Essay · ~10 min read

The Increasing Risk of Building in Public

Arvid Kahl · The Bootstrapped Founder Free Beginner

Arvid Kahl built and sold a company on radical transparency, sharing his real revenue numbers publicly, so this is not a hater's take: it is someone who benefited from building in public now weighing the honest downside. He gives you the actual tradeoff, that the growth and trust are real but AI has lowered the cost of cloning what you expose. It is a starting point for deciding what to share, not a rule that you must or must not build in public.

• Building in public genuinely creates early trust, accountability, and an audience, and Kahl is candid that it worked for him.
• The copy risk is real and has grown: someone can now feed your public posts and product to an AI and rebuild the surface fast, so treat specifics as exposure.
• Use the filter 'interesting to participate in, not easy to clone': share the journey and the why, hold back the exact playbook and metrics that only help a copier.