Build in Public

DW #125 🟡

Author

Ramsey Shaffer
September 08, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Building a startup in ‘stealth mode’ is lame.

Many early-stage (first-time) founders worry quite a bit about someone stealing their idea. I think this is flawed logic; if your idea is simple enough that someone can easily steal it and do it better than you, you probably weren’t meant to do it in the first place.

For most successful businesses, the competitive advantage isn’t the idea anyway, its the execution. Good ideas grow on trees, people with the agency to turn them into scalable, profitable ventures are rare. It’s about building the right team, executing on an effective sales process, shipping good products, and some luck along the way.

Speaking of luck, luck is a function of where you are and who you’re connected with. To be lucky you must maximize your surface area of opportunity by putting yourself out there and connecting with as many ppl as you can.

This is why stealth startups are dumb, you should build in public. The effective increase in luck outweighs the risk of someone stealing your idea by a long shot. I’ve scaled a few businesses now with this mindset, and I’ve seen many businesses that never got off the ground bc the founders were too scared to put themselves out into the world.

So fundamentally I believe in building in public. Sharing your ideas and your secrets with other people. There’s reciprocity in this, there is virtue in this (and it’s just more fun). Ultimately it’s how I’ve learned pretty much everything about running a business, from others willing to share.

About a year ago I figured I should put my money where my mouth is here. Since then I’ve written two dozen how-to guides outlining exactly how I think about various important things at our startup. Here are a few to get you started:

Hopefully one or two of these might be helpful - if you find value in one of them I’d love to know which one. There will inevitably be more topics I’d like to cover as I work on figuring them out for myself. Some of these existing ones already may be due for an update. I’ll plan to treat this blog as a living document to make updates and additions as I can in the future.

For now - keep building, keep trying, keep sharing. I believe you get what you give; the more you can share the more karma will find it’s way back to you.

Peace,
Ramsey