I heard this for years - from market leaders, from VCs, from people I respected.
"This is a regulatory problem, not a technical one." "This is a feature, not a product." "People don't pay for idealistic things."
<<Back story>> In 2019, my team and I went deep into Self-Sovereign Identity: wrote research papers, ran experiments, and found ourselves at the intersection of data, identity, and web3. Right at that intersection lay data portability and sovereignty: the ability to own your data and take it anywhere on the internet.
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.
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.
