Nobody trusts your brand because you're unknown
Share your journey—revenue, mistakes, decisions—publicly. People root for founders who are honest.
When to use
You're early stage and need to build trust and audience from scratch. Works especially well if you're a solo founder.
Hypothesis template
If we publicly share [metrics/journey] on [platform], we'll attract [target audience] because transparency builds trust and curiosity.
Method
The problem: You're a nobody competing against brands people already trust. No amount of marketing copy fixes "who are these people?"
What Buffer did: Published their revenue numbers, salaries, equity formula, and pricing decisions publicly. Joel Gascoigne blogged about everything—including mistakes.
The result: Built a massive audience of founders and marketers before they had a huge product. The transparency itself became their competitive advantage.
Why it works:
- Transparency is rare, so it stands out
- People love following a journey (it's like a TV show)
- Mistakes make you relatable, not weak
- Other founders share your content because it's genuinely useful
How to do it:
- Pick your platform (Twitter/X is fastest, blog is most durable)
- Share one thing weekly: a metric, a decision, a mistake, a win
- Be specific—"We hit $5k MRR" beats "Things are going well"
- Show the messy parts too (failed experiments, tough decisions)
- Engage with everyone who responds
What to share:
- Revenue/user milestones
- What you're building and why
- Experiments you're running and results
- Hiring decisions, pricing changes
- What's NOT working
Key insight: You don't need to be big to build in public. Being small and honest is the whole point.
Success metrics
- •Followers/subscribers gained
- •Inbound signups mentioning your content
- •Engagement rate on posts
- •Domain authority / backlinks from shares
Prerequisites
- Willingness to be transparent
- Consistent posting schedule
- Actual progress to share (even small wins)
Common pitfalls
- •Only sharing wins (feels fake)
- •Inconsistent posting
- •Being vague instead of specific
- •Oversharing personal stuff instead of business insights
Source: Buffer. Built audience through radical transparency.
Suggested ICE scores
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