Six Months of Streaming Every Week — What I Know Now

Twenty-six weeks ago I hit "Go Live" for the first time and started building this app on camera. I had no audience, no plan, and no idea what I was doing from a streaming perspective. I just knew I wanted to build in public and that video was the most honest format for it.

Six months later, here's what I actually know.

Consistency beats quality. My first five streams were rough. Bad audio, no overlays, awkward silences when I was debugging. But I showed up every week. That consistency compounded. The audience that found me in month one is still here in month six — and they've brought friends.

Debugging live is the best content. I used to dread hitting a bug on stream. Now I lean into it. The streams where I spend 45 minutes chasing a weird race condition get more comments than the streams where everything works. People want to see the real process, not a highlight reel.

Talking through decisions builds trust. When I explain why I'm making an architectural choice — even if I'm not sure it's right — the chat engages. People have opinions. Sometimes they're right and I change course. That back-and-forth is the whole point.

I underestimated the editing time. I thought I'd just stream and post the VOD. In reality, a three-hour stream needs at least an hour of editing to be watchable as a YouTube video. I didn't account for that in my schedule. For the first two months I was consistently behind on uploads.

Fix: I now record streams with a separate "YouTube cut" in mind. I structure the stream so the first 90 minutes is the most focused work, and I edit that into the upload. The rest goes to the full VOD for subscribers.

I didn't build the email list early enough. Platforms come and go. Algorithms change. I should have been pushing newsletter signups from stream one. I started doing it consistently around month three. The list is growing now, but I left months of compounding on the table.

I burned out in month four. Two weeks in a row I almost didn't stream. The project felt stuck, the audience felt flat, and the grind of showing up every week felt heavy. I pushed through, but I should have built in a planned break earlier. Sustainability matters more than streaks.

• 26 streams completed without missing a week
• 12,000+ YouTube subscribers (up from 0)
• ~800 average concurrent viewers on Twitch
• 3,400 newsletter subscribers
• 50 beta users in the app

None of those numbers are viral. All of them are real, earned, and growing.

Yes. Without hesitation.

Streaming forced me to build in a way I never would have otherwise. I can't cut corners on camera. I can't skip the hard parts. The audience holds me accountable in a way that no deadline or co-founder ever could.

If you're building something and considering streaming it — start. The first stream will be bad. Stream anyway. For the deeper dive on what the live coding experience actually feels like from the inside — the psychological side, the chat dynamics, what breaks constantly — I wrote What Nobody Tells You About Streaming Your Code Live.

The next one is every week on YouTube and Twitch. Come watch.