Building a Personal Brand That Scales - A Fireside Chat w/ Ish Verduzco
In 2025, attention is everything and founders who know how to tell their story win. Whether you’re building in public, raising capital, or hiring a team, your personal brand is your distribution engine.
In this fireside chat, we’re joined by Ish Verduzco to unpack how to build an authentic social presence that drives traction, trust, and growth.
We’ll cover:
The mindset shift from creator to founder-as-a-media-brand
How to stay consistent without getting burned out
Tactics for building cross-platform presence (without sounding like everyone else)
How to use social proof and content as leverage for hiring, fundraising, and distribution
What Ish is seeing work in real-time with founders building audiences today
This session is targeted towards founders, operators, and early-stage teams who know that building in public isn’t just about tweeting, it’s about building long-term trust at scale.
About the guest:
Ish is a social growth strategist who’s spent over a decade leading teams at LinkedIn, Snapchat, and recently at a16z Crypto. Today, he’s the founder of Internet Empires, where he helps founders and companies grow their online presence with structure and clarity.
He’s worked with VCs, operators, indie creators, and tech execs to scale their audiences without sacrificing authenticity and believes every founder has a personal brand worth building.
About the host:
Sharath is a repeat founder who has built and sold two SaaS products. He previously led community at Product Hunt and now hosts Undefeated Underdogs, a podcast where he interviews ambitious founders and VCs. Sharath is deeply embedded in the startup ecosystem—curious, candid, and always building. Currently he is a fractional community lead at Thera.