İlknur B.

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 large companies (not just tech giants) are laying off employees at scale because AI can already do parts of their work faster, in higher volume, and at a comparable level of quality, sometimes even better.

At the same time, companies are starting to openly admit something important: AI is expensive.

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.