The Uncomfortable Truth About Bootstrapping: Showing Your Face

If you look at the startup landscape today compared to a decade ago, the difference is jarring. This is especially true if you are bootstrapping.

Back then, if you built something great, you had a decent shot at getting noticed. Today, the biggest hurdle isn't coding anymore. It's the fact that as a CEO and founder, you are forced to put yourself out there.

We are living in an era where you have to expose yourself personally to build a brand and get traction. Unless you have a massive budget to burn on social media ads or Google AdWords, your only viable option is organic content. You have to create, and you have to be seen.

Sure, you see people creating "faceless" channels on YouTube or using AI avatars. But a lot of that content is often used to promote get rich quick schemes or just latch onto trending cycles as clickbait.. But what if you are launching a real product? If you have a legitimate tool that actually helps people, you can’t hide behind an avatar. Because the landscape is so competitive, trust is the only currency that matters. And to build trust, you have to build your own social media persona.

For a founder who is introverted, private, or just doesn't feel comfortable looking into a camera lens, this is incredibly restrictive. It’s a genuine conundrum.

I’m facing this exact wall right now.

Six months ago, I had an idea. I realized that different AI tools have different strengths, and I wanted to use them all. But I hated the friction of re-explaining my context every time I jumped from one model to another. So I built this all-in-one AI hub called https://hubalot.com, where a user can upload a document once, and the system remembers the context regardless of which AI model you switch to.

I built it using AI tools, which I’d never done before. It pushed me completely out of my technical comfort zone, but I got it done. And I think I have proved the concept. But now comes the hard part: Promotion. And in this case, self-promotion.

I don't want to spend money on ads until I’ve proven the market fit. That leaves me with the one thing I’ve been avoiding: building a personal following. I’m finding myself standing in front of a ring light, filming videos of myself talking about the product, or sharing stories about my past as an entrepreneur. Is it natural for me? Absolutely not. Is it necessary? Sadly, yes.

It feels awkward. But I’ve realized that people connect with people, not just logos. To give Hubalot a fighting chance, I have to be the face of it.

I’m doing it because it’s what the business needs, even if it makes me sweat. I don't know exactly how it’s going to play out, but for any other founders out there staring at their camera lens and feeling ridiculous, you are not alone.

It’s just part of the job description now.