Build in Public Hurts Startups. Do It Anyway.

Nikita Bier knows how to build viral apps. Two acquisitions totalling over $30 million, advisor to Solana, and now Head of Product at X.

His track record speaks for itself. So when someone with his credentials warns founders about building in public, it's worth listening to.

In his recent X post (January 27th 2026), he argued that Build in Public is "a wrong move for startups" sparked genuine debate.

Source: X

His case is worth taking seriously. But I think he's right about some things and wrong about others, and the distinction matters.

What Nikita Gets Right

Let's start with the valid concerns, because dismissing them entirely would be intellectually lazy.

Nikita argues that startups need room to make drastic changes. He's correct.

The path to product-market fit is rarely linear. You might start with a consumer app and end up building enterprise software. You might scrap entire features, rename the product, or pivot to a completely different market. That flexibility is essential.

He's also right that building in public can create psychological pressure. When you've publicly committed to a direction, pivoting feels harder. There's ego involved, and the friction of admitting you were wrong in front of an audience.

And yes, some founders do get distracted by the performance of building in public. They optimise for engagement instead of product quality. They spend more time crafting threads than talking to customers.

As someone who builds in public, I admit that these are real risks. Nikita isn't manufacturing problems out of nothing.

Where The Argument Breaks Down

Here's where I diverge from his conclusion.

Nikita's framework assumes startups have "finite attention" they need to protect.

This makes sense for established companies with existing audiences and brand equity to preserve. But for early-stage startups?

The average pre-seed founder isn't managing audience expectations. They're trying to get anyone to notice they exist. Their problem isn't attention overload. It's attention scarcity.

For every startup that confuses their audience with pivots, hundreds die in complete silence. They build something nobody hears about, launch to indifference, and quietly shut down.

The risk of obscurity dwarfs the risk of "narrative complexity."

The Attention Economy Works Differently for Unknowns

Nikita's advice implicitly assumes a model where attention is a battery: you start with a charge, and every public update depletes it. Better to conserve that energy for one big precision launch.

But for startups starting from zero, attention isn't a battery. It's a muscle. You build it through consistent exercise, not conservation.

Building in public isn't spending attention. It's generating it.

Every update, every behind-the-scenes moment, every transparent reflection is an opportunity to be discovered. Someone finds your post, checks your profile, gets intrigued, follows along. Three months later, they become an investor, a customer, or an advocate.

The compounding effect of consistent visibility is hard to replicate through any other means.

Strong Founders Already Know When to Ignore The Room

Nikita worries that having an audience makes it "difficult to make those changes that only you can understand."

I'd push back gently here. Founders face pressure from all directions: investors, advisors, co-founders, early customers.

The pressure of internet followers is actually the mildest form of scrutiny you'll encounter.

Founders who can't make bold moves because strangers might be confused are going to struggle with far more consequential pressures down the line. The ability to gather input, then ignore it when necessary, is a core founder skill.

Building in public doesn't create that challenge. It just surfaces it earlier.

The best founders I know treat their audience as a sounding board, not a governing board. They share openly, collect signals, then make their own calls anyway.

Accountability isn't Always A Bug

Yes, pivoting is harder when people are watching. But consider whether that friction is always negative.

Building in public forces you to articulate your reasoning. When you pivot, you have to explain why, which often clarifies your own thinking.

It creates a natural check against the kind of aimless thrashing that kills startups: changing direction every few weeks because nothing was ever committed to publicly.

The discipline of explaining your decisions to an audience, even a small one, reveals whether a pivot is strategic or just panic. Sometimes the best thing an audience does is make you pause and ask:

can I actually defend this?

If you can't, maybe the decision needs more thought.

Early Adopters Beat Launch Day Crowds

Nikita suggests building quietly, then launching with "precision" after achieving PMF.

But consider who shows up for a cold launch versus a warm one.

Strangers who discover your polished product have no context. They'll churn at the first friction point. They have no reason to give you the benefit of the doubt.

The people who followed your journey?

They watched you struggle with that one feature for months. They understand your vision because you've explained it repeatedly.

When they encounter bugs, they report them instead of leaving. They tell their friends because they feel invested in your success.

I'll take 500 engaged followers over 5,000 cold visitors every time.

The Internet Forgets Faster than You Think

Nikita warns that narratives become "so complex that no audience can keep up."

In my experience, this concern is overblown. The internet has a short memory. Most people who discover you won't scroll back through months of posts. They'll see your current positioning and current product. Your past pivots are invisible to them.

And for the few who do follow your entire journey? They often become your biggest advocates. They love origin stories. They appreciate transparency.

Think about the startup legends we celebrate: Airbnb selling cereal boxes, Slack starting as a video game, Instagram beginning as a cluttered check-in app.

The pivots aren't embarrassing footnotes. They're part of the mythology.

It's about Distribution, Not Just Feedback

Nikita frames building in public primarily as a feedback mechanism. Established companies do that better, with larger user bases and proper research teams.

But for startups, feedback isn't the main value. Distribution is.

Every update is content. Content gets discovered, shared, and amplified. Building in public is marketing that costs nothing but time. It's how you attract co-founders, early employees, investors, and future customers without a budget.

Startups can't afford PR agencies or paid acquisition at scale. What they can afford is transparency. Building in public converts your daily work into a distribution engine.

The Real Trap (And It's Not What Nikita Describes)

If I'm being honest about the risks, the genuine danger isn't narrative confusion.

It's that building in public can become procrastination dressed up as strategy. Some founders spend more energy on update threads than on actual product work.

The dopamine hit of engagement replaces the harder work of customer conversations and shipping features.

That's a real trap. But it's a discipline problem, not an inherent flaw in the approach. The solution is self-awareness, not silence.

The Asymmetric Bet

Here's what it comes down to.

Building in public costs nothing material. No budget. No permission. Just your time and willingness to be transparent.

If it doesn't work? You can always go quiet. You can rebrand. You can start fresh. The internet will forget, and you'll have lost nothing but hours.

If it does work? You've built something valuable: an audience, a distribution channel, a community of people invested in your success. That's hard to replicate through any other means.

Who This Advice is Actually For

Nikita's caution makes sense for founders at established companies launching new products. When you already have an audience with expectations, managing narrative becomes important.

But for the founder starting from nothing? The calculus is different.

Building in public isn't mandatory. If you're working on deep tech with IP concerns, stay quiet. If competitors will clone you instantly, be strategic about what you share. If you genuinely cannot filter external opinions without losing focus, protect your attention.

But for most consumer and SMB startups, the theoretical risk of narrative confusion is vastly outweighed by the practical benefits: distribution, accountability, audience building, and early adopters who actually care.

Most startups don't die from too many eyes on them. They die from too few.

The Bottom Line

Nikita Bier is sharp, and his concerns come from real experience. But that experience was earned at companies with existing audiences. The advice doesn't transfer cleanly to founders starting from zero.

Building in public isn't right for everyone. But for many founders, it's one of the few genuine advantages available. It costs nothing. The downside is limited. The upside is substantial.

If you're building something and nobody knows about it, the risk isn't that you'll confuse people with your pivots. The risk is that nobody will be around to notice when you finally get it right.

That's the risk worth worrying about.

Where do you land on this debate? I'm genuinely curious to hear from founders who've tried both approaches.