Saw Hayley's stance on on-device transcription and patterns staying on the phone. We made the same call and it is harder than it looks once you say it out loud. Minimi is an ambient memory layer for Claude. It captures what you see and what is said on calls, on your Mac, encrypted on-device. Keeping capture and storage local meant giving up some easy wins (cross-device sync, cheaper retrieval) in exchange for a promise we could actually stand behind. Two things I am still wrestling with: retrieval quality without cloud-side processing, and how to explain local-first to people who assume cloud by default. How are you framing it? We launched this week. If the local-first angle is your thing, I would genuinely like your read on it.
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.
minimi
