Building in public from Ethiopia
The internet makes the map smaller. It does not make the context disappear. Here is how I think about sharing the work from Addis.
I grew up watching people build on the internet from San Francisco, London, Lagos, Bangalore. For a long time it felt like a place I could watch, not a place I could stand in.
Then I started posting the work. Not the highlight reel ΓÇö the actual building. That changed more than any tutorial.
Context is a feature
"16, Ethiopia, building products" is not a disclaimer. It is information.
People do not follow me because I pretend to be a generic Silicon Valley founder. They follow because the path is specific: school in Addis, products like Shiplog and YScroll, a community that is still being built here.
If you flatten your story to sound global, you become easier to ignore.
Post the work, not the performance
Building in public fails when it becomes a second product. You start optimizing for screenshots of metrics instead of the thing you were supposed to ship.
My rule is simple. If I cannot point to a commit, a user conversation, or a decision, I do not post yet.
The audience is a side effect. The work is the feed.
The map is smaller than it looks
A lot of the people I learn from have never been to Ethiopia. A lot of the people I want to help have never been to a tech conference. Both can be true on the same internet.
I want this blog, the videos, and the products to work for both rooms: the person shipping from a well-funded office, and the person shipping after school on bad wifi.
If you are building from a place the timeline forgets, start anyway. The internet is crowded. It is not full.