[nicbou]

I build in public, but I never share numbers. I find that it attracts the wrong sort of people, and a particularly boring kind of conversation about money and growth and the icky business-y bits.

I do work with the garage door open though. I share screenshots, ask for feedback, and show off the little details I spent a lot of time on. It’s basically a DVD commentary for the stuff I am about to release

This attracts the right kind of people, and sparks the right kinds of conversations. I am basically involving fellow builders in my design process, and hyping what I am working on to my audience and industry peers. It is a good way to make friends.

[kelnos]

This is the thing that was weird to me about the article: it seemed to focus very heavily on the idea of sharing financial details. To me, that's not "building" in public. That's just... sharing your finances. Building in public is sharing all little details about your product development process that most outsiders would never know or hear about otherwise. It's about sharing the dead ends that never saw the light of day, about sharing the roadblocks that made it difficult to get a feature or even whole product done. It's about sharing how collaboration happens and decisions are made.

This focus on finance is distasteful to me. Not in the "it's a taboo subject" sense, but it just feels like focusing on the wrong thing.

I really like your phrase, "work with the garage door open".

[johnnyanmac]

I'm ambivalent. Especially in my domain of games where sharing the financial breakdown can indeed help those "wrong" kind of people realize how little money there is in non-AAA games once all the cuts come in.

So instead they make up shaky heuristics, see reviews and wishlists and must think "wow that game made a lot of money"... missing important context on how much was spent on labor/profit splits, or the area the team is in. Which muddies discussion on what a "successful" game even is (a topic already muddy even with all context).

BUT, then again the tides have shifted so much in that people just take a "should have" approach. "you shouldn't have done it in X genre. You shouldn't have used Y software. Your game sucks so it obviously failed". So maybe bringing up any finances will always attract that crowd, not cause them to look into another place to make money.

[ozim]

There is a lot of that just like people think opening pizza place is a great business - if they look only cost of wheat and water, cheese; it sounds like god knows what margins are there, $1 ingredients and sell for $20. In reality margins are much lower and if you don’t have a good spot you probably will loose money.

[crabmusket]

My take: the valuable parts of "building in public" are actually "learning in public" per https://www.swyx.io/learn-in-public

The stuff in the OP is mainly just marketing/trends driven by social media platforms which has grown under the brand of "building in public".

"Working with the garage door open" is a great phrase.