1. I've always been on the personal brand side. More and more founders are building it now (sometimes even before the product is ready while it's still in development, before seed fundraising). The CEO builds their position so the product sells more easily at the official launch.

2. But I have experience with people who built the product, scaled it, and only then did we discover who was behind it.

Honestly, with the first approach, I'd be concerned that people invest more in me as a person than in the product. People would idealise the founder and overlook the product's flaws (which could hurt development and constructive feedback).

+ I noticed the most common mistake that many people who started building a personal brand first, connected their product to their personal accounts (emails, social media, etc.) and started having a problem selling these things, because they cannot "give someone keys" to their personal profiles.

Let me start from the creator s perspective:
I personally don t have a product (apart from hiring people for creative work or offering personal consultations).

But as a creator, I constantly share content, insights, and information, value that helps me build trust (for free). Based on that perceived expertise, people eventually decide to work with me (a paid service).

I don t want to rant here (but I probably will a bit)...

Almost every ad visual, but also a lot of organic content on social media, is very generic and created by AI (I get it, it s a cheaper and more scalable way of promoting). But when everyone does it, it becomes really hard to stand out and differentiate yourself.

With the advent of clawdbots, it's as if we've all lost our inhibitions and "put our lives completely in their hands."

I'm all for delegating work, but not giving them too much personal/sensitive stuff to handle.

There are a lot of products being hunted, launched, and competing for attention here.

But I still see some makers missing the very basics.

I absolutely love this platform.

The fact that I spend time here every single day is probably proof enough.

Honestly, I sometimes feel a bit of internal pressure or even fear that if I miss something, it will be hard to get back into work, especially because I m strongly embedded in tech.

And you can see it when you disconnect for 2 or 3 days and don t follow the news, you feel mentally better, but at the same time you start losing that sense of overview that feels quite important for your career.

A lot of people try to raise funding before they even begin.

And then sometimes I read those zero to hero stories. (Maybe they re a bit "polished" by the media to have publicity.)

In any case, building products has become much easier from a technical perspective, which also makes it cheaper especially for software startups.

There are founders you d love to NOT work for. And then there are founders whose company you wouldn t want to leave, no matter what.

A big part of that comes down to people, their values, and their character.

And often, that starts with the founder.

AI is incredibly good, I d even say almost perfect.

And for many people, that uniformity of perfect templates is starting to feel annoying.