Why Build In Public University?

As I started learning what it meant to be a creator and an entrepreneur, I made a lot of mistakes.

Seriously, I did pretty much everything wrong. When I say I was bad at it, I mean I was BAD...

So after my first startup failed, I went back to the drawing board. I spent a lot of time reflecting on what I did wrong. The biggest indicator? My mental health went straight to hell. I ended up in a really dark place.

So one of the things I promised myself after giving up on my first company: I wouldn't let myself get to that point again. No matter what, a company wasn't worth my mental health.

So since then, I've been focused mostly on playing with things. Ideas, code, products, etc. I've gone through a million iterations. I've done some launches. Most have failed, but that's fine. It's all experimentation now. I've got a full-time job, so that allows me to do things the way I want.

But as I've gone down this route, I've discovered several very important things:

1. Most people are doing things in very inefficient ways.
2. Businesses are not typically designed for the mental health of their owners or employees.
3. The economy is broken for a number of reasons and we need things to change or everything will collapse.
4. In many cases, our education has steered us wrong.
5. It can all be a lot easier.

Build In Public University is the child of these 5 ideas. I've found that most people were giving advice that didn't quite fit reality. Sure, their advice might fit very specific situations, but there was a reality that wasn't being considered: the world is changing faster and faster.

So the things that were true 1 year ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, don't necessarily have much or any bearing on reality now. And yet, we are continuing down the same paths, doing the same things, and not taking advantage of the new state of the world nearly as well as we could.

At Build In Public University, we are going to focus on the piece you control: you. We'll help you tap into the things that make you unique: your story, your experiences, your skills. And then we'll provide resources to help you grow, scale, and succeed.

Building in public is all about building trust. Social media isn't designed to capture that trust very well, so you have to do it a lot longer or you have to show signs of success that people can easily recognize: usually in terms of money. This has led to a lot of people focused on sharing numbers that have no context. It's really easy to misrepresent things on social media to achieve a specific outcome. But in turn, that has resulted in a lot of people being very skeptical of the things they see. And thus trust is harder to establish.

The fastest way to build trust: community. But most online communities aren't great communities. They are a place for people to gather, but they aren't structured to build trust. People come in and out. They aren't set up for people to easily help each other.

When you combine content with community, you can create a trust flywheel that achieves incredible results. But there needs to be a certain structure, a design, that allows these results to be achieved.

And that's going to be open-sourced as it's developed. Build In Public University will be built in public, the structure shared. Results will be able to be duplicated. The "competitive moat" is the people involved. But we won't be the only people who can be trusted. I'm basing the structure of the university loosely on that of traditional universities, but with the goal of being accessible, results-focused, and modern.

There's going to be a base curriculum: a 1-month cohort all about your story. When you complete that, you'll be able to join an ongoing community that will provide support, events, and small groups that you can work with to achieve your goals. There will be "professors", experts who are there to hold regular office hours that will allow you to ask questions and be live-streamed. Again, we'll be building in public here.

Finally, there will packages available that will give you credits that you can use for 1-1 time with the professors. This will give you an opportunity to buy individual help at a discount and use it where you need it. Each professor will also be able to offer additional help at their market rate.

It's time for a new system: the future of work and the future of education require it.

Welcome to Build In Public University, an educational system for the modern world.