The Double-Brand Game: Why Modern Founders Have Split Personalities (On Purpose)

The guy was really thoughtful, paused before answering my questions, super deliberate with his words. The kind of person you’d want explaining complex stuff to you because you know they’ve really thought it through and aren’t going to bullshit you.

Then he pulled up their website to show me the product, and I did a double-take. It was all bright colors, kind of cheeky copy, screenshots with these casual little callouts everywhere, It has a Twitter-like flow that makes it feel lighter and more approachable than most security product sites. The whole thing had this playful, casual tone that just didn’t match the person sitting across from me at all.

I remember stopping mid-scroll, trying to reconcile the two.

This five-minute moment made me realize that founder-led marketing doesn’t mean the founder and the company have to look or sound anything alike. In fact, most successful startups today are quietly running two brands at once (the founder’s and the company’s) and the magic happens when they don’t match.

We’re so used to thinking of company stories as emerging fully formed from one person’s personality that we forget tech isn’t operating that way anymore. The founder is a character in the story, not the whole narrative. Their brand is personal, textured, sometimes opinionated or quirky. The company’s brand, meanwhile, has a job to do: speak to customers, show value, build credibility, look grown-up. When the two diverge but still share a north star, you get this layered presence that feels fuller than either voice could pull off alone.

You see it clearly with Anthropic. Dario Amodei shows up like an AI genius in every podcast: deeply technical, ready to spar on policy, lit up by big questions about the future of intelligence. He is unpredictable in the best way; he’s thinking out loud and taking swings. Meanwhile, Anthropic’s visual world is warm, inviting, and almost gentle. Claude is the “high EQ” model, the helpful companion, the one who doesn’t demand you stress about existential risk at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday. Dario builds credibility. Anthropic builds trust. Together, it works.

Shopify and Tobi Lütke have their own version of this split screen. Tobi reads like a systems philosopher, someone obsessed with structure and reality and the long view of work. Yet Shopify’s brand is playful, colorful, and empowering, made for the people who wake up one morning ready to start a side business and hope it becomes everything. Shopify is optimistic; Tobi is grounded.

This dual-brand model works because it mirrors how humans operate. No one is one thing. A founder can debate policy and architecture onstage while their company tells millions of people, “you’ve got this.” A CEO can be introverted, scholarly, or even a little weird while the company projects scale, confidence, and swagger. Two voices, one mission. It’s a feature, not a glitch.

It also changes how founders show up. You don’t need the perfect résumé or three exits to your name. You need to be willing to be visible. To have a point of view. To show up in your own voice, not the legal-approved one. Meanwhile, the company is free to grow and evolve without being handcuffed to its founder’s personal tone or quirks.

Of course, it’s harder than the old model. You’re effectively running two campaigns at the same time: one from the head of the company and one from the heart of the founder. One builds trust through consistency and clarity; the other builds energy and momentum through personality and belief. They need to stay in conversation with each other, but not collapse into one indistinguishable voice.

Which brings me back to the neon startup. That founder looked nothing like his branding, and that was exactly the point. He didn’t need to be playful, loud, or internet-native himself. His company could do that for him, speaking in the visual language of its users. Meanwhile, he showed up as the calm, deliberate human behind the product. Together, those two identities said more than either could on its own.

The question isn’t whether a founder’s personal brand and a company’s brand should match. The better question is whether they make each other sharper, bigger, and more believable. If the answer is yes, you’re already playing the game the rest of the industry is just beginning to notice.

Because the era of founder-led storytelling didn’t die, it just split into two lanes. And the founders winning right now are the ones smart enough to drive both.