I can personally vouch that this trap is extremely prevalent in Korea, mores than elsewhere, and is imo one of the top reasons the country has 0 internationally successful SaaS startups. Or actually, it has 1, but ironically it belongs to the 0.1% of companies here with a foreign founder, which says it all really.
Community leaders set the tone, and here the communities in the ecosystem are very rarely led by people who spend >50% of their time building stuff. Instead they're led by, just as you said, people who have 1. never built a successful product 2. spend >50% of their time building their brand.
I can see on OP's twitter that he's actively engaging from people in that scene as well, so really if he wants to build a successful product, step one is getting out of that scene and into one of actual makers.
While building this social network called Disquiet mentioned in the post, I got to connect with over 100,000 people in the Korean startup scene. And yeah, I’ve noticed that most of us including me end up listening more to thought leaders. The people who are actually building real things don’t seem to share as much online. It really makes sense that I need to be intentional about our “information diet”
Community leaders set the tone, and here the communities in the ecosystem are very rarely led by people who spend >50% of their time building stuff. Instead they're led by, just as you said, people who have 1. never built a successful product 2. spend >50% of their time building their brand.
I can see on OP's twitter that he's actively engaging from people in that scene as well, so really if he wants to build a successful product, step one is getting out of that scene and into one of actual makers.