Build your brand before your product, or launch first and reveal yourself later?
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.
Which opens the question:
Which approach brings more advantages in your opinion?
Replies
Feels like it’s not brand vs product but what you’re actually building trust in. If people follow you for opinions, they’ll show up early but they’ll also leave fast if the product doesn’t hold up. If they discover you through the product, trust builds slower but tends to stick longer. Been noticing this while building…the ideal seems somewhere in between
where the thinking attracts people and the product keeps them.
Have you seen cases where strong personal brands actually delayed honest product feedback?
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@kabirsalunkhe Not maybe delayed, but people falsely praised the product because they glorified the influencer. :D and I can see this pattern also in the politics (but this is not the direction I want to lead this convo) :D
@busmark_w_nika Interesting way to frame it. False positives might actually do more damage than delays. You think you’re getting validation but it’s not real signal and you start optimizing in the wrong direction. Especially early on when you’re still figuring out what matters. Strong personal brands can blur that line it’s not just about timing, it’s about the quality of feedback. Maybe the harder part is creating an environment where people feel okay being honest even if they like or respect the builder.
The personal account problem is underrated, seen founders realize too late that their product's entire audience lives on their personal LinkedIn or Twitter and there's no clean way to hand that off. Building on owned channels from day one saves a lot of headaches later.
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@farrukh_butt1 this is another thing and problem (but also a part of this discussion). My personal brand lives on PH and LinkedIn. I was banned several times on LinkedIn and was losing profits. Because my collaborations were there.
So I don't think it's about building a brand. I don't think the focus should be on the brand personally. I think the question should be about the problem you're solving. If you solve a problem that people are actually dying to solve, no one would really care about your personal brand as a person; they would care more about the business.
So this tool is helping me solve this problem. When they now find the person, they fall in love with the person. I don't think it should be either/or. I just feel like the main focus should not be on the person building the product, but on what you're really able to offer people with the product that you're building.
In essence, the founder's personal brand is not as imprtant as what the product delivers and how it delivers it. I do not know who is PH but I use it a lot. And so with other products.
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@janefrances_christopher Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve seen many influencers with large followings launch products that didn’t solve any meaningful problem. A good example is Naval, who launched AirChat (a new social media app built around using your voice and transcribing it into text messages).
People loved it, the first week was a sensation, and now nobody even remembers it. So yes, it’s about solving a problem, but I feel like many personal brands launch something (anything) that solves absolutely nothing, and it ends up flopping.
@busmark_w_nika Oh perfect example. Yes, it might go viral at first, but building a successful product is about making it last. What happens after launch (50 days and 1 year later) - that's what matters the most
I built first and would have benefit if I started building the brand earlier on. It feels like time wasted, especially when you are building in an experience you have no prior experience and you need to build a lot of trust.
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@norteapp at least, I am prepared now for building something and then only to push it through my personal brand :D
@busmark_w_nika You are in a great spot! You'll kill it.
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@norteapp hahaha, Thank you! :)
Both, at the same time, but kept separate. I started a build-in-public YouTube channel under my own name, and a separate brand account for the product. Same story, different stages.
The personal account is where I share the journey. The product account is where the product lives. If I ever hand off or sell, the keys are separable.
Still pre-launch, so I do not know yet which one actually drives conversion. But keeping them structurally separate felt like the right call from day one.
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@hellobzec which was easier to build? Your personal brand or the product brand? :) And how did you merge these two into one? (or didn't merge at all?) 🤔
@busmark_w_nika Kept them separate the whole way. The personal account is the story, the product account is the destination. Merging felt like it would dilute both.
Honestly, the personal brand was easier to build — the story writes itself. The product brand is harder because it has to stand alone without the context of why it exists.
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@hellobzec agree on that personal account stuff is easier to express :)
I definitely see value, and proof, of both
There are some great product builders out there, and their reputation precedes them. It definitely adds a halo effect. It might that they tend to have forward-thinking ideas, involved in the right circles that allows early execution (as in people follow them and help them build quickly), or they may be great designers.
And on the other hand 1) there are many successful products out there that don't reveal the founder(s) behind the scenes or 2) it's known, but it's only relevant in certain contexts (professionals from the industry, other product builders, investors.
I've also certainly seen evidence of a product with traction then having the founder start creating a personal brand, talking about the product, and that humanization often creates a (positive more often than not?) feedback loop. But that might be a parallel concept.
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@jitain Not gonna lie, in this era of AI is difficult to sell so you need to take advantage even from your social media personal account following :) Thos, I would enjoy more if I knew that my product is successful itself (and not only successful, but useful) :)
I don't have enough experience to answer which brings more advantages. But as a user, I know I enjoy seeing #1, but only in moderation in the sense of the founders focusing their content more on the product rather than themselves. For example, if the app is about finding recipes, I strongly prefer the content is generally about food and the founder's personal experiences with it, like their favorite recipes or recipes that are deeply sentimental to them, rather than the founder's entrepreneurial journey.
In other words, I guess I prefer content that's more educational with a touch of personal.
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@christina_m_nguyen I am also this kind of person, but maybe I am biased because I have been building my own personal brand :D
In my experience, founder-first can quietly distort everything. When people are sold on the person, early traction and feedback can look healthier than they actually are. It's the halo effect in action - users overlook real product gaps because they trust the founder. You end up optimizing for the wrong signals and realizing it way too late.
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@sourav_das29 Who knows, maybe I am doing the biggest mistake of my life to showing my face while building the product, we will see :D
If nobody knows who you are yet (i.e. my personal case), the brand-first approach is IMV mostly just self-promotion with nothing behind it. Shipping something real and useful (probably quite hard nowadays, hahaha) at least gives people a reason to care about the person who built it
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@sk_uxpin Yes. The brand position and useful product can redirect the attention from the product to the founder. But you said it – it is pretty difficult to create something useful :D
@busmark_w_nika I wish I was born 50 years ago (from that perspective alone though - I'm more than happy living in the current world :D)
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@sk_uxpin If I was born 50 years ago, I could finally afford a property :DD
@busmark_w_nika too good to be true :D
It's like Apple to Orange.
Completely subjective to each founder's journey. If it's the first product and the founder's career has started. Then product will come first. If the career has been going on for a while then personal brand will help launch the product.
Subsequently working on your personal brand throughout life is advised as jobs, products, companies might change but you are the constant in each..
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@mohit_gupta138 I haven't been thinking about that this way of "timing" but for sure, for me it has always been a personal brand because I didn't have any product, only services tied to me.
@busmark_w_nika Ok, if we were to pull on the time thread a bit. Then maybe think about the balance between launching the second service that was tied to you vs the last one. and the effort that you might have put in each (did it get easier with time and your compounding efforts on personal brand). would love to know