Founder Playbook · The Bootstrapped Founder
10 tactics from Kevon Cheung
Kevon Cheung — Embracing Vulnerability in Startup Culture
Watch the full episode“building in public is it's a long-term thing like you cannot just hope the result will come in six months even six months is quite short I myself made zerar in the first six months um even though that was intentional but it's still kind of prove that in order to build a business around this with the building public strategy like building a personal brand it it takes time and I realize like I observe a lot of people the people who rush to the dollar they will never make it”
Building in public requires a financial cushion and a 6+ month patience window
Treat "build in public → monetize" as a 12-24 month bet, not a quarterly play. Kevon made $0 in the first 6 months on purpose. Founders who rush to monetize burn the audience's trust — and audiences can sense when you're there to extract instead of help. Before you start, calculate how many months your savings give you and treat that as your validation runway. If you can't fund 6-12 months of zero income, get autonomy in a day job first while you build.
“at six Monon Mark she came to me she's like cavon when are you going to start charging people and I was like oh I woke up at that moment... a student or member whatever you call them uh in my program and then couple days ago she sent a message to me she's like Kavon like of all the value that you create you're charging like penis you're not charging enough”
Have an outside partner who pushes you to charge more — creators self-limit prices
Solo creators systematically under-price because they're inside their own work. Arvid's partner Danielle doubled his product prices with no drop in volume; Kevon's wife Lydia forced him to start charging at month 6; later a student told him directly he was undercharging. Designate one specific person — spouse, customer-advisor, mastermind buddy — whose job is to audit your pricing twice a year and tell you the uncomfortable answer. Without that voice, your prices stay low forever.
“you shouldn't be creating a course up front as your first project like creating a course the people who want to take a course usually are quite quiet... so imagine that's your first product you're not optimizing for feedback or for insights or signals that's pretty bad but I keep telling people hey do a live Workshop do a challenge that's the kind of product that bring people next to you”
Don't make a course your first paid product — start with workshop or challenge
Courses are silent buyers — they pay, consume, and rarely tell you what worked or what didn't. Terrible feedback signal for your first product. Start with a live workshop or a 30-day challenge instead: both formats put paying customers directly in your DMs, asking questions, surfacing confusion, and showing you exactly what to put in the eventual self-serve course. Build the course as v3 of your offering, not v1.
“I actually started with a building public community... after four months I shut it down... maybe I can do a challenge... maybe I can try teaching so if a community for building in public didn't work maybe I should really just break things down and walk people through how to actually do it but I didn't jump into course creation I did a challenge first... I went into uh live teaching so a cohort-based course... and only recently I was thinking maybe it's time to switch”
Iterate your product format toward what fits the creator, not what's popular
Kevon's sequence: pure community ($5/month, killed at month 4) → 30-day challenge → live cohort course → interactive video lessons → video+challenge hybrid. Each iteration kept what worked and replaced what didn't. Don't commit to a single product format because it's the "right" creator-economy answer. Audit every 4-6 months: what feels like a slog for you (kill), what energizes you (double down), what do students consistently get stuck on (replace).
“I did that for like almost two years and only recently I was thinking maybe it's time to switch because me showing up and do the teaching four times a year in the same format I don't think that's a good use of my time so I switched to using a very interactive way to do video lessons”
Stop repeating cohorts — they're for discovery, not delivery
After 2 years and 8+ cohorts of the same material, Kevon switched to interactive video. The pattern: cohorts are great for discovering what your students need (questions, confusion, gaps) but they're a bad long-term delivery model — you're paid hourly while teaching the same curriculum repeatedly. Use 2-3 cohorts to surface the canonical content, then codify into self-serve video, then layer interactivity (Loom comments, community posts, embedded challenges) on top.
“I think people really get fixated in you have to talk about what is done but I teach them to talk about what is coming so like oh I think about why do people care so much about follower account I don't know so you want to write about that but you don't know okay now you ask the community... if you take their feedback you improve your product and then you tell people I use your feedback this is the newer version that is building in public because it creates a loop of conversations”
Build in public means sharing what's coming, not just what's done
Default "build in public" content is recapping work already shipped — boring, low-signal, no relationship. Real building-in-public is the loop: share what's coming next → ask the community a real question → publicly use a piece of their feedback → ship the better version. Each loop converts followers into invested co-creators. Posting MRR charts doesn't do this; asking "should v2 have feature X or Y?" does.
“you set a time frame 30 days 60 days and you set the scope like um maybe not the full course but maybe just the module one or module two... so then you build in public intensively in order to build up the momentum and not just like sh keep sharing your updates that's kind of boring... people love seeing someone start to finish like they they they just want to see is he going to pass the finish line”
Run a 30-60 day building-in-public Sprint with start and end dates
Vague "I'm building in public" with no time bound produces vague results. Pick a scoped deliverable (one module of the course, one feature of the SaaS, a 30-day mini-product) and announce explicit start and end dates publicly. The finish line is your accountability mechanism and the audience's narrative hook — they want to see whether you cross it. Failed sprints still teach you (and your students) what to do next; ambient long-running posting teaches no one anything.
“if you are an expert in something like uh a researcher or someone just with a deep knowledge in a topic these people have a hard time because the thing of lowering your ego thinking that you don't know everything and then asking people for their insights and questions it's just out of their world it's like I know everything about this topic why do I need to ask them question”
Experts who can't lower their ego can't build in public — period
The single non-fixable blocker to building in public is the "I'm the expert, why would I ask?" reflex. The whole loop (ask community → take feedback → ship improvement → credit the community) requires admitting publicly that you don't already know everything. Researchers, senior executives, and 20-year operators struggle with this most. If you catch yourself drafting posts without a single question in them, you're posting at people, not building with them.
“4020 2020 like 40% building public because we want eyeballs on our project so yeah just talk about what you're doing 20% wisdom bomb you know those like short reposable wisdom like an expert that's okay we need that kind of to drive growth 20% supporting others I think a lot of people are doing very well in that but it's not just about you and then the last 20% is personality like not not talk about everything you like but pick three things you care in your personal life”
Use the 40/20/20/20 content mix — work / wisdom / others / personality
Concrete content mix for a founder-led personal platform: 40% your active building work (asks, updates, decisions), 20% standalone wisdom/insight posts that travel, 20% supporting and amplifying other people, 20% personality — pick exactly 3 personal-life topics you actually care about (family, pets, a hobby) and let those recur. The 80% non-personal mix builds authority; the 20% personality makes you a person worth following.
“I put more of my family life on Instagram like on Instagram I don't build in public... so on Twitter I keep it very light so once in a while so this way you know I'm very professional on my Twitter presence and I would mention my Instagram account in my newsletter... a lot of people talk about like bringing people from platform to a platform... I don't believe in that you know we we have our own interests and you don't have to force people to follow you everywhere”
Match content to platform purpose — don't force followers across channels
Different platforms collect audiences with different expectations. Use Twitter for the professional craft work, Instagram for the family/personal layer, and a newsletter to bridge them with deeper writes. Don't force every follower to follow you everywhere — the people who want your full self will opt-in to the deeper channels; the people who only want the work won't feel pestered. The newsletter is the only platform you actually own and the right home for the bridge.