Build in Public
on X (Twitter)
The play
Daily public MRR posts + behind-the-scenes building updates that grow a founder-led following into free distribution.
Case studies
Apps that grew on Build in Public.
30 years of opinionated POV publishing (Signal v. Noise, REWORK, It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy At Work). Distribution-by-philosophy.
Radical transparency — every revenue metric publicly available — became the entire distribution strategy. Sahil's narrative of 'failure' on Medium drove more sign-ups than any ad ever did.
Public livestream of building the entire product on a beach in Thailand. Press caught wind, $400K MRR within 3 years. Every interview Pieter does drives sign-ups.
OSS Calendly competitor. Peer's build-in-public on X + GitHub stargazer marketing + community-built integrations drove early growth.
$2M+ ARR. Twitter-tool for Twitter creators — every customer becomes a brand evangelist via tweet attribution.
Damon's daily Stripe-revenue tweets are the distribution playbook. Open dashboard + transparency drove $1.5M ARR solo.
Daniel turned his X following into a paid community with $1.5K/yr lifetime access. The X audience IS the entire funnel.
Built in public on X for 8 months before launch. Pre-sold to 200 followers; opened to $1M ARR in year one. Every product Marc ships afterward funnels back to ShipFast — meta-distribution.
Founder-led X + LinkedIn presence + free tier with zero artificial limits. The 'no asterisks free' positioning.
Built in public on X over a weekend. Sold lifetime licenses at $49 — earned $30K in week 1, $200K in month 3. Tony's existing audience (DevUtils) gave free distribution.
Solo side-project to $50K MRR via SEO (programmatic comparison pages: 'X vs Bannerbear' for every competitor) + Product Hunt launch.
$30 launch-day promo on X via DHH's audience drove 100K+ accounts in week 1. Apple App Store policy fight kept HEY in tech press for 6+ months.
Solo bootstrapped Linktree competitor. Daniel's X-thread case studies + Product Hunt launches drive growth.
Targets Python/Django devs (an underserved boilerplate niche vs Next.js). Cory's blog 'BuildItLab' is the cold-start audience.
Anonymous OSS-first launch in 2023; took the React world by storm. Vercel hired shadcn. The library IS the brand.