Welcome to the 68 subscribers who've joined us since the last Looseleaf!

Each week I help founders & marketers spark their creativity by sharing a new product idea & marketing plan.

Today's product idea is bigger than a product. It's really a whole mindset shift. But don't worry, we'll touch on how it impacts marketing!

Growing up, we would sing carols every Christmas Eve & my dad would accompany on the guitar. Even though this was the only time each year he played the guitar, he was quite good. But unfortunately, what were couldn't were the years of him learning chords that led to up to this. As a naïve kid, I assumed as a result that the guitar was easy to learn. I even fantasized that once you became an adult you magically acquired the ability to play the guitar. Why? Because I never saw the hard work that made performance possible.

As a society, we only value & see finished products. We become fans of bands after they become talented. We follow celebrities after they become famous. We watch athletes after they make it to the big leagues.

But imagine a world where everyone built in public.

If more people learned & built in public, we wouldn't grow up thinking that hard things come easy.

We'd see examples of hard work & grit all around us. We wouldn't be deceived by get-rich-quick schemes, & would be more willing to work hard at something for years before seeing rewards.

Though societal adoption will be slow, many companies & creators have already embraced the "build in public" philosophy.

• Each month Sahil Lavingia tweets the financials of Gumroad, which is on track for $10 million in annual revenue.
• Baremetrics is at $1.6 million in annual recurring revenue, by letting companies easily show all their metrics in one place.
• Creators on Twitter like Daniel Vassallo sell Twitter & AWS courses in public. KP is literally the "Build in Public guy". Dan Rowden's ilo.so is the Twitter equivalent of Baremetrics, letting you share your Twitter analytics publicly, & Sharath is building shoutout.so, which lets creators collect public social proof from Twitter.

Why should YOU build in public?

Two answers: marketing & product.

Marketing: building a company makes great movie material. It's suspenseful, with highs & lows that can resonate with others. Why NOT share your learnings & journey in public? It's free content & free marketing. Bonus if the people who want to follow along are also your target market. This works best when your target market is also going through the same journey as you, i.e. they're also founders, creators, & entrepreneurs.

Product: Sharing in public helps you learn more quickly what works & what doesn't. You can build a new feature & re-design the whole product around it, but it's lower risk to tweet about building it & first figure out no one wants it.

But, most people (& companies) don't build in public. Instead, they build in "stealth mode" due to 1 of 2 fears:

Often they worry that competitors will copy them. But even if other people copy you, you'll stay one step ahead if you're continually innovating. And if a single feature was your only advantage in the first place, being secretive won't preserve your moat from competitors masquerading as customers. Features aren't sustainable moats.

Alternatively, many people fear public failure. They'd rather fail privately & out of the public eye. But if an idea is bad, wouldn't you rather find out sooner? And if it's your "building in public" content that's bad, it'll get punished by Google & Facebook algorithms & no one will see it.

In conclusion, building in public is a great example of asymmetric risk: unlimited upside, limited downside.

That's all for this issue!

As always, respond with the biggest challenge you're facing & I'll respond with some advice!

Cheers,

Luke

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