A B.I.T.O Model to Bring Start-ups, Creators, and Builders into the IF LAB

Software is about to change. Organizations are about to change.

Utilizing AI tools, an organization can now tailor internal tools exactly how they want, nomads can create their MVPs in a week, and creatives can now build their own infrastructure. But how?

Interestingly, this question has been under-asked — not only by affluent business leaders but also by geopolitical leaders.

Build in the Open (B.I.T.O) attempts to answer this question.

But how can my work produce on its own in the world of AI?

This piece will overview a framework to start building in the open. It is a continuation of the original B.I.T.O. principles but stands on its own as a framework for thinking about creating in the world of AI. My own personal failures inform the framework in attempting this strategy, and how I would — and will — change my own systems to define the B.I.T.O model.

Building in the open is not what I thought it would be.

I have attempted this for over two months; it has been a challenge, but not for the reasons one might think. The challenges are broad and far-reaching: discouragement, time management, focus management, and consistency failures. I turned the pipes on, and they burst — but the failures have not been a failure of the idea, but of the system I built, or lack thereof.

In this piece, I will go over the failures, the discernments, and the adjustments I made.

Along any journey, any project, there will be setbacks — no matter how many articles you read, how many reports you study, or how many courses you take, there will be failure. But this article will serve as a single piece among many on how to take your failures of building in the open and mold them into an adjusted system.

Until death, all failure is mental.

Everyone who builds anything will fail; it is the precursor to success.

Before we begin, I want to bring attention to a certain discouragement that might trap many who hold these ideals.

In my journey, I’ve been experimenting with virtually every platform you can imagine and trying to learn along the way. One of these dives led me to a subreddit of small YouTubers sharing strategies and asking for advice. While scrolling, I found a post that I believe conveys all the points I will touch on.

The poster was starting a YouTube channel in gaming. They received a comment from a stranger on one of their first few videos:

“No one cares.”

The video had three views. The user felt discouraged by this comment.

The top advice: Delete it, and you’ll forget about it in two or three days.

My advice: This calls for a celebration!

There is a cohort on Instagram that does this in a comedic fashion — “got my first hate comment” — whether it’s a coping mechanism or true bravery is irrelevant; the truth is, failure is a success. People usually fear the idea of building in the open because they don’t want to get discouraged. Creating anything involves discouragement; you might as well get more reps in.

Business owner and philosopher Alex Hormozi introduced me to this idea: the builder’s journey.

If you read the genesis piece of Build in the Open, and I did a good job, you are hopefully riding the wave of uninformed optimism. I did for a long while — it’s fun. Most people stay here because it feels accomplished. However, if you are serious about creating something in the world, you must take the first step, and the cost is informed pessimism, with failures leading to the Valley of Despair.

Theoretically, everything sounds good. The real ideas that make it out of theory are the ones that can adapt to failure.

Here are my Informed Pessimism lessons that inform this framework:

It takes a lot of work.

I started building by utilizing multiple platforms. My thought process was this: as a consumer of media, I watched channels on Twitch that talked about finance, reactions, etc.; videos on YouTube covering the same topics; tweets reacting to those topics; Shorts summarizing those topics; Substack’s reporting on those topics.

These seemed so fragmented, yet there appeared to be huge potential if all of them worked in cohesion. I wondered why people with these platforms don’t do that.

Answer: It takes a lot of work.

Even if you were to completely erase the mental exhaustion variable:

• Filming takes setup (audio and video settings are hard), multiple takes (you won’t get it in one shot), scripting, and then editing.
• Short-form video — even pulling a clip takes time: finding the clip, adding any additional editing (you most likely will need to), and uploading to the platform.
• Writing a large report, even if you plan to split it up, takes the initial article idea, the research behind the idea, formatting, AI organizing the piece (be efficient), rewriting and editing what AI gives you (spend enough time with AI, and you realize its writing often falls flat), and re-organizing the piece for each platform.

Posting on platforms alone can take up to three hours per day. Each platform’s system works slightly differently.

Since I know entrepreneurs will likely read this: “Well, you could create a platform to do that for you!” — back to uninformed optimism we go. (Try it, but if you use B.I.T.O while you do that, you will face the same issue.)

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy.”

Work itself doesn’t discourage people. The point of building in the open is inherently for the entrepreneurial type, who are accustomed to Dana White clips saying, “You can be secure and work 9-to-5 or do what you love and work 24/7.”

What discourages people in practice is the operational failure that this much work brings. Having to manage it all either distracts you from what you’re building, or you never get better at it — most of the time, both.

You Can’t Iterate

When you initially start on a platform, you will be bad at it. Even if you don’t initially want recognition, learning to format your work is a skill that will improve any area of an organization. This is, in fact, a pro of building in the open in general.

A core principle of Build in the Open is that showcasing your work publicly is the ultimate battleground test. If it works with a large consumer base on the most competitive platform — the open internet — well, that’s the whole point. Your customers and business partners will receive better quality information if you battle-test your skills in the arena of social platforms. But improvement takes iteration.

It’s not 10,000 hours; it’s 10,000 iterations.

If you spend all your time just doing the work of putting content on a platform, you will never have the extra time to learn from the platform and iterate on your next piece to improve. Work improves with iteration, and it is a key part of building in the open — so with too much work and too many platforms, iteration can’t happen. Furthermore, you can’t focus on a platform to iterate if you’re trying to learn many platforms at once.

Beyond this, there are a few traps I have identified that make iteration harder.

The Traps

A) The Pain Trap

No matter how much you tell yourself that a number on a screen doesn’t matter — that you’re expecting no growth — I implore you to spend hours on a piece, see a similar piece on the same platform with a large number attached to it, truly believe you made a better product, and then have no one care.

It can be disheartening, even if you tell yourself it doesn’t matter. But that is part of the challenge. Most of the time, it isn’t even the piece itself. Here are a few frames of mind — not excuses, but context:

1. You just entered the market. If you went to a farmers’ market and sold a product, people wouldn’t really know you. The novelty might hit, but in a sea of vendors, novelty can get drowned out by noise. People who come to the market might have come for Betty, who is there every Sunday without fail and always has something interesting. You’re new — they don’t trust you yet. You just must show up, and people will take notice.
2. Attention is a measure of trust and loyalty. If you wrote a piece titled “The housing market is going to crash,” the valid question is: Who are you? Is this worth my time? There might be some good points, but who knows? On the other hand, if Grant Cardone — a notorious real estate educator — says, “The housing market is going to crash,” millions of people will flock to it. Sometimes, the content doing well isn’t just the content itself; it’s the content combined with who is saying it.
3. Sometimes it’s just bad. We genuinely over-index on how good we are at things. Part of taking this first step is being willing to accept your bad and wanting to improve. You should take pride in this alone. Most people will never take that step in their lives, so be proud of it, even when it feels bad.
4. It is only a failure until it works out.

B) The Getting Clicks Trap

The pain trap and the getting clicks trap usually go hand in hand. The clicks portion is simply the quantified measure of the pain. I have found that for me, the pain trap often turns into the clicks trap — you just must stay focused.

C) The Discipline Trap

Many people get confused by the idea of discipline to the point where they talk themselves into toxic discipline. For example, one of the traps I fell into when managing too many new platforms was telling myself, “Well, of course it’s hard, but I just have to be disciplined and continue.” This is where things get nuanced.

Yes, discipline is good — but you need to build a system you can be disciplined within. If you’re doing too much, you can never iterate and evolve. The point is to arrive at a system you can reasonably sustain. Trust me, it was hard realizing I simply can’t do as much as I want to while also leaving time for iteration. Construct a valid system first, then become disciplined within it.

If your goal is to write an article every day, but you constantly feel like you’re outputting bad writing without learning — just to get something out — it is not worth being disciplined in that system. Be disciplined, yes, but in a system that allows good work to be produced over time. Otherwise, you’re running an organization that is disciplined at producing garbage. Not fun.

D) The Identity Trap — Niches (I hate niches.)

There is a paradox here:

The real world increasingly rewards generalists. AI tools have made narrow specialization almost obsolete. In fact, the famous quote goes:

“A jack of all trades is a master of none…”

But it ends with:

“…but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

The issue is that platforms reward specialization — to a point. Once you’re large enough, the niche thing matters less, but to get started, the platform needs to know where to place you so it can organize the content you’re producing.

Platforms will consistently bring you to the same audience, but it is often hard to convey what you are doing when it is multifaceted. Algorithms do push content, but they will get confused about who to serve you.

This is an identity challenge, and it can confuse new entrants into the space of building in the open. We will discuss how to overcome it in the model.

Time Management

This takes two forms: time management while building, and time management with clients.

Eventually, you will get clients — either in the form of an actual business engagement or by servicing consumers with your product, tools, or research.

One development I had during this journey was landing my first client engagement — let’s go — but with it, I had set a goal of doing a thread a day and an article a day, as well as staying active on Twitter (I’m never calling it X).

The client’s work is revenue-producing → Important. The writing work is brand- and future-revenue-producing → Just as important.

So again, you must figure out what you can reasonably do with your limited time — and you need to rest. You get dumber with less sleep; that’s a fact. The entrepreneurial spirit idolizes not sleeping or eating — I struggle with this too, don’t get me wrong — but you must rest as hard as you work for long-term growth.

While building, there is a similar time management challenge, since most times the Build in the Open portion is largely distribution work. But on top of distribution work and client work, there is research work, business plan writing, education, and strategic planning.

Our goal in adopting Build in the Open is to enhance what you’re already doing — not pull you away from it.

As one can imagine, both time management issues can arise simultaneously. As you’ve probably gathered, I must find a way to manage client work alongside everything mentioned — it is difficult, which is precisely why it requires a model.

The Build in the Open Framework

Our goal here is to guide you through this curve by creating a symbiotic relationship between the lab and its builders. The Lab will make you an informed pessimist, present tools to guide you through the Valley of Despair, and bring you out as an informed optimist.

Who this framework is tailored for:

1. You don’t know what you want to build at all.
2. You know what you ultimately want to build, but you don’t know the incremental steps to generate cash flow to get there.

I will present this model in three flows, covering how the lab can supplement your work and the final symbiotic relationship.

Flow 1: Organizing to Defeat the Identity Trap

What would I do if I were going to start building in the open all over again?

The goal: Have each platform represent one of your niche ideas, and have them all combine into your overall website.

The model:

The best way to start is to map out where you ultimately want to go. No restrictions, no financial constraints — full, unrestricted dreaming about the goal of the organization you’re building, the research you’re working on, or the thing you’re creating.

Then write down the things you like to do — the things that feel like play. For me, they are:

1. I like to draw.
2. I want to combine blockchain transactions with accounting rules.
3. I am interested in AI automation.
4. I have a passion for finance.
5. I like to travel.
6. I want to express my thoughts on global policy and the environment.
7. I like to write.

The goal of this framework is to take pieces of your generalized interests, isolate them into specializations, fit them into respective platforms, and — over time — tie them together.

(Here is an outline and an example of my topics. Notice how I only assigned one or two to each respective platform.)

Now, with our “it takes a lot of work” lesson in mind, here is the reality: this is impossible to do on your own. Entrepreneurs usually laugh in the face of “impossible,” so let me be more precise.

As a solo individual or small team, it is impossible to cater to every platform while simultaneously studying what works, iterating on the next piece to improve, and building whatever you’re building.

At worst, you will fail. At best, you will be so burnt out that you’ll hate what you’re doing and what you’re putting out. So, here’s how I would practically start.

Choose one platform — the one you like the best.

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to express what you’re doing:

1. Video form
2. Written form

With some slight nuances, most video-form platforms resemble each other, and most written-form platforms resemble each other. It comes down to what you want.

Practical 1–2-week flow:

For one week, or two depending on what you’re working on, create some sort of media in each category. You don’t have to show it to anyone — just go through the process. This will do two things:

1. It will show you what is easiest or most naturally enjoyable to you — something you could theoretically produce on a daily or every-other-day tempo — and, perhaps more surprisingly:
2. It will break down the mental barriers to creating.

When I started creating on certain platforms, I noticed a huge mental block to just getting started. It took significant effort just to open the platform and begin, to set up a camera to make a video. But once I finally went through the process, it wasn’t bad, and I didn’t hate it — it was just a mental block.

You don’t have to love every platform, but in today’s environment, you are leaving something on the table by not discovering what they can do for you. You might as well try to be able to say you tried, rather than dismissing it altogether.

How to mold topics together over time — the 80/20 rule:

Make 80% of what you produce specifically about the topic assigned to that platform. If it’s finance, 80% of what you create will be about finance. Make the remaining 20% an experiment — that way, you can grow and pivot if an opportunity presents itself.

Flow 2: Create Something for Free and Show the Process

At this point, you should have your interests mapped and a rough outline of how to bridge them together over time — we will finalize this in Flow 3.

Now for the next step: practice. The best way to practice is by creating a project you will give away for free. Let me explain why.

This is as much a business strategy as it is a B.I.T.O strategy.

If you were a chef who wanted to open a restaurant, you would want to first test that you can make good food. Making something to give away is a stress test of whether what you’re working on will resonate with an audience. (I borrowed this from Hormozi — don’t reinvent the wheel.)

Analogies aside, this product can be anything: an actual product, a guide on how to research your topic, an education course, etc. This step will help get people’s foot in the door of what you have to offer, and it gives you a compact project you can complete within a month to practice the full process.

The goal:

1. Outline your platforms.
2. Pick one you like.
3. Pick a small project to give away.
4. Use that platform to show yourself building it.

This small project doesn’t have to be separate from what you’re building — in fact, it should be related. An obvious example: a lot of deep research involves modeling results. Show an audience how you built a model, package it as a how-to guide, and build it in the open.

This task will lead you naturally into the final flow.

Flow 3: Study and Iterate

With this project, you should have a relatively small and compact body of work, as well as a collection of posts showing the process of building in the open. This is your baseline.

From here, you will have two things:

1. An isolated version of your overall project.
2. The content you produced shows the process.

Now do it again — take your project and break it up into pieces that you will work through to achieve the goal.

All of us do this anyway. For example, if I were going to write a research paper:

1. The research phase (which can also be broken into sub-steps)
2. My raw draft
3. My modeling and visuals
4. A first draft combining the raw draft with visuals
5. Editing the final draft

With these steps, you can create content to accompany your process — giving you “seasons” of Build in the Open content to iterate on.

Look at what worked in one season versus another. I personally do a weekly review, but you can do a seasonal review: before starting a new section, take stock of what you want to try differently in the next season of building in the open.

It then becomes a constant process of iterating on your Build in the Open strategy as you work toward your goal.

Eventually, the final step is adding more platforms — but that will be another post.

At this point, you should be well on your way to building in the open.

Synergies — Why Do This with IF Lab?

Externally, the benefit of IF Lab is to create a platform that connects donors, investors, grant providers, and general readers to research content surrounding future technologies produced by the lab.

Internally, the benefit of collaboration between builders and IF Lab is to create tools that facilitate and automate the research process for output, collaboration, and quality. IF Lab, with a network of researchers, can provide funding by connecting researchers to grants, housing to produce tools from research, and a community to test those tools for iteration.

The synergies are threefold:

1. Builders get an institutional-level platform to produce research, IF Lab gets quality content for their audience.
2. Builders get connected to grants through their research, IF Lab grows in stature by housing quality projects.
3. Builders get the ability to create tooling and projects under the IF Lab umbrella, IF Lab is able to demonstrate hands-on use of technology.

Important note: IF Lab will never own what you produce. It is simply a platform focused on the open collaboration of a community.