Cuecoder’s revenue has been public since month one. Not in a founder-flex way — the number is posted and updated, without comment, in the footer of this site. Current MRR: $24,800.
Posting the number forces a kind of discipline that’s hard to manufacture otherwise.
What changes when the work is public
The most obvious change is that you can’t hide behind the roadmap. “We’re working on it” is easy to say when no one can verify. When the commits are public, working on it means actually working on it.
The subtler change is in taste. When you know the work is visible, you make different choices. Not showboat choices — opposite of that. You make tighter choices. You delete more. You ship fewer things, but finish them.
Private work accumulates. Features half-done, systems halfway migrated, documentation that’s been “almost ready” for six months. Public work doesn’t survive accumulation. The exposed surface area is too embarrassing.
On the incident reports
The postmortems are the most uncomfortable part of building in public. The April gateway incident cost 14 minutes of degraded service and, when written up honestly, made the decision-making process look worse than it actually was.
That discomfort is the point. Postmortems written for internal audiences tend toward absolution. Postmortems written for public audiences tend toward precision. Precision is more useful.
On revenue transparency
The MRR number creates a feedback loop with users. When it drops, users notice and ask why. That’s a product conversation that would never have happened behind a closed door.
When it grows, the growth is attributable — to a specific feature, or a specific essay, or a specific outreach. Public growth is better signal than private growth.
What it doesn’t fix
Building in public doesn’t fix execution. Some months the number doesn’t move. Some quarters the roadmap doesn’t ship. Transparency makes these visible but doesn’t solve them.
It also doesn’t fix taste by itself. There are plenty of public builders churning out content and commits without substance. The forcing function is real, but it requires the underlying work to be real first.
Build in public if you would be proud to show the work. Not before.