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Founder Reality with George Pu. Real talk from a technical founder building AI-powered businesses in the trenches. No highlight reel, no startup theater – just honest insights from someone who codes, ships, and scales.
Every week, George breaks down the messy, unfiltered decisions behind building a bootstrap software company. From saying yes to projects you don't know how to build, to navigating AI hype vs. reality, to the mental models that actually matter for technical founders.
Whether you're a developer thinking about starting a company, a founder scaling your first product, or a technical leader building AI features, this show gives you the frameworks and hard-won lessons you won't find in the startup content circus.
George Pu is a software engineer turned founder building multiple AI-powered businesses. He's bootstrapped companies, shipped products that matter, and learned the hard way what works and what's just noise.
Follow along as he builds in public and shares what's really happening behind the scenes.
New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
George Pu (00:00.204)
So everybody's telling you about how to build in public, know, share your revenue, your struggles, your team changes and all that. Right. And building in public has been a thing for the past couple of years, but today I'm calling it bullshit. And I personally believe that building in public is just startup theater, you know, that's wrapped up with better marketing. I'll show you more about my personal insights about what building in public is. So you might know me from Twitter and you probably noticed that I have started posting more and more.
since the beginning of this year 2025. And I haven't really shared my struggles and you know, the things that's really not been working. I think roughly a month or just even a month or two ago, right? Starting on this podcast. So all those things that have happened was like two years ago, you know, and I haven't really shared it. Why? So it's like walk through it.
George Pu (00:59.022)
The first, if it can struggle that I personally have faced, it's probably just like cutting our team down from 14 to five. So as you might have known already, two years ago in 2023, my team member was like 14 and then eventually shrink down to four. And then we just recently added up to five. No, actually, I think recently, I think it's shrink down to like three and then we added up to five in a past like year. And the reason why I haven't really talked about it for all the past two years is because of it's a very sensitive matter. It's regarding, you know, co-founders that work closely with.
you know, for the past many, many years. And as you, as you guys know, I started my company in, you know, basically second, third year in college, right. And eventually basically like very young age, I was 1920 at a time and I embark on like a journey with all these different great people that have been together on my team with all the different things I've said about co-founders aside, right. Just based on this journey together, some of those folks I've spent a great number of years working with. So it's just been really difficult to see of them go. So that was like a really difficult moment. And I think
You know, if quote unquote building public would to be true, I would have made a Twitter thread about, okay, I just let go 11 people from my team and here's what I learned. Right. It's very cringe to be honest. Like it just doesn't make any sense. And it's disrespectful to the people I work with. And so obviously I think this is the first problem I see with building public is that why are founders not sharing the bad news and many founders are using the hashtag building public to as a way of promoting their products, say sharing the good stuff and all that, which I've totally understand is a good marketing.
method and tactic for founders. But I just find it disingenuous to call that building public because I personally think building public is a different thing. And also I've shared with you just last week that I've walked away from a partnership that could total three to $5 million in the next two years. And the reason I walked away from it and the reason and my learning from it and the reason why I walk away from it. I didn't tweet about it at real time because it has just happened. Right. And then for a founder, I obviously need to respect the counterparty. So the people that I'm working with.
no matter even even if it didn't work out the end. So there's a basic topic of respect. There's a basic topic of, you know, just like basically, you we have I have worked together with this partner for the past, we've been on and off for about two to four years. And I'm known everyone from the team. So it's a shame that didn't work out. But there's no personal vengeance or anything like that. Like we just walked away, both walked away peacefully. And I think you know, tweeting about it in real time, or even just like the same week would be disrespectful. So I did disclose it.
George Pu (03:25.649)
you know, on the beginning of the podcast, episode one, I think about two weeks ago, I think it did happen in real time, but I kept it private. I didn't tweet about it. I don't want my partner to feel offended or anything, right? So that's also why I didn't tweet about it in real time. So there's also these like, all these different things. And my issue is like as a founder, if you're really building in public, then you should really be building the good stuff, the posting about the good stuff, as well as the bad stuff. And this is why I think the performance theater, which is the reason why it's where we started the show,
is because we think substance over performance, right? That is the basically senses the show. And that's what we're here to talk about. And also let's talk about another thing about the Twitter founders tweeting about their Stripe revenue. I've seen it quite a lot. If you go to like hashtag building public on Twitter, or if you go to anywhere else, you will always see these things like building public. Here's my Stripe revenues snapshot, right? And it always convenience cross out like a very specific timeframe. So if you have used Stripe, then you know what I'm talking about, right?
You can specifically tailor the Stripe revenue dashboard to show exactly the date that you want it to show. So for me, I don't show my revenue publicly. And the reason is because I'm pretty much embarrassed about it. Right. And I've shared with you why the revenue has been declining over the past, like, I don't know, still over a month. Well, I wouldn't call it declining. I think it's more like averaging and sometimes declining. Right. It's been it's been plateauing. It's basically the word. So I will feel embarrassed to share my revenue with you guys. Or I might share with you if you're interested. Definitely let me know.
However, you know, my point being for my SaaS business, which is not working out that well at the moment, if I were to choose to share with you the revenue for the past seven days, it would have been a straight upward trajectory, right? If I just close a customer or the customer just have renewed for annual contract, obviously the graph is going to stick up. So I take a screenshot of the past seven days, I upload on Twitter, oh, here's my win building public, you know, it just feels very disingenuous, right? And so that's my first issue. And the second issue is the number porn.
and I call it number porn because it's literally number porn. And I've seen people, you sometimes not using a hashtag themselves necessarily, but they do post about, I made a million dollars this month and here's my SaaS business, AI SaaS business. I've made this much, hundreds of thousands this month or made whatever number this month. So I think it sends the wrong signal precisely because first of all, what is a year date revenue for your business? What is all lifetime of your business?
George Pu (05:47.6)
Were their numbers are just really down? That's not working. Were their period that's not working? Were you showing us that? And second of all, like I really have an issue with a seasonal business model and that's just like me personally. So for example, when Google image and it just came out, know, when open AI is like image generated just came out, if you have built like a apper, so to speak, you know, that can take users to generate the best, you know, like to put clothes on them, for example, right? Or let them be really professional and charge users $10 a month for it.
So of course you're going to have a huge spike on your revenue in the first like couple of months, right? But eventually, as we all know with these tools, it's seasonal, right? It's periodic. So I'd also think that is a little bit disingenuous. And of course I'm not discouraging people from putting in public and I'll talk about it a little bit later in the episode. I do also wonder like, what are people's profits? Because that's something I think we're not like going to talk about these days. You know, we see the revenue numbers and I think a few weeks ago,
how.com CL.com's founder just tweeted about himself making 1.25 million for the past like 34 days, which I think is a pretty good update just because he generally shared, guys, this is just a revenue. This is not profits. Our profits are way lower. And obviously I'm just a CEO. I'm an employee of the company. I own the company. However, we also have investors in the company. So this is just not just money that I made. Right? So I think sometimes those qualifications are really super important because as a founder in a, building community that we really want to show
are examples about like, how is it to build? We don't want to attract people who are just main goal is just to make a quick buck to come in, hey, come here, like, let me teach you how to make money and then teach people how to make something or give them a false expectation that, you can vibe code and happen and put it on the market and make hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, in the first few months, my dad, she told me about this a few weeks ago and I gave him the same response. I said, dad, you're only looking at the news news release or you're only looking at the people persons.
self-describe money that they have made, right? And really, I think another thing is I think like generating revenue over time shouldn't be a necessarily hard thing. I think my business has reached I think in low numbers of millions. If you added up the past year or two, I think we've made that much. Well, I guess it's never any incentive to like bloat about or share about it, right? That's just the revenue that we have made. You know, there's nothing crazy that, you know, to not share about it. But when I do share, I want to be super honest with you. Here's the profits. Here's the revenue. Here's how much we pay our people.
George Pu (08:08.75)
And here are the most expenses, right? So I think if I do want to share some take and let me know if you want me to share it. If I do share it one day, you I do want to let you guys know about, you know, all the pros and cons of building that type of business, because you're going to ride the highs, but you're also going to ride the lows. That's the reality of running a startup and be a startup founder. I think most people don't talk about. So we've talked a lot about what I don't like about the building in public movement. However, there's a lot of antidotes about it as well, right?
So there are many actually good companies. actually a handful of good companies that I know who are done really well with building public. So let's take a brief look about who they are. One of those rare examples, I think it's Buffer. If you haven't heard about them, their domain is bufferd.com slash open for the open block. And I've read buffer stories since I was in college, which is like 2017, 2018. And buffer started in 2012, if I remember it correctly. And their founder, Joel, I think has been sharing their journey quite a while.
I wish I can share my screen with you guys, but basically how it is is like, let's go to buffer.com slash transparency. And I think the first thing that you'll see is that they actually open source their entire team salary, right? And there are many things to say about whether it's a good or bad thing. think Netflix has tried it. I'm not sure if Netflix still doing it today, but Netflix have tried it and Netflix to try like radical transparency.
I don't think has worked too well for them in terms of like knowing each other salary. It creates a weird vibe in the office. But Buffer Team actually did it. They open source all their salaries and they are very transparent about, even being a remote startup, they want to keep everyone's salary transparent, right? And the idea is that no matter where you are, you know, your salary should be consistent. So I think that's a very good thing. And they do account for cost of living.
do account for which city, which country you're in. And they rank like higher costs of across the living countries, obviously get paid a lot higher. So that's obviously a very good thing. They also open source, also open source their revenue numbers and key performance metrics, KPI is right. So if you take a look at their website, they actually do share about their MRR monthly recurring revenue ARR, and they open sourced, I think, I think since the very beginning when the data became available. So that is the type of building public that I personally really appreciate.
George Pu (10:22.544)
And the reason for that is you're not hiding things that it's not going well, right? So if you go to their website, can actually see the steep decline from March 2020 when the pandemic first happened, their revenue dropped by about 20, 25%. And it took them almost three years, I think, almost three years to recover from that revenue drop. And I think that's such an authentic story because you have clear numbers to back you up.
When things are not working well, Buffer team is not saying, oh, and we need to take this like open page down. You know, we need to like hide our numbers or we need to massage our numbers, whatever. They were really transparent about their numbers being in a very competitive industry, more so less, right? So in the social media space, which they're in social media, etc. in space, there's also a cut suite. There's also a lot of other competitors in space. They're also being disrupted by AI as well. So I think it's just, it's a really good example about like what really building public really means.
And of course, for making this podcast episode, my idea is not to trash building public. also hashtag building public sometimes as well about some upcoming features that I'm building. My team is building as well, right? But I think if you're really building in public, and I think it's a message even for myself, it's like, we need to really share about the good things and the bad things. We need to share about the journey and tell a complete cohesive story and not just highlighting the high and creating cocaine type content, you know, that makes people engaged.
It makes people all this person is so great. He makes hundreds of thousand dollars. He made millions of dollars, you know, for the past couple of months. That's the type of content I think that wouldn't be great for the community. That's personally my belief and just be very transparent. I wouldn't feel comfortable sharing my real time revenue either. Right. Because like I feel embarrassed and many founders probably feel the same. I will feel embarrassed because there are so many huge drops and huge downs. And as I mentioned, there has been periods of time. I think the past like eight months being the same period of time.
where the revenue has been pretty much plateauing. There's no, there's not a tangible growth, right? And it will be very embarrassing for me to go and source that revenue, even though which I might open source our revenue from our SaaS business. However, like, you know, for something that's been, I've been working on for 45 years. I'm not, I'd be very honest. I'm not really comfortable or even confident about my numbers right now for the SaaS business. And that is why I'm concerned about sharing that. And I'm very honest sharing that with you guys because you know, we are
George Pu (12:47.408)
build quote unquote building in public. So obviously, hoping for the other founders to do the same when you're building, right? If you're a founder, that you're building something, I think if you are choosing the building in public hashtag, and if you really want to be in the building in public community, I think is really important to share. also like, you know, just to add on top of that, I know a founder who I really respect, and I've known him for the past like three to four years, he's a really good product oriented founder. And his building product,
principle was basically just to ship in new features. But obviously I'm really concerned about the business model and I go to market strategies the team has, but I'm concerned that they're having a really hard time to get to revenue, which is not a really good look. However, I think building in public means that transparency comes above anything else. And I think if we're all going to be using the hashtag building in public or even being in the building public movement, we should redo that. Right? So there was a tool called bare metrics. think they got sold to
private equity and I vividly remember there were only like 20 to 30 companies are doing at a time. Some companies were only making, you know, $1400 a month for the MR. We should ask ourselves, why are there only 20 to 30 companies are willing to share it? And I took a look, I think majority of those companies are outside of the US. Why are more of the American founders sharing those metrics, sharing their numbers and just building more public, you know, on the internet, right? So that's something I think needs to be more explored.
Right. And let me talk about a little bit about what I share. I do share about expensive lessons I have learned. I'll give specific numbers whenever possible. Like last week, basically the partnership was a little bit based on performance, right? So obviously it's not like three, it's not like, but your people are like, oh George, why it's three to five million? That's because it's based in performance, right? There is a fixed amount that was determined by mutual signing agreements and there are specific numbers that are more performance based, right? That's tied up to the performance that we do at our company, company is called PlutRack.
So when things screw up, I share them and I show the specific numbers whenever possible. Right. And I also share about my philosophies and especially when my philosophy has changed and the reasons behind them and why I think it's important because like we are obviously in a changing world and I keep tweeting on my Twitter about a changing AI landscape. Why is it important? You know, why is it important? Because I keep changing my idea as well about certain things, my view about certain things like every day or even on a weekly basis. So this week I might have a different opinion about
George Pu (15:11.46)
building in public or even just like, sorry, building a specific product, right? I have, I have an idea about it next week. I might come back at it and it's like obsolete, right? So that happens a lot. do share opening about my thoughts about those, like, those like shifts, especially with, you know, technology and also the reasons behind it. I will also share about the industry observations to help other founders. So I will open source real tools and technologies and frameworks and books and eBooks, you know, most or all of them will be free on my website, funder reality.com.
And I do think those will help other founders. So I openly share with them. And I will also openly share about my personal decision making frameworks, like how I make decisions. As I mentioned before, I think what you read and the things that you read is very important for the for basically the way that you do decisions. Right. So when I say that I will be more specific, maybe in like an ebook or something, or blog posts. And I'll openly share that with you guys as well. But, you know, very, very important. The years I don't share. Right.
And I'll give an example and a reason behind every one of them. So first of all, I think the things I want to share is about live strategic decisions when they're happening. And obviously, that is very important, right? Obviously, operating in a very competitive world. I'm sure every one of you guys do. And we operate in very competitive industry where there are competitors who have been co-calling us, co-emailing us, and trying to get the technology ideas behind it, how we do certain things.
So obviously when I make a huge decision, I will not tweet it about it right away as they're happening because obviously some of them are not even considered trade secrets, but they are competitive advantages that if we do share our competitors will steal them away. So obviously what we'll do is we'll make the change, we'll give it at least like two weeks or even more, right? Give or take, and then I'll share about the reasons why we're making this change after. So there will be a strategic delay about it, right? And second of all, like why don't share about its specific partnership negotiations or numbers.
Obviously third parties and I encourage every one of you guys who are building in public to also not share about these things It gets really messy and obviously there's so many partnerships involved in NDA So you can't share it anyways, but you could vaguely imply about it without saying like who you're in partnership with which is like what I did I think third of all was most important most important thing. It's a team dynamics issues in real time. It gets really messy I think if you look back at all the major Silicon Valley companies you look at major screw-ups. I think
George Pu (17:36.141)
team is always one of them. It doesn't have to be your co founders could be your actual team. could be your new hires. could be the people that you're working closely with. And it's so easy. And it's natural, I think to have a falling out with people. But it doesn't it's it's inhumane to be tweeting about okay, today I have fired my chief engineer slash name. All right. And here's why it happened. Right. So that's just like, it's a trash human behavior. I don't think that's respectful. And I think
These things need to be dealt with very delicately because at the end of the day, we're all humans. I still remember I almost got fired from my first co-op internship job. For going through that experience, even thinking about today, it's very scary, especially for someone who's a little bit young at the time, right? And everyone's different, right? Someone might be having a family, they might have babies or are expecting babies to come and all that stuff and they got let go. And I think that has happened some part in my journey. I've seen people got let go because of that. Sorry, not because of that, but...
But you know, in a situation of that, so these things gets really personal and gets really messy and you don't really want to get in between of that. And I think give people privacy, give people time and don't share about their personal issues or dynamics real time. Right. When you do want to share it, you can share it weeks, months, years after and then just obviously anonymize the name and almost everything that you can and just share it as experience. That's totally okay about it.
which is why I shared my experience with you guys by my co founders. I'm sure you know, it's the same same thing. I didn't mention any names and I mentioned like who it is, I'm not sure who I have specific issues with. And that's all because of respect to the people I have worked with. And also the next one is like competitive advantages or proprietary insights. Obviously, I'm not going to share all that. Those are all proprietary for a good reason. Right? And those are all things I think if you're building public, you should also keep that confidential as much as you can, especially if it's like something that makes your business different.
Obviously, I'm probably wouldn't have to say this, you know, so those are all the things that I think if you're building in public, you can just like not share about to people just based on respect and other things like I have many business disputes, I think here or in the past, with various different people or companies and all that, but I don't share with them. I don't share them on Twitter or anywhere else because it's a private business matter. It has to do with other people's reputations, relationships and
George Pu (19:47.309)
their things, right? And this is not just because I want to avoid being sued for defamation or whatever. That's not really the reason. That's not a topic altogether. But I do think, you know, even with business principles, with respect, like keep things between you and the other party and don't overshare. Don't be, you know, an asshole and share everything about others. And I think those are all the things that, you know, it's very important. And lastly, I think anything that
It's close to basically saying, okay, I'm sharing this because I want to feel validated. want to feel people to cheer me onwards. I want to share the screenshot. I want to the screen news. I want to share this so people can know. I think in many cases, if it's a good strategy for your business to more customers, sure, go ahead and do it. If it feels right to you. However, will avoid, just for myself, being performative about it because I don't want to post something just because I think, oh, this makes George look good. This makes me look good.
And this makes me look like I'm a genius or anything like that. Or because my company look like we really know what we're doing. Those are the things I don't post on that. But that could more so, you know, be a personal decision. So at the end of the day, that's how you can operate your business. You can go ahead and do it. I personally feel like I also have this like term about the Sunday night test, which you guys might know about. So on the Sunday night test originally was the idea of like, if today is Sunday and you're feeling dreaded about tomorrow, which is Monday, then you're probably not working on the right thing.
And I think the Sunday night test is also very good to come to transparency. If on a Sunday night you want to share something online in the next following week, if sharing this feels like work or sharing this feels like performance, I personally don't share it. I'd rather not to get that quote unquote spotlight. I much prefer to have a genuine connection with other founders, with other companies. I have a genuine connection with others. I don't want to bloat. I never bloat. At least that's what I think. yeah, so those are some of the things I...
personally have done about building in public. I don't claim I'm building in public because there are many things I am not actively sharing. But I think for the podcast, like you're hearing a lot more behind the scenes stories than anywhere else. And you're hearing this, you're knowing pretty much in real time, close to real time about what is happening in my business. And I just want to emphasize that, you know, not everybody can do it.
George Pu (22:01.625)
Right. Some people obviously have constraints they cannot share publicly. But if you're a like B and you're really serious about something that's like you want to build public and you want people to share to be really engaged and listen to your story on obviously share your vulnerable side, be authentic. Don't make it into an AI generated article or AI generated performance LinkedIn post or Twitter post about something. Just share exactly how you feel about things. I personally also going to do better at this to share more to the community. And I'm sure you guys are hearing.
a lot about my business already that, you know, maybe some, maybe some people who know me doesn't even know about. So I think that's awesome. And in the future, I will continue to open source more things. They're valuable to you guys. Yeah, so all these things, I think, I think we're almost at a conclusion for this per episode. I also wanted to add just one more thing. Before we go, it's like, I've only tried it for three and a half months before I'm comfortable sharing with you guys, because I want to make sure that, you know, that simple formula or
the bogey head approach actually works, right? It was too easy to be true. And I wanted to really figure out, okay, like, is this really true? Is it really make sense? And at the end of the day, I think, okay, like, yes, it did work, right? I gained 6.05 % over the last three months, three and a half months, I think, and that was really important. And I think it's successful for me, at least. So that's why I'm sharing with you guys, because I realized that this is something that's working.
Right? Obviously, if it's not working, I might share as well, but this is things not working, right? But obviously I want to try things out and share with you guys. So, you know, just to finish off this program, I think most founders only post about the good stuff, right? And I personally believe that it's not really building in public. If you're just curating the highlights and not showing the full story building in public is slowly becoming another marketing channel and has slowly losing the genuinely and the transparency behind it. And I think people seeing these curated stories and
They get discouraged because they think someone else have or everyone else have figured it out. And I think this is doing a disservice to community and money itself, it's just flashy, know, like people put this like flashy money screenshots without context. That's just showing off. It's like an Instagram post. So do more about like what Buffer does, right? Real transparency is embarrassing when things are not doing well, share those. And I think people really appreciate those when, when there are vulnerable or failing moments. And most founders, including me.
George Pu (24:24.313)
like wouldn't feel comfortable sharing as much as Buffer did, right? And that's just a reality. But there's a difference between selective sharing and pretending that you're fully transparent, right? Like there is a middle ground that you can take and even, you know, for companies like Buffer, there's probably 80 to 90 % of things that we don't know that can be truly valuable. So I started this podcast to show the real side of this, of my story that doesn't really happen on Twitter. In Twitter, obviously there's like a context limit so I can share everything that there is. But obviously I want to show you the stuff that's actually happening behind the scenes.
I want to also let you guys join the community as well. Obviously share about like what's happening with your business. And I'm hoping in the future to have more one-on-one or one of many conversations with the community and also bridging the gap between, you know, performance transparency and also like privacy. And that's why I said like the founder reality community is not about performance, right? It's about substance over performance. And I think true authenticity comes with really being really genuine and vulnerable sometimes and just being open about just about everything.
The moment you optimize vulnerability for engagement, however, you stop being vulnerable, right? So that's why people like my content sometimes is because I openly share about what's working, what's not working. And I'm coming from a system of experience of not making things up on the go, right? I'm sharing with you exactly what happened. So basically what I do is first of all, time delay. Second of all, share value, not specific stories about people or places or partnership or names.
Right. And no performance matrix. I will never post it. I'll never share with you exactly the millions of millions or whatever it is that I'm making. I'm quote unquote. So I don't want to bloat and I never want to share about things that I think is taken without context or make other feel like, I have to figure out. I don't. I'm just being very honest. I don't. And also at the end, having respect for others, like consider how your transparency might create, affect other people, team members, counterparties. And if that's the case, don't share it. Right. So
I really think building public means that you lead with your value, right? You lead with insights that can actually help the community and not just sharing about, you know, like your emotional moments that are engaged, like basically engaged for clicks, right? Time delay your major events. Don't share anything right away as it happens. Give it some time, right? Share your lessons. Don't share dramas. Dramas are never worth sharing. Share your lessons or where you learn from it and, you know, what cost you to learn, right? And why.
George Pu (26:46.777)
respect your counterparties and you know, share, bring it on, right? Share it with the community and we're all here to share. So next time, if somebody tells you to document everything publicly or building in public, you know, ask yourself if you're just creating value, right? Or are you just adding to it in the way it's are you actually creating transparency or are you just creating like a Rio or tech type video with better marketing, right? There's a difference. And I think many founders, other founders can tell which one you can actually build. So at the end,
you're listening to the founder rally podcast. I think this is actually the longest one that we've been so far. So I hope that every episode brings you clarity and lessons that hopefully you couldn't find elsewhere, which you find this podcast valuable. So obviously you can find me on Twitter at the George Poo. You can find a podcast at founder reality.com. And, know, where I'll also open source many of my tools and you know, different things I use, including my investment portfolios. So if you would check that out, and this podcast gets updated every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
and we will update it every week. So thank you for support. I'll see you next time.