Learning in Public

June 18, 2025

Last week, I shared my project, Kalen, publicly. I'd been working on it quietly for a while. I even showed it to a few friends privately, but was too afraid to post about it publicly. I felt it wasn't ready for prime time.

The moment I posted, two things happened:

The response was overwhelmingly positive. People were supportive and encouraging.
As people signed up for Kalen, the cracks started to show, and users started to give feedback.

The public launch exposed flaws in my app, but it also launched me into a feedback loop I'd never experienced building solo. I was not just building based on assumptions, but reacting to real usage. I wasn't embarrassed. I was energized and engaged. I wanted to fix things, improve the experience, make it better now that it was out in the world.

I've always known this is how things work. I've built inside teams before. Get something live, test quickly, adapt. But when your name's attached to it, you start holding yourself to a higher (and often unhelpful) standard. You wait. You over-polish. You try to protect yourself from judgment.

But judgment is more valuable than praise. It's feedback: confusion, bugs, friction. That's the good stuff. The feedback I've gotten so far has already shaped what I'm building. It's giving me a clearer sense of what matters. The risk isn't putting something out too soon. The risk is waiting too long and getting silence.

This experience taught me that vulnerability accelerates learning. Even writing this post is part of the same effort to "build in public". I don't usually do that. It feels vulnerable in a way I've avoided. But building in public lets me learn much faster. And for me, learning is the goal. The faster I learn what works and what doesn't or even lessons about the process itself, the faster I can deliver something valuable.

Here's a remix I made for getting this far.