Build, Teach, Rinse, Repeat: The Counterintuitive Path to Startup Visibility

Let's be honest: you're not actually building a startup. You're building a bloody content machine that happens to sell a product. At least that's how it feels most days, doesn't it? Here you are, trying to code/design/launch/fix/pivot your actual business, and every productivity guru with a LinkedIn account is telling you to "document your journey" as if you've got nothing better to do than film yourself having existential crises at 3 AM. But here's the uncomfortable truth: they're right. And I'm about to tell you why, even though it pains me to admit it.

The Grand Delusion of Stealth Mode

There's something seductive about working in secret, isn't there? That fantasy where you emerge from your coding cave with the perfect product, to thunderous applause and an immediate acquisition offer from Google. I've been there, clutching my ideas close to my chest like they were the last biscuits at a tea party.

After experiencing a business failure that taught me more than my entire formal education, I can tell you with certainty: stealth mode is where good ideas go to die alone. The startup graveyard is full of perfectly engineered products that nobody knew existed.

The "teaching while building" approach isn't just about content marketing—it's an accountability mechanism, a feedback loop, and a customer acquisition strategy disguised as transparency. When you document your process, you're essentially performing market research in public. People will tell you—often unprompted and with brutal honesty—exactly what they think of your direction. And yes, that stings like hell sometimes, but it's better than building in the wrong direction for 18 months.

The Counterintuitive Economics of Giving Away Your Knowledge

There's a persistent myth that sharing your expertise devalues it. "Why would anyone pay for what I'm giving away for free?" This backward thinking nearly crippled my first business. The truth is, the more you teach, the more people recognise your expertise.

Your most valuable insights aren't currency to be hoarded; they're bait. Every time you solve someone's problem for free, you're not losing a potential client—you're proving to thousands of others that you understand their problems deeply enough to solve them.

Think of it this way: Gordon Ramsay has published dozens of cookbooks detailing exactly how he makes his signature dishes. Has this put his restaurants out of business? Of course not. People don't just want the recipe; they want the experience, the execution, the result without the effort. This mirrors what research shows about the power of authentic recommendations—92% of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising, and your transparent content works the same way as trusted word-of-mouth.

The Content Strategy For People Who Hate "Content Creation"

The word "content" makes most founders break out in hives. It conjures images of dancing on TikTok or writing vapid LinkedIn posts about "hustle culture" while using way too many line breaks.

But "teaching while building" isn't about becoming an influencer. It's about narrating the problem-solving process that you're already doing. You're not creating content; you're extracting it from the work that's already happening. With over 31.7 million blogs existing in the US alone, the key isn't adding to the noise—it's finding your unique voice in the documentation process.

Here's how to do it without wanting to crawl into a hole and die:

• Record your problem-solving sessions. Not the polished solution—the messy middle where you're figuring things out. That 20-minute debugging nightmare you just went through? That's content gold.
• Keep a "Today I Learned" document. Every time you overcome an obstacle or discover something useful, write it down in plain language. One paragraph. That's a LinkedIn post.
• Answer questions you get asked repeatedly. If three people have asked you the same thing, thousands more are wondering it. There's your next blog post.
• Share your failures in real-time, not just retrospectively. The "what I learned from my massive failure" posts are a dime a dozen. The "here's what's going wrong right now and what I'm trying" posts are rare and valuable.
• Create templates from your internal processes. That customer onboarding checklist you made for yourself? Clean it up and share it. Instant lead magnet.

After my own business imploded partly due to isolation and not sharing my journey, I've become evangelical about this approach. The most valuable asset isn't your product—it's the documented path you took to build it.

The Three Audiences You're Actually Building For

When you document your journey, you're simultaneously speaking to three distinct audiences, each with their own value to your business:

Future customers who are watching you solve problems in your domain, demonstrating your expertise before they ever need to pay for it. By the time they need your solution, they already trust your approach. Understanding this psychology is crucial—building authentic relationships through problem-solving content creates stronger connections than traditional advertising ever could.

Potential investors who get an unfiltered look at how you think and operate. I've seen founders get funding largely because a VC had been following their build-in-public journey for months and already felt invested in their success.

Future you, who will inevitably hit moments of doubt and need to look back at the progress made. The documented journey becomes a monument to your persistence. Trust me, in the dark tea-time of the soul when you're questioning everything, this archive of progress is worth more than gold.

The Implementation Framework That Actually Works

Here's the brutal truth about why most founders fail at the "teaching while building" approach: they try to bolt it on as a separate activity instead of integrating it into their workflow. After burning out from trying to do everything myself in my last venture, I've developed a system that makes documentation nearly automatic:

• Schedule "extraction sessions" twice a week where you review what you've done and pull out the teachable moments. Just 30 minutes, non-negotiable.
• Use the "one in, many out" principle: create one piece of substantive content (like a detailed blog post) that can be atomised into multiple smaller pieces (tweets, short videos, infographics). This approach leverages multi-channel marketing effectiveness, where using 2+ marketing channels can increase engagement by 166% compared to single-channel campaigns.
• Create content templates for recurring formats: "Weekly Build Update," "Problem-Solution Breakdown," "Behind the Metrics," etc. Having a structure eliminates decision fatigue.
• Build a "Insights Bank"—a running document of observations, challenges, and learnings that you can draw from when you're feeling uninspired. Aim to add three items daily.
• Find your documentation style. Not everyone needs to write. You might be better with voice memos, sketches, video walkthroughs, or screenshots with annotations. Consider that 89% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, with 93% of marketers reporting good ROI from video content—the highest rate ever recorded.

Cash flow issues ultimately killed my first business, but what's often overlooked is how isolation amplified the problem. Had I been building in public, I would have caught the warning signs earlier through external feedback, possibly found collaborative solutions, or at minimum, built a supportive community to help weather the storm.

The Psychological Barriers You'll Need to Overcome

Let's talk about the real reason you're not documenting your journey: it's terrifying. It makes you feel vulnerable, exposed, like an imposter waiting to be found out. Welcome to the club. We meet on Tuesdays and there's terrible coffee.

The truth is, the discomfort never fully goes away, but it does transform. What starts as anxiety gradually morphs into an asset—a radar for detecting what's worth sharing. If it makes you nervous to post something, it's probably valuable.

Remember that people don't want polished perfection. They want authentic struggle because that's what they're experiencing too. Your messy middle is their messy middle. Your half-baked solutions are their half-baked solutions. By articulating the challenges you're facing, you're giving language to the problems they haven't been able to name.

After experiencing burnout from trying to maintain a perfect facade with my previous venture, I can tell you the freedom that comes with transparency is worth its weight in venture capital.

The most common objection I hear is: "But what if someone steals my idea?" Let me save you years of therapy: your idea isn't special. Your execution might be. Your insights might be. Your relationship with your audience definitely is. But the idea itself? There are at least 17 other people thinking the same thing right now, and 16 of them won't do anything about it.

The one who documents their journey will win.

When to Start (Hint: Yesterday)

There's a misconception that you should wait until you have something substantial to show before you start documenting. This is precisely backwards. The most compelling content comes from the earliest stages when you're still figuring things out.

Think about it: Would you rather read a case study about how Apple became a trillion-dollar company, or would you rather have access to Steve Jobs' journal from the garage days? The origin story is always more instructive than the empire.

Start with a simple premise: "Here's what I'm trying to build, and why." Then follow it with: "Here's what I tried today, and what happened." That's it. That's the formula. The rest is just iteration. Remember that 80% of a firm's future profits derive from 20% of existing customers—your documented journey becomes the foundation for building those crucial long-term relationships.

Having learned the hard way that systems matter more than willpower, I recommend setting up your documentation tools before you even begin building. Create templates, set reminders, establish the habit before you need it. When you're in the trenches of product development or putting out customer fires, you won't have the bandwidth to design a content strategy from scratch.

Remember: the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. The same applies to documenting your journey.

At the end of the day, building a startup in public isn't just a marketing strategy—it's a survival technique. The founders who share their journey attract the resources, feedback, and support necessary to navigate the inevitable storms. The ones who build in isolation are left to weather those same storms alone. I've tried both approaches. Trust me on this one: the view is better when you're not the only one looking at it.