Brand observations, MVP progress, and market insights
Four types of updates: BUILD (product development behind the scenes), REFLECT (strategic insights from founder patterns), ILLUMINATE (cultural stories connecting markets), and ANNOUNCE (company milestones). Not press releases. Not quarterly reports. Real-time observations running 3–5 minutes—quick enough to scan during coffee, detailed enough to inform your next conversation.
Insights are deep-dive research articles (8–15 minutes) analyzing brand ecosystems, competitive landscapes, and founder transformation arcs. Updates are real-time observations (3–5 minutes) capturing what we're building, what we're noticing, and what's shifting in Global South markets. Think of Insights as the research report; Updates as the field notes.
When Fanagoria ships 800,000 bottles to China, every stage is controlled in-house. While Western brands outsourced, Global South brands retained integration—and that's now their moat.
Preparing a speech led to scoping, building, and deploying a new post type taxonomy—all in 30 minutes, before my coffee got cold.
There's a special chaos when you're building solo. Today I actually looked at my backlog—and discovered what full-scale development mode feels like.
A Penang temple built by coconut farmers from three different Quanzhou districts reveals hidden connections between UNESCO World Heritage sites and working-class migration.
We migrated from separate repos to a unified monorepo structure. Schema changes that required editing 6+ files across 2 repos now happen in one place.
Dark mode is live across the entire Brandmine platform. Automatic theme switching, WCAG AA compliant, zero JavaScript required—pure CSS with semantic color variables.
After evaluating several options, we chose Supabase—and 3 months in, it's proven to be one of our best technical decisions. Production-grade PostgreSQL without the pain.
Mobile navigation just got better. Persistent bottom nav bar, thumb-friendly 44px touch targets, automatic hide on scroll—context switching without scrolling to the top.
I set out to build a CMS for my team. In less than a day I had a polished system deployed—and discovered I was building it for myself.
Brandmine is now a Progressive Web App. Install to home screen, faster load times, offline browsing—for both our public site and internal Hub.
Accessibility isn't an afterthought—it's a core value. We implemented Lighthouse CI to continuously monitor accessibility, performance, and SEO across every deployment.
We've officially migrated from brandmine.io to brandmine.ai. The .ai domain better represents our commitment to using advanced technology to surface hidden brands.
Brandmine's new illustrated portrait style: one visual language for founders from Ethiopia to Russia, with cultural context built into every image.
Introducing our new Updates section for quick brand observations, MVP progress, and market insights from the Global South—timely, brief, closer to the daily rhythm of discovery.
Type to search across all brands, founders, and insights
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