Build in public examples: real pages with live numbers

The best way to understand building in public is to look at people doing it. The problem with most "build in public examples" roundups: they're screenshots — numbers frozen at whatever flattering moment the author captured. Six months later, half the projects are dead and the post can't tell you which half.

Live pages fix that. On Discover you can browse indie projects building in public with numbers that update themselves — real MRR, uptime, GitHub stars, and shipping activity, pulled from the actual sources and ranked by the community. If a project is listed as growing, it's growing now, not in a screenshot from March.

What the good ones have in common

Browsing live pages, the patterns that separate useful build-in-public pages from vanity pages:

They show trade-offs, not just wins. A page with revenue and uptime and error tracking says "this is the whole picture." A page showing only the best metric says "this is marketing."

The numbers are verifiable. Metrics wired to GitHub, a payment provider, or an uptime monitor carry weight that self-reported numbers don't. Third-party data is the closest thing to proof.

They're selectively honest. Almost nobody shares everything. The good pages pick which metrics are public deliberately — revenue as a growth rate, users as a trend — and it reads as considered, not evasive.

They stay current without effort. Pages that require manual updates die. The ones still alive after a year are wired to their sources.

Use them as a template

If you're starting out, steal the structure: pick three or four signals (dev activity, uptime, usage, revenue — in whatever combination you're comfortable making public), put them on one page, and link that page from everywhere you post. The step-by-step guide covers the sequence, and the full building-in-public guide covers what to share and what to keep private.

And when your page is live — claim your spot on Discover and become one of the examples.