Building in Public — The Cons people don’t talk about
Everyone’s talking about building in public here and there, which is super amazing right?, no one is talking about the Cons/Side effect of it.
This in no means a way to discourage anyone from building publicly
1st Jan 2022, 12:05 am to be precise(yeah I purposefully penned that down), I told myself from now on I am going to build my ideas Publicly no matter the problems I face along the way.
Hahaha to be honest if I had the power to go back to that day I would pinch myself not to make such a promise. Why??
1. You are being monitored
The moment you hit the send button on your phone publicly informing your followers and maybe everyone online, you are being monitored.
Every milestone, drawback, procrastination are being seen literally.
I mean I can be a stoned procrastinator(I procrastinate having breakfast sometimes). making the feeling of being monitored on what I am currently working on, the next steps, and my progress was overwhelming for me.
Yeah, you might be saying it's a good thing, it keeps on in check and dissolves the problem of procrastination. You are 100% correct but as an introvert knowing my next step is being watched can be uncomfortable sometimes.
2. Risk of sharing too much
100% transparency is one of the core values when building publicly, You have to explain publicly why and how you are taking a particular.
And then someone takes all your knowledge gracefully shared and builds a competitor out of it. (Competitors are good but not when it's from your idea).
A healthy might be sharing only valuable information and not all your data, but duhhhh I talk a lot and intend to share every little detail.
3. No one Might be interested
Now, this is very painful trust me.
One time I had this crazy idea for an awesome backpack design called (Superbacko). It’s basically a backpack consisting of different superheroes themes eg batman, superman, etc. But instead of opening it manually, it works through voice command.
I mentioned this to a few friends about building a prototype before pitching it to manufacturers for mass production. I was so pumped about kicking off and I made some designs and shared them online. Guess what. No one showed concern
It was so disheartening because I made about 5–7 different posts mentioned looking for collaborators and all and no one was interested.
I humbly deleted the announcements and scrapped the idea from the internet.
Yeah yeah, according to motivational speakers, “Keep going even when no one cares about you” but I was young and new into certain stuff so this was a heart breaker for me.
4. Constructive and Destructive Criticism
Lastly, It's the 21st Century everyone has a say on your idea and how you should do it. One way or the day we have received feedback or criticism from our friends, neighbors, or family. But the world online can be very harsh when criticizing people.
If you want to build in public, you have to be able to withstand some level of public Criticism. Some may hurt (really really hurt) but you must build a wall of self-confidence to overcome it.
Although you can mostly brush it off, it is jolting at the start when what you thought was a great idea becomes weaponized.
It's 2022 baby Lets buiiiiilllllddddd 🔥
