Building In Public: OCTA Co-Founder And CEO Jon Santillan

In an era where startups often make themselves known only after they raise a funding round or land a marquee customer, UAE-based entrepreneur Jon Santillan is doing something that feels almost radical: he’s offering an unfettered look at just about all the work he and his team are doing at his enterprise—even if they haven’t nailed everything down yet. Indeed, Santillan calls his posts on the social media platform LinkedIn “building in public,” which, according to him, means showing the work while you’re still figuring things out—as he puts it: “Not after the big win, not after you’ve got it all figured up, but during.”

Santillan, co-founder and CEO of OCTA, a UAE-based fintech platform that helps B2B companies get paid on time by automating invoice collection, contract management, and payment tracking, has embarked on this arguably novel way of building a business in his second outing as an entrepreneur in the UAE. He had previously founded Denarii, a money transfer platform also built out of Dubai, which went on to be acquired by MENA unicorn Careem. And as Santillan tells it, the decision to build OCTA in public was made the moment he and his co-founder Nupur Mittal left their roles at Careem to launch their new enterprise. “The day Nupur and I left Careem, I posted it on LinkedIn,” he says. “To set the tone that we will be building in public.”

For Santillan, this wasn’t a branding tactic or a transparency stunt—it was a deliberate counter to what he saw as a growing problem in the region’s startup ecosystem. “At my last startup, raising money early on was brutal,” he says. “You’re trying to sell a vision without much numbers in place, and even the people who say they invest early are actually just waiting for traction. You’re constantly trying to prove something without anything concrete to point to. That messes with your head.” That experience, combined with a growing frustration with how the region evaluates early-stage founders, helped crystallize the approach he and Mittal would take with OCTA.

“A lot of venture capitalists who entered the market post-2018 didn’t come from operating backgrounds,” Santillan points out. “Many came from consulting or banking, only a few who are real operators. So they rely on the only things they know how to measure: decks, markets, metrics. They weren’t trained to spot grit, belief. They were trained to spot patterns. That’s not a criticism. It’s just how the industry evolved. Which is why I chose to share the process. Because the earlier you are, the more important it becomes to show the work, and eventually they can pattern match from the progress not from the numbers. You can’t fake progress if people are watching it unfold."

It’s therefore this unspoken rule that entrepreneurs must present certainty—basically, to look like they’ve already figured it all out— that Santillan wanted to challenge. “That kind of pressure is why you see so many founders in the region curate their story,” he points out. “They feel like they have to. Everything’s polished, the decks are overly optimistic, and it becomes this game of pretending you’ve figured it all out.” The result? Early hype for some, sure—but eventual silence for many. “I’ve seen what happens next,” Santillan adds. “Quiet shutdowns. Founders disappearing. No one talks about it, but it happens a lot. And that kinda stuck with me.”

This, in turn, led Santillan and Mittal to take a different path for their entrepreneurial journey. “With OCTA, Nupur and I made a deliberate call: we’re not going to pretend we have everything figured out,” he shares. “We’re both technologists. We didn’t come in as finance experts— and that’s exactly why we saw the pain point. We questioned things others accepted. That outsider view, combined with first-principles thinking, is what’s driving our approach. And we want people to see that in real time. That means we’re going to share what we’re learning, what’s breaking, what still doesn’t make sense, the parts that feel slow, or confusing, or [going] totally sideways. If someone’s going to back us, or join the team, or even just follow the journey, they should see the real version of how difficult it is to build a company. Not the investor- friendly version. The actual version. The one we live through every day.”

OCTA co-founders Jon Santillan and Nupur Mittal. Image courtesy OCTA.

But building in public is not just about optics for Santillan— it is also a way to stay deliberate in how the work gets done. “I’m not doing this to be trendy or transparent for the sake of it,” he shares. “There is a bigger reason for it. One, we’re doing it because it keeps us grounded. It keeps me and the team accountable. And honestly, it’s the only shot people like me get. I wasn’t born in the region, and I’m not from it either. The reality is that I didn’t grow up with the same access or same connections as many others here. It took me 20 years to have what I have, and to take a shot at entrepreneurship. We don’t have the luxury of hiding behind signals. So, we show the work that we can deliver.”

"And look, maybe this all sounds too ambitious, or a little corny, I get that,” Santillan continues. “But one part of the reason is that I’m not doing this just for us. We want to be part of something bigger; I want to help build something better for the next [generation of ] founders in the region... I want to be part of the solution to inspire, to establish what the standard looks like, fixing the system, not just playing inside it.” To Santillan’s credit, his mindset when it comes to owning the messiness of the entrepreneurial journey, documenting it in real time, and allowing others to see it unfold, has already begun to ripple across the region’s founder community. “You’ll be surprised how many founders who now follow our path raised capital, acquired customers, and have more engaging investors,” Santillan says. “It sets a standard for all of us, and hopefully, it makes it much easier to weed out bad actors in the ecosystem.”

Among the biggest benefits, Santillan says, is the trust it builds. “When people see you share the actual work, not the fundraising headline version, they trust that you’re in it for real,” he points out. “I don’t need to pitch hard. The updates do the work.” There’s also a kind of momentum that comes from that consistency—a subtle but powerful sense of forward motion. “Building in public has changed how people engage with us,” Santillan says. “Building in public has become a growth engine. It’s driven inbound, not just customers, but investors, hires, collaborators. Some invested without a deck, just by following our updates. That’s what consistency builds.”

Of course, building in public can come with its own set of risks—but for Santillan, that’s not something to shy away from. “I don’t feel pressure to manage appearances,” he says. “In my opinion, once you start optimizing for how people will perceive you, you’ve already lost. Not that we don’t care, but if you’re serious about building something bigger than yourself, you can’t afford to make decisions based on how you think LinkedIn will react. That’s performative. It’s not progress.”

That belief extends to what’s worth sharing, too. While many founders worry about only putting out content when it’s “ready,” Santillan sees value in the messy middle. “Founders worry too much about whether what they’re sharing is too early, too small, not meaningful enough,” he says. “But that’s usually where the real value is—the early tests, the broken assumptions, the weird bugs, tools we use—that tell you more than the big milestones ever will.” Santillan’s filter is therefore simple: if it feels real, it’s worth saying. “If it resonates with me—if it’s something we’re going through, a problem we’re solving, or a pattern I keep repeating in conversations with other founders or in ecosystem discussions—I’ll share it,” he says. “Because if it’s speaking to me, there’s a good chance it’s speaking to someone else too.”

And so far, Santillan says he has no regrets about building in public. “Some people think it’s a distraction, but it’s actually been the opposite,” he says. “It creates momentum for us. It keeps the team energized. It builds trust. No regrets. Every post becomes part of the trail—and if someone wants to understand how we really built this, that trail should be there.” Plus, in a region where polished decks and neatly packaged narratives still dominate the conversation, Santillan’s approach is a quiet but powerful challenge to the status quo. He’s not just documenting the journey—he’s helping reframe what progress really looks like. “And whether you agree, disagree, or have your own take, the fact that you’re thinking about what we’re sharing means it’s working,” he concludes.

Founder To Founder: Jon Santillan’s Tips For You To Start Building In Public

1. Start before you’re ready, and go at your own pace—but keep going. “You don’t need to post daily. Just be consistent enough to leave a trail. You can start by sharing one thing a week. Not a highlight. Not a finished product. Just something real, an insight from a customer call, something that broke, a quiet win, a product fix, a small release, or a shift in your thinking. Frequency beats formality.”

2. Make it part of your process. “If you’re discussing it with your co-founder, a story you learned from others, or writing it in Slack, that’s your content. Share it as is.”

3. Show the build, not just the launch. “People don’t connect with perfection. They connect with progress. A raw Figma shot, a changelog, a screenshot with context—these are the markers of momentum.”

4. Keep it human. “This isn’t about crafting a narrative. It’s about telling the truth, simply. A single paragraph that sounds like you. One visual. One honest line. That’s often more powerful than a polished thread.”

5. Ask for feedback. “If someone engages with your update, ask what they think. What stood out. What was missing. How you can improve.”

6. And one last thing: be kind to yourself. “You’re building something from nothing. That’s already extraordinary. It will stretch you in ways nothing else can. It’s often lonely, but it doesn’t have to be. Share the journey. Invite people in. You don’t need to have all the answers. You just need the courage to keep going. Yalla, keep rocking.”

Pictured in the lead image is OCTA co-founder and CEO Jon Santillan. Image courtesy OCTA.