EP 01 · The decision to build in public

The first episode is the easiest to write and the hardest to publish. It's the one where I stop being able to pretend I haven't started.

The setup

Trayd has been a private spreadsheet for fourteen months. Two co-founders, three early customers, a thesis we believe in, and a calendar full of work. We are out of the part where the company is a question and into the part where it's an answer that needs proof.

The decision I'm making out loud, here, in episode one: I'm going to write the company down as I build it. Twelve episodes over twelve weeks. Each one shipped on the same day, regardless of how the week went. Especially the weeks where nothing went.

The decision

There's a perfectly rational case against doing this. Public writing is a vector for noise. Customers and investors who watch you stumble in real time form opinions you can't unform. The optimal personal-brand move for an early-stage founder is to ship quietly, win, and then write the deck about how you won.

I'm going to do it anyway, for two reasons.

The first is a discipline reason: I make better decisions when I have to explain them. Not "explain them after the fact in a tidy retrospective" — explain them while they're still wet. The cost of being publicly wrong is what makes me actually think.

The second is a craft reason: the founders I learn most from are the ones who told me what they were doing while they were doing it. Patrick McKenzie, Tobi Lütke, Sahil Lavingia in his first year of Gumroad. I owe those people a tax. I'm going to pay it forward.

What it cost

I had to talk my co-founder into this. He's more cautious than I am, and the conversation took two hours. The deal we made: I write about myself, my decisions, my failures. I don't write about employees, customer specifics, or numbers we haven't shared on our investor updates. The arc is mine to publish; the company is ours to protect.

That's a fair line. It costs the writing some texture. It also keeps it from costing the company anything important.

What's next

EP 02 next Friday. The subject: the first pricing call I had this week, what I did wrong in it, and what I changed before the second one. I have receipts.