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
Second approach..because there is a limit in which you can scale your personal branding..Because when you are going the product/ service way, how good your product/ service is what determines its longevity..and when you are building the company, the personal brand becomes the deterrent..to start its ok..but the way should be move slowly but swiftly from personal branding to product
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@shikha_pakhide Where do you think is the limit of the personal brand? Like where is the end?
Truly
I think you are right with your intuition. I've done both and my second business that I built has been exponentially more successful because of what you said -- people are buying the product as it is, for what it is, and their usage of it is 100% signal and no noise, so I have a source of objective truth to follow.
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@eroltoker Did you use a personal brand for promoting, or not?
Truly
@busmark_w_nika First business, used personal brand, raised $17M, got to $4M ARR, gartner magic quadrant, keynoted the biggest conference in my industry, got 50% of my TAM to follow me on linkedin. walked away with $0. Second business, built in secret, barely anyone knows what i'm doing and 24 months in i'm semi-retired. I tried to start getting more involved with customers recently but basically the business/customer based optimized itself so there's nothing for me to do (the best customers stayed, the bad fit ones left -- I guess the free market works).
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@eroltoker Do you find "only the product business" as more successful?
For Sweepbase I deliberately went the other way. There is no founder face on the homepage and no personal-brand layer at all. The brand is the category. People who land on the site come through "crypto card comparison" searches, read the data, and have no idea who built it. That has tradeoffs: zero pre-launch hype, no Twitter audience to ride. But trust sits on the data instead of on me being likeable, and for a comparison site that felt safer. Curious whether you think the brand-first approach works equally well for B2C utilities, or mostly for SaaS and community-led products where the founder's voice is the actual moat?
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@sweepbase Sweepbase is a product related to crypto? TBH, if yes, it is more likely that they will not use faces because crypto is related to too many scams :D
Asa.team
The "keys to personal profiles" problem is real and underrated. We've seen teams build decent audiences under a founder's personal account and then hit a wall when they needed to hand off community management. The brand becomes inseparable from one person and that's a liability at some point, not just a feature.
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@ng_junsheng The boths (or all + employees), if they were built equally with a slight emphasis on a personal brand of maker/founder – would be the best I think
@busmark_w_nika Most founders don’t fail at brand vs product — they fail at timing clarity.
Knowing when to show up vs when to stay behind the product is the real gap.
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@piyush_teq When is the right time to show up your face then? :)
I’d separate “build an audience” from “make the founder the product.” The first can de-risk launch because you learn the market’s language earlier; the second can become a trap if every asset, relationship, and belief lives inside the founder’s personal account.
My preferred version is founder-led but not founder-dependent: publish the thinking publicly, use it to sharpen the category POV, but route the strongest language, objections, and proof back into product/brand assets the company can actually own.
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@jim_jeffers Th real challenge is to make a combo that will make your product survive :D
I prefer the second one.I think if a brand relies entirely on a person,it is only a matter of time before the brand falls apart. No one is perfect——even the most careful people will make mistakes.But replying on product inself is far more sustainable.A brand's long-term development needs consumer who thinks critically,not consumers who thinks emotionally.
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@siqi_huang1 2 is ideal, and if the product becomes successful, people will naturally start paying attention to the maker.
@busmark_w_nika Yes,once a product becomes successful,attention naturally starts flowing toward founder as well.From the point on,choosing between building a personal brand or staying low-key and continuing to focus on the products becomes two very diffrenet paths.Personally,I lean more toward the latter.Building involves more complicated factors-shaping a public persona,giving up a certain degree of privacy...If i stay focuesd on product instead,the questions become much simper:Is the product good enough?
hello @busmark_w_nika I think the strongest path is building in public while keeping the product brand separate from day one.
A founder’s voice can create trust, attract early users, and make launch momentum much easier — but the product still needs its own channels, audience, and identity so it is not completely dependent on one person. That feels like the healthiest balance long term. 👏
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@alpertayfurr That's something what I am doing right now actually :)
This always sounds like a strategic decision, but I think it’s actually more personal.
Some people naturally like sharing and talking, so building a brand first feels easy. Others just want to put their head down and build.
The only thing that seems universally true is that you eventually need both (something real and someone paying attention). I think the order matters less than people think.
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@sara_magina For now, I am that talking person, and it is honestly the only asset I have now :D
Cosmic
The risk of brand-first isn't just account transferability, it's that you optimize the product for what makes you look good rather than what solves the problem. That said, founders who build in public consistently raise cheaper capital and close deals faster. The trick is keeping the personal brand tied to insight and craft, not hype.
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@tonyspiro I need to learn how to handle both concepts, becaue I am most of my time on the side of personal brand.
@tonyspiro Attention can bring the first users but the product still has to earn trust after that.