"Mommy will you build with me?"

My earnest four-year-old asked me this just after I'd announced my intention to go downstairs and make dinner. But who am I to turn down a girl who just wants to build?

She held in her hand a small stack of Magnatiles, the in-vogue building block kit for anyone with kids ages 2-6.

Like Legos, the nice thing about Magnatiles is that every new kit expands the possibilities. Over time, you can build castles, spaceships, or whatever your imagination dreams up. (Side note: If you're ever stuck on a birthday gift for anyone in this age range, it's nearly always a surefire win.)

"OK I just want to show you one thing..." she said and quickly got to work building a small but tricky prismatic structure.

First she showed me how she builds a base layer, then set up a couple of tiles vertically to set up the triagular diagonal wall structures that all fed in toward an offset roof tile. The second and third sides are the hardest ones to get right. Any offset triangle would knock the whole structure down. I watched her carefully hold the roof tile in place while stabilizing the structure with all three sides.

Then she turned to me and handed me the three remaining triangle pieces.

"Ok mommy, you finish it."

"Wait. You're so close! This last part is easy, are you sure you want me to finish it for you?"

"Yes!"

"But why?"

"Because I want you to."

So I took the three remaining tiles from her hand and easily snapped them into place. The prism house complete, she trotted upstairs while I started dinner, shaking my head and smiling.

How is it possible that my pre-K kid already recognizes the power of an incomplete build? That sometimes, the final step isn’t about doing it yourself—it’s about inviting someone else in.

The Power of An Incomplete Build

An incomplete build is a project that is intentionally designed to leave space for others to contribute.

I first learned this tactic a few years ago while working in web3. I was commissioned to research what made decentralized community-building different from their centralized counterparts. (Here's the full report*, which also links out to detailed summaries of many projects that I profiled.)

To conduct this research, I interviewed a dozen top projects across the onchain (i.e., crypto) ecosystem to understand how their communities formed, operated, and flourished. One of my favorite insights was how many successful early web3 projects started by building something incomplete—deliberately leaving lots of white space or gaps for others to fill in.

Here's what I wrote about this back in 2022:

Start with an incomplete build.

One interesting tendency among some web3 projects is to intentionally start with “incomplete builds.” A deck of Loot bags dropping as an NFT collection inspired dozens of side projects, teams, and builders to corral around the “player’s deck” and build out the world with additional elements: Maps, Realms, HyperLoot Characters. A 100% creative commons collection of NFTs called Nouns beacons a new wave of designers, animators, and storytellers to contribute to this emergent ecosystem. Dark Forest’s decentralized world-building game was made to be exploited – actively encouraging developers to build plug-ins, integrations, and other boundary-pushing gameplay tactics – even when this sometimes meant acknowledging when things went a little too far. Each of these projects, and many more in the space, serve as magnets in the way they playfulness and collaboration from a community that not only decides what comes next, but also builds it themselves.

In each of these examples (arguably the most truly decentralized projects I explored), getting the starting conditions right is more important than ever. Sina Habibian who helps web3 builders through Zeitgeist said:

“I think being thoughtful/intentional about the initial conditions actually matters more with decentralized projects like Loot and Nouns. That's because the core team (if a core team even exists) can't course correct as easily after the fact. There is meaningful inertia around the initial choices.”

Each of these projects—Loot, Nouns, and Dark Forest—started as some version of an onchain game or NFT collection:

• A deck of trading cards with no predefined game (Loot)

• A set of characters without a story (Nouns)

• A game with an evolving set of rules (Dark Forest)

The idea is, you inject something fun into an ecosystem, and then you invite the community to "finish the build" with you.

As a result, the earliest adopters become co-creators, shaping the project's ethos from the ground up. One major advantage of this approach is that it allows the original creators to explore multiple creative directions simultaneously. Instead of dictating the next steps, they can observe which ideas gain the most traction as the community experiments.

The best concepts naturally rise to the surface, and the core team can then focus resources on what’s already proving to have momentum. It's a really fun way to build in public, with friends.

How to Share the Load

Whether you’re starting with a few key ingredients and inviting others to co-create, or taking a project to 90% and asking your network to shape the final 10%, there are countless ways to structure an incomplete build.

The magic of incomplete builds isn’t just about creativity—it’s about shared ownership. When people contribute to shaping something, they feel invested in its success. That makes them natural evangelists, creating a built-in viral loop.

Somehow, my four-year-old already gets this. Maybe deep down, we all intuitively recognize that people latch onto things more when they participate in the process. So maybe the question is: How can you retain this playful and collaborative mindset as an adult?

What's great about building anything today is that it's easier than ever to share the load. With people more accessible and fractionally available than ever before, it's easy to tap people in and out of even micro-components of any project. It's easier than ever to launch something into the world and see what sticks. And it's easier to have a conversation with a diverse set of stakeholders and users in every step of the way.

So if you're sitting on something half-baked, instead of asking, "What do I need to do to finish this?" try asking, "How can I make this something others want to help build?"