Building in Public: How to Share SaaS Progress Without Oversharing

"Building in public" has become the default way indie founders market a SaaS product - posting progress on X, showing the climb from $0 to whatever's next. The problem is the binary choice it usually forces on you: publish your exact revenue for the internet to see, or don't build in public at all. Chartsy's Share Progress feature was built to remove that choice.

What Is Share Progress?

Share Progress is a feature that generates a branded, shareable image showing how close you are to a monthly revenue or growth goal - a ring chart and a percentage, ready to post to X/Twitter or anywhere else. It's built directly from your live Stripe or Paddle data, so the number updates as your business does, and it includes a privacy toggle that shows your percentage-to-goal without ever exposing the underlying dollar figure.

In practice: most founders who build in public aren't trying to hide that they're growing - they just don't want a specific dollar number attached to their name in a public feed forever. Share Progress is built for that middle ground.

How the Privacy Toggle Works

Turn the privacy toggle on, and instead of posting "$46 of my $100 May goal," Chartsy generates "46% of my May goal." Same ring chart, same visual progress, no dollar amount anywhere in the image. You get the credibility and momentum of showing real progress toward a real goal, without publishing exact revenue to a public audience that includes competitors, customers, and anyone else who might read too much into a specific number.

	Privacy toggle off	Privacy toggle on
Shows exact dollar progress	Yes	No
Shows percentage toward goal	Yes	Yes
Shows the ring/progress chart	Yes	Yes
Good for	Full build-in-public transparency	Sharing momentum without exposing numbers

Why This Matters for Indie Founders

Revenue numbers invite unwanted attention. A specific dollar figure posted publicly gets scrutinized, screenshotted, and sometimes used against you - by competitors estimating your business, or by customers who feel entitled to a discount because "you're clearly doing fine." Percentage-to-goal sidesteps all of that while still showing real, verifiable momentum.

Momentum is the actual story, not the number. Followers who engage with build-in-public content are usually responding to the trajectory - the fact that you hit 80% of a goal you set, or that this month beat last month - not the specific dollar amount. Progress-toward-goal captures that story just as well as a raw number does.

It removes the "do I have to hide my whole journey" false choice. Founders who aren't comfortable publishing exact MRR often stop building in public altogether rather than finding a middle ground. Share Progress exists specifically so that discomfort doesn't have to mean opting out of the format entirely.

How to Use It

Set a monthly goal in Chartsy's Goals section - a revenue target, a subscriber target, or both.
Open Share Progress any time during the month to generate an up-to-date image reflecting real progress against that goal.
Toggle privacy on or off depending on how much you want to show for that particular post.
Post the image to X or wherever your build-in-public audience is.

The image regenerates from live data every time you open it, so a screenshot from the 5th and one from the 25th of the same month will show different progress - there's no manual updating required.

What a Realistic Cadence Looks Like

Founders who build in public most successfully tend to post progress on a consistent, low-effort cadence - weekly or at meaningful milestones (50%, 75%, goal hit) - rather than trying to narrate every single day. Share Progress is designed to make that cadence nearly zero-effort: open it, screenshot it, post it, without composing a new image or recalculating percentages by hand each time.

Share Your Own Progress

Share Progress is available to any Chartsy account with a connected Stripe or Paddle account and at least one goal set.

Set a goal and generate your first progress image →

Frequently Asked Questions About Share Progress

Does Share Progress show my exact MRR publicly? Only if you want it to. With the privacy toggle off, it shows the exact dollar progress toward your goal. With it on, it shows only the percentage - for example "46% of my May goal" - with no dollar figure anywhere in the image.

What goals can I track with Share Progress? Any goal you've set in Chartsy's Goals section, typically a monthly revenue target or a subscriber target. The Share Progress image reflects live progress toward whichever goal you're currently tracking.

Does the image update automatically? Yes - Share Progress generates its image from your live Stripe or Paddle data each time you open it, so it always reflects your current progress, not a stale snapshot from when you first set the goal.

Is Share Progress only useful for public build-in-public posting? No - some founders use it privately too, for example sharing a screenshot in a mastermind group or with an accountability partner, using the privacy toggle if they'd rather not share the exact number even in a smaller group.

Do I need a goal set before I can use Share Progress? Yes - Share Progress shows progress toward a goal you've already set in the Goals section. If you haven't set one yet, set a monthly revenue or subscriber target first.