Balancing transparency with responsibility
Balancing transparency with responsibility
When building in public goes wrong
I worked at a tech company for 15 years and had never heard of "build in public" until I joined a marketing agency in 2021.
If the concept is unfamiliar to you also, building in public is when a company's founder shares information very publicly about how the company is doing — even before a product is fully ready for public use. Founders will share their wins and challenges, along with early metrics and feedback they've received talking to potential customers. The goal is to build excitement and support before a product is released, thereby making the actual launch more successful.
In theory, this makes a lot of sense. Building a business can be a lonely and difficult journey. Potential customers (and, truly, other founders) appreciate the transparency. As a result, the practice has become a favorite for many startups.
It was the opposite of how I operated for most of my tech career. The company I worked for rarely shared anything about product plans — even with customers. The roadmap frequently changed and deadlines were routinely missed, so sharing too much meant egg on our faces.
Building in public, on the other hand, brings a lot of transparency and accountability. Companies like Buffer and Ghost still share their financials and metrics, even though they're more well-established. On LinkedIn, it's common to see founders share their journeys. These stories are often interesting, but building in public is often founder focused. Building in public becomes problematic when employees — often those who've faced real harm — become a footnote in the story.
Startups suffer from a lack of leadership
A few weeks ago, I interviewed Melina Cordero, a DEI consultant. She pointed out that back in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, management training was very popular. Today, very few people have been trained in proper leadership and management.
I see this frequently in startups. A founder has an idea and sees a product-market fit, but lacks the knowledge to run a company, including operations, financial decision-making, and hiring. Solving a problem is not the same as running a company. If there's no co-founder or other team member who can provide that additional perspective or support, the founder is flying by the seat of their pants.
For example, a founder shared his story about starting a company about a year ago. He says he has generated more than a million dollars in revenue. Over the course of the year, he hired several roles... only to lay those people off and hire different people. Somewhere along the line, hiring missteps occurred. Either he hadn't quite figured out what roles were needed, or had no experience hiring and chose the wrong people for the jobs.
This is best illustrated by the swaths of tech layoffs over the past two years. Some tech giants certainly knew better and have many layers of leadership. Their layoffs were not necessary, but instead a measure to cut costs and appease shareholders. Smaller startups, on the other hand, were caught off guard when the demand for their products dwindled in 2022 after a sharp increase in 2021. Founders were rolling in venture capital money and didn't plan well for a rainy day. And to some extent, that happens with a young company that hasn't experienced highs and lows before.
I've been critical before that leadership seems to escape financial harm. I previously wrote about building in public with companies that had experienced a downturn. One founder laid off 10% of staff. The other took no salary until the company was back on track, so he could retain all of his employees. The first scenario is far more common: dump the headcount, rather than maintain your responsibility to employees — employees that took a risk coming to a startup.
But building in public should include some type of public accounting — or at least, accountability — for decisions that were made, leading up to layoffs. But that rarely happens.
Building in public becomes a public experiment
There's a vast difference between "sharing what's going on within a startup" and "I'm making this up as I go and going to share EVERYTHING along the way." One truly wants to be transparent. The other makes running a startup all about them and their experiences. The latter is certainly appealing to other founders, who may want to commiserate about the challenges they face.
But to a large extent, it becomes very performative. Those who don't believe in full transparency and accountability are saying, "Look at me! I'm running a company!" — even if they have no business doing so.
Remember the crying CEO? The person who laid off some of his staff and then posted a selfie, writing about how much he was hurting? Sure — he was "building in public" and sharing a vulnerable moment. But the focus was on him. I can't imagine being the impacted employees and finding that my former boss had garnered attention by saying, "I had to lay off some great people. And here's how it impacted me." He was hoping other people would feel bad for him.
With building in public, blunders are often celebrated as part of the founder's "learning process," and we forget about the people harmed along the way.
Outside of layoffs or mistakes, building in public often stops short of full transparency. A lot of people refer to LinkedIn's toxic positivity and I tend to agree. It's easy to share only a portion of the picture, rather than the full picture. Revenue is not the same as profit. Someone may boast about generating a million dollars in revenue, but after paying employees, expenses, and contractors, is there anything left? I’m skeptical about numbers, even though I personally believe in transparency and try to share openly (like a pricing guide I’ve created for freelance writers).
Building in public, when done wrong, can channel a false or hyped-up version of something that may never live up to its promise.
The most interesting people I see on LinkedIn are the often ones involved in day-to-day work, not the ones assigning it. Perhaps building in public makes more sense when it’s not founder-led. Instead, it could come from people working within the company who can share the challenges and decisions they face as they work collectively to build something amazing.
Except… The world only seems interested in hearing from people who are running companies — no matter how unqualified — rather than from the people actually doing the work.
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