What Happens When You Build Software in Front of 90 People

The Uncomfortable Part Happened 12 Minutes In

I'm live on LinkedIn. 90 people watching. I ask my Chief of Staff agent a question.

It starts pulling up emails.

Confidential emails.

About my apartment roof being replaced. A strata email that had absolutely no business being on screen.

"Oh man, probably shouldn't have shown that one."

Nobody cares about strata roof replacements. But showing personal email content to 90 strangers? That's the exact moment where building in public gets real.

And it's the exact moment I knew this was worth doing.

Why LinkedIn Live (And Why 2pm on a Wednesday)

That's where my audience lives.

I thought maybe 10-15 people would tune in. At 2pm. On a Wednesday.

We hit 90 at peak.

Way more people are active on LinkedIn than I expected. The comments came in every few seconds. The engagement was insane. Multiple people asked me to make it weekly.

I could have done YouTube. Or Twitch. Or a polished Loom.

But LinkedIn is where the builders are. The founders. The people who actually want to ship things with AI, not just talk about it.

Go where your audience already lives.

What I Actually Built (In 60 Minutes)

Five projects running simultaneously:

1. LinkedIn post writer for University of Auckland CS Society
2. Newsletter sponsor schedule with automated tracking
3. PitchMaster discount code (live product launch)
4. Chief of Staff expansion (adding new capabilities)
5. Monday morning AI team meeting (building the agent framework)

Five Claude Code windows open at once.

Comments coming in every few seconds.

A 2-3 minute delay between what I said and what people saw - awkward as hell.

Someone asked about costs: $250/month for Claude. $100/month for Vercel. $50 for random tools.

Another person asked about security. I was honest: "I run --dangerously-skip-permissions because I trust Claude and I want speed."

Not the answer a security expert would give. But it's the truth.

Building in public forces you to be honest about the unsexy parts.

The PitchMaster "Flop" That Wasn't

I launched a product live.

PitchMaster. An AI agent that reviews your pitch deck and gives you founder-quality feedback in 10 minutes.

Offered a special discount code to everyone watching.

One person used it during the stream.

One.

I'll be honest. That stung a bit.

But then 2-3 people actually tested it live. Got feedback within 10 minutes. One person posted on LinkedIn afterwards saying they'd genuinely pay for it.

Turns out not everyone has a pitch deck ready to review at 2pm on a Wednesday. Shocking, I know.

The real win wasn't conversions. It was showing the entire build process. From idea to working product to real user feedback. All in one hour.

The Austrian Passport Rabbit Hole

Someone asked about my most ridiculous Claude session.

I told them about the time I asked Claude to research Austrian citizenship requirements.

It went 8 hours deep.

Dive after dive. Every legal pathway. Every edge case. Every ancestry possibility.

I didn't ask it to go that deep. It just... kept going.

That's the thing about AI agents. Sometimes they surprise you. Sometimes they show you your apartment roof emails. Sometimes they research citizenship law for 8 hours.

The chat loved it. Because it wasn't planned. It was just a weird thing that happened.

"I Don't Type Anymore, I Just Talk"

Multiple people asked about my workflow.

I use WhisperFlow. Voice-to-text for everything.

I literally don't type anymore. I just talk.

Those five projects during Build Hour? All spoken prompts.

The speed difference is wild. I can think and build at the same pace now. No keyboard bottleneck.

People in my office walk past and see me having full conversations with my screen. It's so freaking weird. But it makes you work 10 times faster.

Someone in the comments said: "This is the future of programming."

Maybe. Or maybe it's just the present for people willing to try it.

What I'd Change Next Time

The screen share setup was rubbish.

I want to switch between screen share and face camera. When I'm talking and not showing code, people don't need to stare at my terminal. But I haven't worked out the software yet.

Also, the post-production was non-existent. I just uploaded the whole recording to YouTube. All the umming and ahhing. All the awkward pauses. Nothing cut or polished.

That's actually kind of the point, though.

The messy, unedited version is more honest than a polished cut. You see the real workflow. The confusion. The moments where I'm stuck.

That's where the real learning happens.

The Deep Reason This Matters

Here's what I really learned:

Seeing someone build is completely different from hearing someone talk about building.

You can read 100 blog posts about AI agents. Watch 50 YouTube tutorials. Listen to 30 podcasts.

Or you can watch someone actually build one. See how they think. See where they get stuck. See what works and what doesn't.

That was the unlock for me - watching my friend build at Startup Striders. Not a presentation. Not a tutorial. Just building.

I really hope Build Hour has the same effect for the people who watched.

The world is divided between talkers and doers. 99% are talkers.

Build Hour is for the 1% who want to do.

Your story is the magnet to attract opportunity. Transparency and vulnerability are the amplifiers.

So turn on your camera. Open your terminal. And show people how you actually work.

The ones who matter will lean in.