In 2025, founders aren’t just running companies — they’re running content channels. Here’s how turning the people behind the brand into its biggest influencers can drive trust, reach and growth.

Once upon a time, branding meant selling products. Now, brands are in the people business — elevating founders, leadership teams and even the intern with a breakout TikTok. Why? Because the combined social footprint of a company’s people can easily outstrip the following of a young brand.

Case in point: my friend with 1.6 million TikTok followers — mostly watching him eat — is now igniting his fashion brand almost entirely off that audience. It’s a reminder that if you already have reach, you can skip years of expensive customer acquisition. A single influencer with a loyal following can effectively kickstart a company and save a fortune in marketing spend.

Look at Grace Beverley, founder of TALA in the UK. She started with a modest personal following, parlayed it into a fitness ebook empire and then scaled TALA to 85 employees. Today, she’s as much a media property as her brand, proving that personal reach can be the most potent marketing channel. This isn’t unusual — in fact, with 5.2 billion people (64% of the global population) on social media, the brand account is often playing catch-up to the personalities behind it.

Why It Works (When It Works)

The psychology is simple: people trust people more than logos. Huda Kattan is living proof. Her beauty empire reaches 54 million global followers, each post a personal endorsement that moves product without the whiff of an ad buy.

This “parasocial ROI” is why Daryl-Ann Denner’s apparel brand Nuuds sold out its launch in seven minutes. Two million followers weren’t just shopping — they were buying from a friend they’d never met.

And in some cases, an influencer’s following can all but launch a company overnight. If the trust is already there, you’re not starting from zero — you’re starting from a built-in audience that can replace months of paid media spend.

The economics are equally compelling. Brands earn an average of $4.12 for every $1 spent on Instagram influencer campaigns and the global influencer marketing industry will hit $32.55 billion by the end of 2025. No wonder 80% of brands have held or increased influencer budgets this year with nearly half raising them by more than 11%.

The Hidden Job You Just Took On

Of course, it’s not just charisma — it’s labor. A “low-output” founder still needs to keep a steady drip of content across multiple platforms. TikTok rewards daily posting. Instagram wants 3–5 posts a week. LinkedIn punishes you for going dark for more than seven days.

And this isn’t just product talk. The audience wants behind-the-scenes moments, failures, personal milestones, customer shoutouts and yes — a little controversy now and then. With 5.07 billion social media users spending an average of 2 hours and 20 minutes a day online, you’re competing for attention in a marketplace that’s both massive and ruthless.

But founder beware. Once you train your audience to expect you, disappearing feels like ghosting a relationship.

Why It Fails 

The same forces that make a founder-influencer valuable can also turn them into a liability and in some cases a serious business risk. For clarity a brand here means the sum of the company’s reputation identity and customer relationship — not just a logo or a product line. The ego tax happens when a founder starts chasing engagement instead of building that reputation. Likes get mistaken for loyalty. A post that racks up 100,000 hearts feels like validation even if it’s about a pet’s Halloween costume and has nothing to do with the business. Over time the content shifts toward whatever gets clicks rather than what reinforces the brand promise which leads to audience drift confusion about what the company stands for and eventually falling sales.

Overexposure is another trap. A brand tied too tightly to a founder’s constant presence can feel fresh at first then stale fast. Engagement spikes then collapses as audiences tire of the repetition. Beauty companies saw this in Q1 2025 when Instagram earned media value for the category dropped 28% year over year. Even strong content suffers when saturation sets in and the cost of maintaining attention rises while returns fall.

Burnout is the slow bleed that can take a brand down without warning. Lee Tilghman built a large following by sharing healthy recipes lifestyle tips and personal reflections but years of constant creation and personal exposure took a toll. She walked away citing exhaustion and returned only cautiously. When the founder is the primary marketing channel burnout doesn’t just mean a personal break it can mean losing the engine driving awareness and sales.

Follower inflation is another credibility killer. Daniella Pierson’s Newsletter claimed more than a million subscribers but reporting showed closer to 500,000 were active. In industries where perceived reach fuels sponsorships partnerships and valuations revelations like that don’t just dent reputation they can undercut revenue and stall growth.

Then there’s the succession cliff. When a founder sells, steps back or simply stops being interesting a brand that depends too heavily on one personality can lose value almost instantly. Investors see this as a structural weakness and treat it as a red flag in due diligence. Without a plan to bring other credible faces and voices into the public eye the brand’s equity becomes tied to a single person’s willingness to keep performing.

The Archetypes

Not all founder-influencers operate the same way and each style shapes the brand’s positioning risk profile and growth potential.

The Relatable Expert works for brands that trade on trust credibility and expertise. Vivy Yusof co-founded FashionValet, a Malaysian e-commerce fashion platform, and dUCk, a premium scarf and accessories brand. She blends entrepreneurship and personal life with more than a million followers posting selectively but with value. Her slower growth rate is offset by deeper audience loyalty which helps her brands hold steady over time and weather market fluctuations.

The Entertaining Tyrant suits brands that thrive on attention and cultural relevance but can tolerate higher volatility. Lorna Luxe founded her own namesake Lorna Luxe fashion label after building 1.4 million followers on bold style choices and unapologetic commentary. For her brand this drives rapid spikes in engagement and awareness but also means the brand’s tone and reputation rise and fall with her public persona.

The Evangelist is ideal for brands built on mission-driven or lifestyle positioning where energy and emotional connection convert directly into sales. Emma Grede co-founded Good American, the size-inclusive fashion brand, and later became founding partner of Skims. Good American launched with $1 million in day-one sales by leaning into inclusive storytelling and high-energy personal presence. The payoff for the brand is immediate demand and strong advocacy but it requires sustained personal visibility to keep momentum.

The Anti-Influencer works for brands that want to project exclusivity and scarcity. This founder posts rarely and maintains high mystique which can strengthen brand desirability and pricing power. The trade-off is slower awareness growth and longer timelines to scale. A clear example is Phoebe Philo, whose eponymous luxury fashion label debuted in 2023 after years out of the public eye and relies on her selective, almost invisible presence to cultivate desirability.

The Proxy Builder model stands out for brand longevity because it anchors growth beyond one personality. A strong real-life example is Phlur under Chriselle Lim. While Lim helped revive the brand and remains its creative director after TSG Consumer Partners’ 2025 acquisition, she has built the public identity of Phlur around its perfumers, collaborators, and community stories rather than herself. This deliberate shift means the brand can scale without being solely dependent on her personal visibility, preserving its indie credibility while ensuring resilience if her role changes.

The Strategic Playbook

The most successful founder-influencers operate like pros, not like people winging it on their phones. They set boundaries early — deciding what’s public, what’s private and what’s never going online. They integrate founder content into the brand mix without making it the entire marketing strategy.

They stage-manage authenticity, batch-shooting “spontaneous” moments so they can focus on running the company the other six days of the week. They use their reach to elevate others — customers, employees, partners — so the brand becomes bigger than one personality.

They also understand that reach doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Jones, a UK drinks brand, generated 300 million views by filming simple street interviews and podcast-style conversations — proof that a smart low-cost concept can outperform big-budget campaigns if it connects with the right audience.

The Future

AI is already in the mix and it’s moving fast. In 2025, 92% of brands say they already use or plan to use AI to streamline influencer content — from drafting captions and editing videos to cloning founder voices for rapid content production. This isn’t just about saving time; it’s about scaling a founder’s presence across multiple channels without physically being there.

The scale of the opportunity is enormous. The creator economy is projected to grow from $191 billion in 2025 to $528.4 billion by 2030, meaning the competition for attention will intensify and the tools that can amplify a brand’s voice efficiently will become essential.

One of the more experimental developments is the rise of synthetic founders — fully fictional personalities created to humanize a brand. For companies without a public-facing founder, this offers a way to craft a consistent, controllable brand ambassador. The downside is the looming trust problem; audiences can feel duped if they discover the person they’ve been following doesn’t exist.

There are also outliers who illustrate the power of merging tech entrepreneurship with personal brand equity. One clear example is Lucy Guo—as of 2025 she became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, thanks to her nearly 5% ownership stake in Scale AI, the data-labeling AI company she co-founded in 2016  . Her rise demonstrates how innovation and personal credibility can fuel each other in ways even AI can’t replicate.

The next frontier could be a backlash — a founder detox. Audiences asking for the product without the constant personality show. Smart brands will anticipate this and have an exit strategy ready, shifting focus back to product strength and other credible voices before fatigue sets in.

Walking The Tightrope 

Being a founder-influencer is a constant act of balance — thrilling when it works and unforgiving when it doesn’t. You are both the tightrope walker and the rope itself carrying the weight of the brand’s image while navigating the scrutiny that comes with being its most visible ambassador. The ones who win see their role not as a distraction from the business but as a growth engine for it. They use their visibility to build trust faster than a faceless brand ever could, turn their personality into a competitive advantage and create momentum that paid media alone would struggle to match.

The difference is intention. Successful founder-influencers approach their presence with the same discipline they bring to product design or strategy. They build a strong supporting cast to keep the story fresh, develop a deep library of ready-to-post content so the brand never loses its voice and stay focused on amplifying the brand rather than themselves. Done right the founder-as-influencer isn’t just a marketing tactic — it’s a brand asset that can shorten the path to relevance, deepen customer loyalty and drive growth that outlasts any single post or personality.

Sources: Edelman Trust Barometer 2025 – Trust in People vs Brands, Digital Marketing Institute – Global Influencer Marketing Market Size 2025, PR Newswire – Influencer Marketing in 2025 Report, Vogue Business – Beauty Industry Instagram EMV Decline Q1 2025, Smart Insights – Global Social Media Usage Data 2025, Glamour – Nuuds Launch Case Study, Financial Times – Grace Beverley and TALA Growth Story, Washington Post – Lee Tilghman Influencer Burnout, Business Insider – Daniella Pierson Newsette Subscriber Numbers, Wikipedia – Profiles of Huda Kattan, Emma Grede, Vivy Yusof, Chriselle Lim.