Why I Build in Public

There is a certain comfort in building quietly. You can work on an idea for months, change direction countless times, make mistakes, start again — and nobody needs to know. There is no pressure to explain, no need to defend an unfinished thought, and no need to admit that you were wrong.

But over time, I have come to believe that some things are better built in the open. Not because everything needs an audience, but because writing changes the way you think.

Thinking becomes clearer when it has to be written down

An idea can feel convincing in your head. It becomes something different when you put it into words. Writing forces you to slow down, and it asks simple questions: What do I actually believe? Why do I believe it? What evidence do I have? What might I be missing?

This is one of the reasons I want to write more — not to present finished answers, but to make my thinking visible, first to myself and then to anyone who finds it useful. Some ideas will be incomplete. Some will change. Some will simply turn out to be wrong. That is part of the process.

Building is more interesting than talking about building

Technology is easy to discuss, products are easy to describe, and business ideas are easy to imagine. The difficult part is building something that works. A product has to meet a real user. A system has to survive real traffic. A business has to find a reason for people to pay. An idea has to survive contact with reality.

That is why I want this space to contain not only thoughts, but also the things I am actually building: projects, experiments, architectures, products, decisions, failures — and occasionally, things that work. I don’t want to separate thinking from doing.

The best ideas should eventually become something real.

Public does not mean everything is public

Building in public does not mean sharing everything. Some things should remain private. Some decisions need time before they can be explained. Some unfinished ideas are better protected while they are still fragile. And some parts of life simply don’t belong on the internet.

For me, building in public means sharing the parts that can create value for others: what I have learned, what I am building, how I approach problems, what I believe, what changed my mind, what failed, and what worked. The goal is not exposure. The goal is useful transparency.

Know. Think. Build.

This is the idea behind 知与思 · zhiyu.si.

Know — keep learning, understand how things work, and stay curious. Think — question assumptions, form opinions, and change your mind when the evidence changes. Build — turn ideas into something real: a product, a company, a system, a piece of writing, or simply a better way of doing something.

These three things form a cycle:

Know → Think → Build → Learn again.

Why now?

Because I have accumulated enough experience to have questions worth exploring, but not enough certainty to believe that I already have the answers — and I think that is a good place to start.

I want to document the journey while it is happening, rather than reconstruct it years later. Some of these notes may become useful. Some may become outdated. Some may contradict something I write in the future. That is fine: I would rather have a record of changing my mind than a collection of opinions that never evolved.

A place for the long term

The internet is increasingly optimized for the immediate — short posts, short videos, short opinions, fast reactions. I also want a place for things that take longer: ideas that need several pages, projects that take several months, and questions that may take several years to answer.

That is what I want zhiyu.si to become: a quiet place for long-term thinking and building. Not a résumé, not a media company, and not a collection of personal branding slogans — just a place to leave things that are worth remembering.

One idea at a time

I don’t know exactly what this site will become, and I don’t think I need to. For now, I will write about technology, products, entrepreneurship, investment, and the ideas connecting them. I will share what I learn, document what I build, and try to explain what I believe. When I change my mind, I will try to explain that too.

Because ultimately, this is not about building an audience. It is about building a body of work — and perhaps, over time, building something more valuable: a clearer way of seeing the world.