Pieter Levels makes over $3 million per year running multiple products as a solo founder.1 No employees. No investors. No massive marketing budget.

His approach: build everything in public. Share revenue, share failures, share the process. Let people watch as you create.

This isn’t just transparency for its own sake. Building in public creates marketing, accountability, feedback loops, and trust—simultaneously. Pieter has proven the model works across Nomad List, Remote OK, Photo AI, and a dozen other products.

This guide breaks down the framework he’s developed over a decade of building publicly.

What Is “Building In Public”?

Building in public means sharing your work process openly as you create. You document the journey, not just the destination.

What it includes:

  • Sharing revenue numbers (monthly, annually)
  • Posting progress updates as you build
  • Discussing technical decisions and tradeoffs
  • Acknowledging mistakes and failures
  • Showing what you’re working on next

What it is NOT:

  • Bragging or humble-bragging about success
  • Faking results for appearances
  • Sharing absolutely everything (some things stay private)
  • A replacement for building something valuable

The building comes first. The public part amplifies what you build.

Why Building In Public Works

Psychological Principles

Social proof: When others see you consistently shipping, working through problems, and generating revenue, they believe your product is real and worth their attention.

Reciprocity: Sharing useful information freely creates goodwill. People want to help those who help them.

Familiarity: Repeated exposure builds trust. Following someone’s journey for months creates a relationship that a landing page never could.

Story arc: Humans follow journeys, not products. A founder struggling, iterating, and eventually succeeding is compelling. A static marketing page is forgettable.

Business Benefits

Accountability: Public commitment drives action. When you announce you’re launching next week, you launch next week.

Feedback loops: Get input while you’re building, not after you’ve invested months. Your audience tells you what’s broken before it costs you customers.

Marketing: Every update is content. Every tweet showing progress is marketing that costs nothing and builds authentic connection.

Community: Attract people who share your values. The people who follow your journey become early adopters, advocates, and sometimes collaborators.

Trust: Transparency creates credibility in ways that polished marketing cannot match.

Pieter’s Core Philosophy

“The first version of anything always sucks. It should. But then, with iteration, it becomes something.”

This mindset underpins everything. Launch ugly. Improve publicly. Let users shape what you build. Speed beats perfection.

The Build In Public Framework

Stage 1: Scratch Your Own Itch

Build something that solves a problem you personally have.

Pieter built Nomad List because he was a digital nomad who needed information about cities for remote work.2 He built Photo AI because he needed professional headshots and found the traditional process expensive and slow.

Authenticity cannot be faked. When you solve your own problem, you understand the user deeply because you are the user.

Why this matters:

  • You know the problem intimately
  • You can validate quickly (does it work for you?)
  • Your passion sustains you through difficulties
  • Your domain expertise is a competitive advantage

Action: List five problems you personally experience regularly. Which one bothers you most? Which one would you pay to solve?

Stage 2: Build the Minimum Viable Product

Pieter’s MVPs are intentionally ugly. They contain just enough functionality to test whether the idea works.

He builds in days or weeks, not months. No elaborate frameworks. No over-engineering. Just enough to get something in front of users.

Pieter’s typical tech stack:3

  • PHP and jQuery (no frontend frameworks)
  • SQLite for databases (not PostgreSQL or MySQL)
  • Single VPS hosting
  • Plain CSS, no design systems

This simplicity is strategic. It enables speed. You can build and launch before competitors finish their planning documents.

Action: What’s the smallest version of your idea that tests the core assumption? Can you build it in two weeks?

Stage 3: Launch Fast, Launch Often

Don’t wait for perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist, and waiting costs you time and feedback.

Pieter famously attempted “12 startups in 12 months”—launching a new product every month to see what stuck.4 Most failed. A few succeeded spectacularly. The failures taught him as much as the successes.

Launch platforms:

  • Product Hunt (product launches)
  • Hacker News (technical audience)
  • Twitter/X (your followers)
  • Indie Hackers (maker community)
  • Reddit (relevant subreddits)

Each launch is marketing. Each launch is learning. Even failed launches build your audience and sharpen your skills.

Action: Set a launch date. Make it sooner than you’re comfortable with.

Stage 4: Share Everything

Revenue numbers. User counts. Technical decisions. Mistakes. Failures. What you’re working on next.

What Pieter shares publicly:

  • Monthly and annual revenue (with screenshots)
  • User growth charts over time
  • Feature announcements and rationale
  • Technical challenges and how he solved them
  • Behind-the-scenes of development process
  • Things that didn’t work

The transparency builds trust and creates content simultaneously. Followers learn from your journey while developing connection to your success.

Stage 5: Iterate Based on Feedback

Users tell you what to build if you listen. Building in public means your feedback loop is public too.

How this works:

  • Share what you’re considering building
  • Users respond with what they actually need
  • Build what they ask for (when it aligns with your vision)
  • Share that you built it because they asked
  • Repeat

Public roadmaps, visible responses to feedback, and shipping features users requested creates powerful loyalty. People feel ownership in products they helped shape.

Stage 6: Side Project Marketing

Build small related projects that drive traffic to your main product.

Pieter created Hoodmaps (a crowd-sourced city neighborhoods map) which drove traffic to Nomad List. The side project was interesting on its own, got press coverage, and funneled users to his primary business.

Criteria for side projects:

  • Related to your main product’s audience
  • Interesting enough to get attention independently
  • Quick to build (days, not months)
  • Links naturally to your core offering

Where to Build In Public

Twitter/X (Primary Platform)

Pieter built his audience primarily on Twitter, growing to over 400,000 followers by consistently sharing his building process.

What works on Twitter:

  • Quick updates with screenshots
  • Revenue shares (monthly updates)
  • Technical decisions and rationale
  • Engagement with community responses
  • Thread format for longer updates

Best practices:

  • Post consistently (daily or near-daily during active building)
  • Include visuals (screenshots, charts, graphs)
  • Engage with replies—don’t just broadcast
  • Share both wins and struggles

Indie Hackers

A community specifically for indie makers. Product pages let you track revenue publicly. The forum provides feedback and support.

Use Indie Hackers for:

  • Detailed product pages with metrics
  • Monthly or quarterly updates
  • Asking for feedback on specific challenges
  • Connecting with similar builders

Personal Blog

Long-form content has SEO benefits and lets you own your content (unlike social platforms).

Blog content:

  • Technical deep dives
  • Lessons learned from launches
  • Annual retrospectives
  • Detailed case studies

Newsletter

Direct line to your audience that doesn’t depend on algorithmic reach.

Newsletter content:

  • Monthly updates on progress
  • Launch announcements
  • Exclusive insights not shared elsewhere
  • Build an asset you control

What to Share (And What Not To)

Share

  • Revenue numbers (MRR, ARR, revenue milestones)
  • User and customer counts
  • Growth metrics and trajectories
  • Technical stack and architecture decisions
  • Feature releases and upcoming plans
  • Mistakes and what you learned
  • Time spent on various features
  • Pricing decisions and rationale

Keep Private

  • Specific customer data or identifying information
  • Security vulnerabilities (until fixed)
  • Unannounced major pivots (until ready)
  • Personal financial details beyond the business
  • Competitive intelligence you’ve gathered
  • Contractual or legal details

The line: share your journey, protect your users and business operations.

Building In Public: The Pieter Levels Principles

Speed Over Perfection

Ship in days, not months. “Done is better than perfect.” The market provides feedback faster and more accurately than your internal planning.

Pieter launched Photo AI within approximately two months of starting development. It was profitable within 48 hours of launch.5

Simplicity Over Complexity

No frameworks when jQuery works. SQLite instead of complex database clusters. Single server instead of microservices.

Complexity slows you down and increases failure points. Simple systems are easier to build, debug, and maintain solo.

Solve Your Own Problems

Every successful Pieter Levels product started from his own needs. Nomad List came from needing city information as a digital nomad. Remote OK came from wanting to find remote jobs. Photo AI came from needing professional photos.

Authenticity drives product-market fit because you know the user—you are the user.

Revenue Over Vanity Metrics

Followers don’t pay bills. Focus on paying customers, not audience size. Share revenue, not just user counts.

Profit matters more than growth rate. A small profitable business beats a large unprofitable one.

Iteration Over Planning

Launch first, plan later. Let users guide direction. Kill what doesn’t work quickly.

Plans are guesses. User behavior is data. Bias toward learning from reality over predicting from assumptions.

Common Build In Public Mistakes

All Talk, No Shipping

Building in public is not talking about building. Ship something first. Post about what you’ve done, not what you’re going to do.

Vanity Metrics Focus

Follower counts feel good but don’t generate revenue. Revenue is the metric that matters. A thousand engaged followers who might buy beats a hundred thousand who just scroll past.

Over-Sharing Early

Build something worth sharing before you start sharing. Ideas are worthless; execution matters. “I’m thinking about building X” isn’t interesting. “I built X and here’s what happened” is.

Comparing to Others

Your journey is yours. Pieter’s results came from 10+ years of consistent work. Don’t compare your month three to someone else’s year ten.

Expecting Immediate Results

Nomad List took years to reach its current revenue level. Consistency compounds over time. Building in public is a long game.

Ignoring the “Build” Part

Public without product is just content creation. The building must come first. The public part amplifies good work—it doesn’t create it.

Getting Started: Your First Week

Day 1-2: Commit

Choose your primary platform (Twitter recommended for this audience). Set up your profile clearly stating what you’re building. Make your first post: “I’m building [X] in public. Here’s why…”

Day 3-4: Document Current State

What are you working on? What stage is the project? What’s the next milestone? Share where you are honestly, even if it’s early.

Day 5-7: Establish Rhythm

Post daily or every-other-day updates. Mix progress, learnings, and questions. Engage with similar builders. Respond to comments on your posts.

The habit matters more than perfection. Consistency builds audience and accountability.

Case Study: Photo AI Launch

Timeline: Built in approximately two months Launch: February 2023 Result: Profitable within 48 hours of launch Current: Multi-million dollar annual revenue

The process:

  1. Identified personal need (professional photos are expensive)
  2. Built MVP quickly using existing skills
  3. Shared progress publicly on Twitter throughout development
  4. Launched before it felt “ready”
  5. Pivoted from AI avatars to AI headshots based on user feedback
  6. Iterated rapidly based on what users actually paid for

What made it work:

  • Solved a real, painful problem (expensive professional photography)
  • Built with speed over polish
  • Shared everything during development
  • Launched fast, iterated faster
  • Let paying customers guide product direction

Conclusion

Building in public works because it aligns incentives correctly. Transparency creates trust. Shipping creates feedback. Public commitment creates accountability. The audience you build becomes your marketing, support network, and early customer base.

But the building comes first. The “public” part amplifies good work—it doesn’t replace it.

Start small. Ship something. Share what you’re doing. Engage with responses. Iterate based on feedback. Repeat for years.

Pieter Levels built his $3M/year business over a decade of consistent public building. The framework works. The question is whether you’ll show up consistently enough to let it work for you.

Further Reading

References

Footnotes

  1. Levels, Pieter. Revenue shared publicly via Twitter/X and Indie Hackers. Photo AI alone reported $3M+ ARR in 2024. ↩

  2. Levels, Pieter. “How I Build My Minimum Viable Products.” https://levels.io/how-i-build-my-minimum-viable-products/ ↩

  3. Lex Fridman Podcast #440. Pieter discusses his tech stack choices: https://lexfridman.com/pieter-levels/ ↩

  4. Levels, Pieter. “12 Startups in 12 Months.” https://levels.io/12-startups-12-months/ ↩

  5. Greenfeld, Jakob. “What I Learned from Pieter Levels.” https://jakobgreenfeld.com/make-levels - Analysis of Photo AI launch timeline. ↩