Denis Kuznetsov

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.

We ve worked in two other eco-systems (India & France), and each has clear strengths and trade-offs in terms of talent density, cost of building, access to capital, speed of decision-making, and openness to risk all vary a lot.

Curious to hear from founders and operators who ve built outside the US:

• Which ecosystem punches the most above its weight today?

• Where do you see the best balance between talent, capital, and customer access?

• Are there cities/countries that are especially strong for specific stages (0 1 vs scaling) or specific verticals (AI, fintech, climate, SaaS, deep tech)?

I m experimenting with something new in Trace.

Instead of asking people to check another app, Trace now sends a daily email with the most relevant things for their interests from across the web.

Same idea as the feed:
you tell it what you care about
it adapts based on what you read or skip
no trending-for-the-sake-of-it
meant to be read in a few minutes, then closed

I m curious: