Usama Hanif

After auditing my own bank statements, I found 6 subscriptions I'd completely forgotten about totaling $136/month. The manual process of combing through CSVs was painful enough that I built a tool to automate it.

What surprised me most: the hardest part wasn't finding the charges it was actually canceling them. Most services bury the cancel button.

Curious if anyone else here has gone through a similar "wait, I'm paying for WHAT?" moment while building or using fintech tools. What patterns have you noticed?

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.