Building in public, from being super secretive to giving the concept a try

Sharing bits and pieces of my password safety ebook to validate the idea

I have been working on a new project for the past couple of months, and I'm stuck. Truth be told, once the excitement of a new idea wears off, I procrastinate a lot.

So here is where Eduardo (my husband) comes in with his idea. He told me to build in public. Use the latest tech trend to my benefit and help motivate myself and keep me accountable.

If you are not familiar with the concept, building in public means you share your progress while making something, you share the steps you are taking, and let everyone know how things are going.

I'm old school, and this concept goes against my core. I'm used to being ultra-secretive until everything is ready to launch. Or until you ship it. So I was pretty close to hyperventilating when hubby suggested that I share it with the world instead of keeping my project a secret until I finish it.

I still think that if you share too much too soon, someone will hijack your idea and launch it first. But I also know that, thankfully, things evolve for a reason. If so many people swear by this new concept, why not look at it?

On the one hand, there's the feeling that someone will like the idea and steal it. The other is the hope that I will build an audience and people will validate the concept once I share bits and pieces. And that validation will motivate me to work faster and better. So I think the risk is worth it.

Here I go.

I'm working on an ebook—a book about password safety and how password managers can be life-saving in this day and age. I'm writing about the state of our hyper-connected life and how important it is to keep our credentials safe. I'm researching and showing people that you are super exposed if you don't take passwords and safety seriously. I gathered examples of data breaches and found places where you can see if your email is compromised, etc.

Of course, I go deeper into things in my ebook, but I'm sharing just a glimpse here. I'm telling you the basic concept to explain that I will give the build in public trend a try, and I will start sharing blog posts with parts of the book to see if there's an audience.

I had countless conversations with family, friends, and acquaintances about this subject. The number of people who still use the same password for everything or use nicknames and important dates as passwords mesmerized me.

Combining that finding with my interest in the subject, I decided to start this project.

I used to be one of those people. I used and reused lame passwords to keep my accounts safe and did not realize how bad it was. It took my husband a lot of convincing for me to try a password manager to help me properly generate/store passwords and organize my credentials. And after I got the hang of it, I was glad I listened to him. Having a service that does the work of generating and keeping strong passwords to keep your info safe is life-changing.

I believe that if one thing helped and solved something for me, chances are it can be helpful to other people. So why not go deeper into the subject and help other people out there?

If you were shily avoiding eye contact when reading about lame passwords and not taking safety too seriously, stay tuned and join me on this journey. Follow me to check out my progress and let me know what do you think. Worst case scenario, you will learn a thing or two about how to keep your credentials safe.

0 comments

Write a comment

A picture is worth a thousand words: Turning Data into Infographics

Bullish Newsletter - we also offer a FREE version

See all posts from Gisele M. Sasso