You don't need a company, thousands of followers or a massive audience to build in public.
At its simplest, building in public means documenting the process of creating something while you're creating it.
That something could be almost anything — a startup, an app, a YouTube channel, a game, a design portfolio, a business, a fitness goal, or a skill you're learning. The important part isn't the size of the project. It's the documentation.
Why people build in public
There are several reasons people choose to document their progress.
The first is accountability. When you publicly say you're working toward something, it becomes slightly harder to quietly abandon it.
The second is community. Someone who is working on the same type of project might discover your progress and offer advice, feedback or collaboration.
The third is learning. Explaining what you're doing forces you to understand it better.
And finally, there's the record itself. Six months later, you can look back and see exactly how far you've come.
You don't need to pretend everything is going well
One of the biggest misconceptions about building in public is that you have to constantly post impressive updates. You don't.
A useful update might be:
- "I spent three hours trying to fix this and got nowhere."
- "I completely changed the design because the original idea wasn't working."
- "I finally figured out something I've been stuck on for a week."
Those updates can be more interesting than a polished announcement because they show the actual journey.
The internet is full of finished products
We're used to seeing things after they've already worked. The startup after it gets funding. The creator after they become successful. The developer after the application launches.
But nobody starts there. Every finished project has an earlier version that was smaller, uglier and less certain.
Building in public makes those earlier versions visible.
Why Lore exists
Lore of Ambition is being built around this philosophy. Instead of making another platform primarily focused on polished outcomes, Lore is intended to give builders a place to document what they're working on, connect with other people doing the same, and gradually build a record of their progress.
Because your project doesn't suddenly become meaningful when it succeeds. The work that got you there was part of the story too.