The conventional wisdom is that you should keep your ideas secret until launch. The fear: someone will steal your idea. The reality: ideas are cheap, execution is rare, and the people most likely to see your work are potential users and collaborators, not competitors.
Feedback Before You Finish
Sharing work in progress forces you to articulate what you're building and why, before you're too close to see it clearly. Early feedback is cheaper to act on than post-launch feedback. The friction of explaining your work to an outside audience is the same friction your users will face.
Building an Audience as a By-product
People follow journeys, not products. A launch is a moment — a build is a story. When you document the process, the struggles, and the decisions, you create content that compounds. By the time you ship, there are people already rooting for you.
What to Share and What to Keep
Share the process, the problems, and the progress. Keep proprietary business logic and sensitive data private. The goal is authenticity, not oversharing. A weekly update — what you built, what broke, what you learned — is enough to build a genuine following.