The Open-Source Entrepreneur: Why Solving Problems in Public Creates More Value Than Your Actual Product

Remember when we all thought the path to success was jealously guarding our "brilliant" ideas like dragons hoarding gold? Then we'd emerge triumphantly from our caves after months of secrecy with The Perfect Product™, only to discover nobody actually wanted the bloody thing. (Just me? Well, this is awkward.)

The truth is, I've spent more time protecting ideas that weren't worth stealing than I have building things people actually needed. And after watching my own business implode—partly because I was too busy being clever in private rather than useful in public—I've become an unwilling convert to a different approach.

Teaching what you know while you build isn't just content marketing. It's the difference between being the forgettable founder who disappeared or the one whose name people still mention years later—even if your company didn't make it. Let's explore why solving problems in public might be the most valuable asset you'll ever build.

The Counterintuitive Power of Intellectual Nakedness

Most founders treat knowledge like currency—something to be hoarded, protected, and only spent when absolutely necessary. We're terrified someone will steal our precious insights and beat us to market. But here's the uncomfortable truth: your ideas, in isolation, are virtually worthless.

Teaching while building—what I've come to call the "Teaching Stack" approach—flips this paranoid mindset on its head. By documenting your journey, explaining your decisions, and sharing your hard-won knowledge, you're not depleting your value. You're compounding it.

Having burned through capital trying to perfect a product nobody understood, I now realise that articulating your thinking is where the real leverage exists. When you solve problems in public through strategic content creation, you're simultaneously building something remarkable: with over 31.7 million blogs in the US alone, the competition for attention is fierce, but consistent, niche-focused content that genuinely solves problems cuts through the noise.

• Building an audience that feels personally invested in your success
• Creating a feedback loop that improves your thinking
• Establishing authority that transcends your current venture
• Developing intellectual capital that survives even if your business doesn't
• Attracting opportunities, talent and investors who value your approach, not just your product

This isn't just theoretical. After my business collapsed, the only thing that maintained my relevance wasn't the product I'd built—it was the thinking I'd shared along the way. The people who remembered me weren't customers; they were readers.

From Founder to Authority: The Reputation Hedge

Let's be brutally honest: most businesses fail. The statistics are grim enough that we should all have a backup plan. Building in public creates what I call a "reputation hedge"—an asset that retains its value even if your company tanks.

When you document your journey through newsletters, social media threads, or blog posts, you're essentially creating a portfolio of your thinking. This portfolio becomes increasingly valuable as it grows, regardless of whether your current venture succeeds.

The teaching stack approach means systematically converting your daily work into shareable insights. It's taking the problems you're solving anyway and transforming them into content that demonstrates your expertise.

But here's where most get it wrong: this isn't about crafting a carefully curated highlight reel. It's about the messy, unvarnished truth of building. The failures. The pivots. The moments when you haven't the foggiest idea what you're doing.

Paradoxically, these vulnerable moments build more authority than any polished success story ever could. Why? Because they're relatable. They're authentic. And most importantly, they're educational in a way that success stories rarely are. The science backs this up: word-of-mouth marketing research shows that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising, and authentic, vulnerable content creates that same trust-based dynamic at scale.

The Teaching Stack Framework: How to Actually Do This

After learning this lesson the hard way (isn't that always how the important ones come?), I've developed a framework for implementing what I call the Teaching Stack. It's not rocket science, but it does require a shift in mindset from "protect at all costs" to "share systematically".

Here's how to build your own Teaching Stack:

• Document decisions, not just outcomes — explain why you chose certain paths over others
• Translate technical challenges into accessible narratives that demonstrate your thinking
• Create frameworks from your processes that others can apply to their own problems
• Extract principles from failures that transform mistakes into valuable lessons
• Package insights into easily digestible formats (newsletters, threads, videos) that showcase your unique perspective

The beauty of this approach is that it transforms the everyday work you're already doing into content that builds your authority. It's not an additional task; it's simply changing how you process and share what you're already thinking about.

When I look back at my defunct homeware business, I realise my biggest mistake wasn't product-market fit or even cash flow management (though those were spectacularly bad as well). It was failing to document and share the journey in a way that would have created lasting value beyond the products themselves.

The Virtuous Cycle: How Teaching Creates Unfair Advantages

Teaching what you know while building creates a virtuous cycle that accelerates everything else you're trying to achieve. When you share valuable insights consistently, several powerful things happen:

First, you develop what I call "borrowed authority"—people begin to associate you with the problems you solve, not just the products you sell. This association becomes incredibly valuable when launching new initiatives or pivoting existing ones.

Second, you attract a different calibre of people. Customers who come to you through your teaching are pre-qualified in ways that traditional marketing can't achieve. They understand your approach, value your thinking, and are primed to see your solutions as the logical extension of your expertise. This matters tremendously when you consider that customer retention research shows 80% of a firm's future profits derive from just 20% of existing customers, and repeat customers spend 67% more over time.

Third, and perhaps most valuable, teaching forces you to clarify your own thinking. There's no better way to identify gaps in your understanding than trying to explain something to someone else. As Richard Feynman famously noted, if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

When cash flow issues were strangling my business, I was too embarrassed to write about it. Looking back, that was precisely when I should have been documenting everything I was learning. Not only would it have helped others, but it would have forced me to confront problems I was avoiding and potentially saved the business.

Implementing Your Teaching Stack Without Losing Your Mind

At this point, you might be thinking: "Brilliant. Another thing to add to my already impossible to-do list." I get it. The last thing founders need is another demanding habit that takes time away from actually building the business.

But that's precisely where most people misunderstand the Teaching Stack approach. It's not about creating additional work—it's about extracting value from the work you're already doing.

Here's how to implement this without adding significant time burdens:

• Spend 15 minutes at the end of each day capturing one insight or decision in a note-taking app
• Set aside 60-90 minutes weekly to transform these notes into one piece of content
• Create templates for different content types (case studies, how-to guides, decision frameworks) to streamline production
• Repurpose single insights across multiple platforms rather than creating unique content for each
• Build content creation into your product development process, not as a separate marketing function

The key is consistency over perfection. A steady stream of honest, thoughtful content builds more authority than sporadic, polished masterpieces. And remember: teaching doesn't just build your audience—it builds your company's thinking muscles.

After watching my own business collapse, I've realised that the companies that survive aren't necessarily those with the best products or the most funding. They're the ones that learn fastest. And nothing accelerates learning like teaching.

The Legacy Beyond the Product: Why Your Teaching Stack Might Outlast Your Company

Here's a sobering thought: the company you're pouring your life into right now has a statistical likelihood of failure. Not because you're not brilliant or dedicated, but because that's the reality of entrepreneurship. Most ventures don't make it.

But your insights, your approach to problems, your unique perspective—these can transcend any single business. When you build a Teaching Stack alongside your product stack, you're creating something that can survive even if your company doesn't.

I've seen founders whose companies folded years ago who still command respect, attention, and opportunities because of the thinking they shared during their building process. Their products may have disappeared, but their authority remains intact.

This isn't just about having a backup plan. It's about recognising that in an age where products become commoditized almost instantly, your thinking may be the only truly defensible asset you have. The data supports this: multi-channel marketing research shows that using 2+ marketing channels can increase engagement by 166% compared to single-channel campaigns, and 72% of people prefer brands that use multiple content channels.

The teaching stack approach creates a body of work that serves as both your company's marketing engine and your personal intellectual portfolio. It's the rare business asset that you can take with you, regardless of what happens to your current venture.

And here's the greatest irony: the founders most afraid to share their insights are often the ones who need this approach the most. The more precarious your business, the more valuable your teaching stack becomes.

From Consumer to Creator: The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Implementing a teaching stack requires a fundamental shift in how you view your role as a founder. You must transition from being primarily a consumer of knowledge to being a creator and distributor of it.

This shift isn't just philosophical—it's practical. When you wake up thinking "what can I learn today?" you're in consumer mode. When you wake up thinking "what can I clarify and share today?" you're in creator mode.

The most successful teaching founders I know have developed habits that support this creator mindset:

• They treat insights as products, giving them the same attention to packaging and distribution
• They view documentation as a core business function, not an occasional marketing activity
• They separate signal from noise, focusing on principles that transfer rather than contextual details
• They prioritise usefulness over impressiveness, choosing clarity over cleverness every time
• They build in feedback mechanisms to refine their thinking based on audience response

This creator mindset doesn't just build authority—it fundamentally changes how you approach problems. You begin to see challenges not just as obstacles to overcome but as opportunities to develop intellectual property that serves both your business and your audience.

When my own business was struggling, I was consuming information voraciously, desperately searching for solutions. What I should have been doing was documenting and sharing what I was learning through that process. The very act of articulating the problems might have led to solutions I couldn't see when everything remained locked in my head.

The teaching stack isn't just content marketing. It's a fundamental reorientation of how you process information and create value. It's recognising that in an information economy, your ability to make sense of complex problems in public may be more valuable than the products you build to solve them. This approach aligns perfectly with problem-first content strategies that focus on solving customer pain points to build authentic authority and following.

When you solve problems in public, you're not just building an audience—you're building a thinking machine that improves with every iteration. You're creating a system that generates both attention and insight, the two scarcest resources in business today.

Here's the final, uncomfortable truth: your product isn't your most valuable creation. Your thinking is. And the sooner you start treating it with the same care and attention as your codebase or your supply chain, the sooner you'll build the kind of authority that transcends any single business venture.

Because at the end of the day, products come and go. Markets shift. Technologies evolve. But clear thinking, generously shared, creates value that compounds over time. It's the one investment that never depreciates, regardless of market conditions.

Your teaching stack might just be the most valuable thing you build. And unlike your product, nobody can copy, compete with, or commoditize the unique way you make sense of the world. That, more than anything else, is your true unfair advantage.