Build in public.

Not for attention. For proof.

Author

Michael van Lier
May 30, 2026

There used to be a playbook for building software companies. There isn’t anymore.

When building gets cheaper, faster, and more automated, the thing that compounds is no longer just what you ship. It’s what people can see you learning. The decisions. The changes. The moments where something breaks and the team decides what happens next. That’s the part most companies still hide.

But in a market where everyone can make something look real, proof matters more than polish.

Build in public is not posting more. It’s making the work visible: the calls, the signals, the decisions, and the moments where the story changes before it becomes obvious.

This month, that also means showing more of the system underneath Builders. The one we’ve been quietly rebuilding, and the one we’re opening up with VSI (venture studio intelligence) on June 4.

Because in a market where everyone can make the output look polished, the process becomes the proof.

First things first: build in public means showing the system.

Most teams hear “build in public” and think it means more posts, more updates, more behind-the-scenes. That’s not the shift.

The shift is moving from showing output to showing how the output gets made. The calls. The signals. The decisions. The moments where the team changes direction because reality says so.

That is also what we’ve been rebuilding inside Builders.

For years, the studio has worked because of pattern recognition. The founder signals that repeat. The customer calls that sound familiar. The moments where something looks promising, but the evidence says “not yet.”

VSI is how we turn that into a system. It turns customer conversations into scored, queryable evidence, so founders can decide from data, not gut or emotion. Every call should make you smarter, not just more informed. Every signal should help you understand what to do next.

So when we talk about building in public this month, this is the part we mean: not just showing what we’re building, but showing the operating system underneath it.

What this unlocks (and how we’ll prove it):

  • More proof → less explaining. When people can see how you build, what you believe, and where the product is moving, trust compounds before the first call.

  • Sharper positioning → better pipeline. The right people self-select when the signal is clear enough. Founders, engineers, investors, partners; they know what room they’re walking into.

  • Queryable evidence → better decisions. When calls, signals, and founder decisions become visible, the team stops debating memory and starts working from proof.

In the loop: rooms, reps, and receipts

A few moments that shaped the month:

  • Paris with OSS Ventures and Lovable. 40+ founders, AI products shipped in hours, and the same conclusion from two studios in the trenches: when building is free, the moat shifts. Deep domain knowledge, distribution in industries others ignore, and fast learning loops start to matter more than code.

  • CTO Network x Helloprint x Up!Rotterdam. The shift is no longer AI-first. It’s agent-first. Helloprint opened up what an AI-native organisation actually looks like in practice: smaller teams, faster execution, less operational overhead, and agents embedded into how the company runs.

  • Builders Investor House #14 at Blockrise. During Upstream, we hosted another closed room with founders and investors who are actually in it. Jos Lazet and the Blockrise team shared what it means to build in one of Europe’s toughest regulated industries, from early Bitcoin days to becoming one of the first Dutch firms authorised under MiCAR.

  • Shipweek at Builders. One goal. One opportunity. Everyone pointed at it. The joke was “how’s it going, and with AI?” The honest answer: excited as hell and spending every waking moment building. The actual moat is still having people who would rather ship than sleep.

  • Behind the scenes at Builders. We went quieter for a few weeks. Not because nothing is happening, but because the system underneath the studio is changing. Same studio. Same all-in approach. But the way we capture signals, close loops, and help founders decide is being rebuilt from the inside out. More on June 2.

Up next →

The system underneath: VSI launches June 4th

VSI launches June 4.

For pre-PMF enterprise AI founders, it becomes the entry point into Builders. Start with the platform. Turn customer calls into evidence. Build the loop. And if the signal gets strong enough, it can become the path into the studio: team, capital, CTO matching, investor network, and Builders going all-in.

For Builders, it marks a bigger transition.

Same studio. Same all-in approach. But now with a system underneath that makes every venture more queryable, more closed-loop, and sharper every time it runs. The decade of pattern-matching we’ve built is moving into the way founders work from day zero.

If you’re building an enterprise AI company, still pre-PMF, and trying to understand whether the market is actually pulling you forward, this is the moment to explore it.

👀 What we’re reading (and seeing):

Final word: show the work

Build in public is easy to say and hard to do well. Because doing it well means showing more than the win. It means showing the system behind the win. The rooms. The reps. The wrong turns. The way the team thinks when things are still unfinished.

That is uncomfortable, but it is also the point.

That’s why we’re opening up VSI. Not as another product announcement, but as the next version of how Builders works: evidence first, closed loop, built in public enough that the right founders can see where they fit.

In a world where anyone can make the output look polished, the process becomes the proof.

Forward, always,

Michael van Lier
Managing Director at Builders