nothing is reordered for a hook, and nothing is invented.