Founder Diaries: Entry 16

Building a Brand When You Are the Brand

"When you become the brand, protect the parts of you that don’t need to be seen to be valuable. Visibility shouldn’t cost you your identity."

It starts innocently enough. A tweet here, a blog post there. A founder sharing updates, thoughts, learnings—being “authentic,” as the playbook demands. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the line between you and the brand begins to dissolve.

At some point, you look up and realise:
You didn’t just build a startup. You became it.

Your name is the pitch. Your story is the strategy. Your personality is the product-market fit.

And while that can be powerful—it can also be exhausting.

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Entry 16

We love a founder-led story. Investors eat it up. Customers resonate with it. The market rewards it.