Building in public works — but the default version of it mostly attracts other founders, not buyers. Revenue screenshots, MRR charts, and “what I learned launching” posts are catnip for other builders and nearly invisible to the people who would actually pay you. To reach buyers, you have to build in public about their problems and outcomes, not your startup journey.
Why it attracts founders by default
Think about who finds each type of post interesting. A “we hit $10k MRR” screenshot is fascinating to someone trying to hit $10k MRR — another founder. It is meaningless to a buyer, who does not care about your revenue milestones; they care about their own problem. So the metrics-and-milestones content that dominates building-in-public naturally sorts your audience toward peers.
That is not useless. A founder audience can bring encouragement, hires, investors, and partnerships. But if the goal is customers, an audience of other founders is a vanity audience wearing a productivity costume — which is the same trap as chasing reach that never converts.
What buyers actually respond to
Buyers engage with content about the problem they have and the outcome they want. If you sell to e-commerce operators, posts dissecting a specific conversion problem will pull in e-commerce operators. Posts about your funding round will pull in founders. Same “building in public” habit, completely different audience, decided entirely by what you build in public about.
The reframe: share the work, not the scoreboard. “Here’s how we solved [specific problem a buyer also has]” reaches buyers. “Here’s our growth chart” reaches builders. You can absolutely do both — just know which one you are doing and why.
How to point it at buyers
A few adjustments turn a founder-magnet into a buyer-magnet: talk about the customer’s problem more than your product, show the messy middle of solving something real rather than the polished win, use the buyer’s language instead of startup vocabulary (MRR, runway, pivot), and post where your buyers actually are — which is often not the same platform where founders hang out. Choosing that platform correctly is its own decision, closely related to posting from your personal profile vs. the company page.
Doing it consistently, aimed at the right people
The hard part is sustaining buyer-focused content, because founder-focused content is easier and gets faster applause from your peers. The DIY discipline: before publishing, ask “would my customer care about this, or only another founder?” and cut the ones that fail.
If keeping up a steady stream of buyer-relevant content is the bottleneck, Dopameme helps founders build content specifically around their buyers’ problems rather than the usual metrics-and-milestones feed — which is the difference between an audience that claps and an audience that buys. The rule holds regardless: build in public about the buyer, and buyers show up.
Bottom line
Building in public works when it is pointed at buyers. The default — metrics, revenue, journey — attracts founders. Post about your customer’s problem and outcome in their language, on their platform, and the same habit starts building a pipeline instead of a peer group.
Based on real discussions across founder communities. Read the original thread.