Working with us
Structured brand support,
adapted to where your company is today.
Brand Foundations
for growth
Clear ways to build trust, focus, and momentum,
without long or costly processes.
Below is an overview of how founders typically work with us
during the different stages of growth. All our work is senior-led and hands-on.
The difference lies in depth, scope, and the stage of growth it supports.
Brand Assessment
→ Are we ready to spend on marketing, and give our agencies focussed input?
Investor Brand Readiness
→ Are we sending the signals investors expect before we raise?
Trusted Brand™ Sprint
→ Give us a clear brand foundation we can build on.
Brand Advisory
→ We need a senior sparring partner for brand, messaging, and high-stakes decisions.
Scale-Ready Brand™
→ We are stepping into serious growth and need a brand that holds at scale.
Not every startup needs a full brand build from day one.
But every startup needs trust, clarity, and focus early.
The first four offers are designed as smart entry points:
practical, fast ways to strengthen your brand
before growth, marketing spend, or fundraising amplify the wrong signals.
Scale-Ready Brand™ is different.
It is designed for companies entering a phase
where brand decisions carry structural, financial, and long-term consequences.
Brand Assessment
The Pre-Marketing Reality Check
A fast, low-barrier half-day session that pressure-tests your brand foundations before you invest or scale.
It ensures you are giving the right input to your team, your agencies, and the market — before marketing, sales, or fundraising amplify the wrong signals.
You get
- An outside-in view of customer understanding, messaging, and trust signals
- Clear insight into what helps conversion — and what quietly blocks it
- Concrete guidance on what to fix, refine, or stop guessing about
Founders use this to
- Align internal thinking
- Brief agencies with clarity instead of assumptions
- Enter pitches and campaigns with confidence
This is the fastest way to remove blind spots before they become expensive.
Investor-Ready
Brand
Earn Investor Confidence
The missing step before fundraising.
Founders often think:
“We will fix the brand after the round, when we have more funds.”
Investors quietly ask:
“Does this team understand how customers choose? And can they communicate a credible growth story today?”
Investor Brand Readiness bridges that gap.
You get
- A focused review of whether your brand sends the signals investors look for — not just today, but as the company grows.
It answers
- Clear insight into what helps conversion — and what quietly blocks it
- Concrete guidance on what to fix, refine, or stop guessing about
Founders use this to
- Strengthen their deck and narrative
- Reduce friction and “soft” objections
- Enter fundraising with greater confidence and credibility
This turns brand from a future task into a present advantage.
Trusted Brand™ Sprint
The Complete Foundation
A two-phase sprint that gives startups a complete brand foundation — without a long or costly process.
This is often the natural next step after a Brand Assessment or Investor Brand Readiness.
Those offers clarify where you stand and what is missing.
The Trusted Brand™ Sprint turns that insight into a usable, shared foundation for growth.
You get
-
Clear positioning
Relevant, differentiated, and credible — so customers immediately understand why this matters. -
Credible, usable messaging
Language for website, sales, product, and pitch — so interest turns into action. -
A coherent brand world
Visual and verbal direction that makes everything feel like one business, not separate efforts.
The result is a shared foundation that teams, agencies, and growth partners can all work from — executing a strategy, not personal preference.
Phase 1 — Insight & positioning
We establish the strategic core of the brand.
This includes:
- Customer insights: needs, motivations, and emotional triggers
- Clear articulation of the problem in customer language
- Competitor and category mapping (direct and indirect)
- Early Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
- Positioning and brand promise
- Brand character: personality and behaviours
Business impact:
- People understand what you do and why it matters
- Early adopters feel the fit — emotionally and practically
- Every touchpoint starts to sound like one company
Phase 2 — Brand expression & direction
We translate strategy into a brand that can be used immediately.
This includes:
- Big Brand Idea: the emotional core that makes the brand meaningful
- Visual and sensory direction: brand world, photography, and style cues
- Verbal identity: tone of voice and signature language
- Messaging matrix across audiences, moments, and channels
Business impact:
- Designers and marketers execute faster and stay on-brand
- Website, social, sales, and pitch become aligned and credible
- Investors see a strategy they can trust
Founders choose this when
- They want to stop improvising and start scaling with consistency
- Growth partners need clear direction to be effective
- Marketing, sales, and fundraising must reinforce each other
With this foundation in place, decisions stop being debated and start being guided.
Brand Advisory
Guidance for growth decisions
Brand Advisory provides ongoing strategic support as your business moves, decisions multiply, and brand choices start to carry real consequences.
Rather than isolated advice, this is a working partnership that helps founders, teams and their external partners make better brand, messaging, and go-to-market decisions as they happen.
You get
- Clear guidance on brand, messaging, and narrative as situations evolve
- A sparring partner to pressure-test ideas, assumptions, and execution
- Support in translating brand intent into marketing, sales, and investor-facing decisions
This typically covers
- Messaging and storytelling across channels
- Decks, investor communication, and fundraising narratives
- Go-to-market choices, prioritisation, and trade-offs
All without adding a full-time head of brand to the organisation.
Founders choose this when
- Decisions are frequent and increasingly interconnected
- External partners and agencies need consistent direction
- The brand must guide action, not just exist on paper
Brand Advisory keeps the brand understood, applied correctly, and actively guiding decisions as the company grows.
Scale-Ready Brand™
When growth accelerates
This typically applies from late Seed through Series A and into Series B, when expectations rise, visibility increases, and teams start to grow.
Brand is no longer about first impressions. It becomes a strategic system that shapes decisions, culture, and return on capital.
Founders think: “We can refine the brand as we grow.”
Investors now ask: “Will this brand hold when spend increases, teams scale, and decisions multiply?”
You get
- A brand system designed to hold under growth, investment, and expansion
- Clear direction for how the brand must support the next phase of scale
- Alignment across leadership, teams, partners, and agencies
- A shared foundation that guides decisions as complexity increases
This ensures growth strengthens trust — rather than amplifying confusion.
What this delivers
- A clear definition of the role the brand must play at scale
- A positioning that holds up under competition, visibility, and investor scrutiny
- A brand logic that translates strategy into day-to-day decisions
- A coherent brand world that supports credibility, consistency, and pricing power
The result is not a theoretical strategy, but a working brand system teams can execute with confidence.
How the engagement works
- Clarifying how the brand must support the next phase of growth
- Pressure-testing positioning under customer, market, and investor conditions
- Aligning brand logic with go-to-market, pricing, and expansion plans
- Translating strategy into a scalable brand system teams can use daily
The depth and sequencing are adapted to your context, but always focused on the decisions that matter most.
How this differs from earlier brand work
Trusted Brand™ Sprint creates a strong foundation for early traction and focus. Scale-Ready Brand™ strengthens and extends that foundation so it holds under growth, investment, and expansion — when mistakes become expensive and hard to reverse.
When this is not the right offer
- The market or problem is still being validated
- Growth direction is intentionally fluid or experimental
- Brand decisions are expected to change frequently
- The priority is short-term visibility rather than durable value creation
In those cases, lighter brand foundations or assessments are usually the better next step.
the founder-aligned
brand process
Where brand becomes
a growth-driver
We develop the brand alongside your startup journey, not as a separate or final exercise, but in sync with product and market development. It is something you capture, shape, and strengthen as product-market fit emerges.
Instead of inventing brand elements upfront, we capture and shape them at the moment they emerge: from the language customers use in discovery to the proof and stories that form during validation and growth.
Because the process is iterative, not linear, each stage delivers immediate value while strengthening what comes next.
Customer Discovery
Turning insight into early trust
Objective
Prove there is a real problem or hidden tension strong enough to anchor a market.
Brand focus at this stage
-
Capture raw brand ingredients: customer language, emotional drivers, founder intent
-
Observe how customers describe the problem and what they care about
-
Identify early narrative patterns that can anchor positioning later
What this gives you
For founders
- A clear problem–solution frame to guide product and roadmap decisions
- Language that feels natural to use in conversations, decks, and early outreach
- Early positioning cues that reduce improvisation
For customers
- A sharper articulation of their problem and its broader context
- Emotional meaning around the idea, not just functional claims
- Greater openness to test, give feedback, and re-engage
Investor perception
- “This founder really understands their customer.”
- “They have a story I can repeat to my partners.”
- “Even at this stage, they look more credible than most.”
Typical brand outputs at this stage
- Founder story
- Early Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
- Vision and mission
- Customer journey (rational and emotional)
- Early positioning and value promise
- Initial narrative and Big Idea direction
- Sensory cues (verbal and visual mood)
Customer Validation
Early trust becomes real demand
Objective
Prove that customers are willing to choose you and pay — and that the business model has real potential.
Brand focus at this stage
-
Test early brand elements alongside product and pricing
-
Refine positioning and messaging based on real customer response
-
Consolidate brand signals so the company starts to feel coherent
What this gives you
For founders
- Messaging that resonates and converts, not just explains
- Clear differentiation in a crowded and noisy market
- Early brand signals that reduce doubt for customers and investors
For customers
- Messaging that makes the value immediately clear
- Greater confidence to try, buy, and recommend
- Early consistency that builds familiarity and trust
Investor perception
- “This is more than an idea — people care.”
- “They are learning fast and refining intelligently.”
- “They already present themselves like a real company.”
Typical brand outputs at this stage
- Refined positioning, UVP, and brand promise
- Clear ICP / personas based on real behaviour
- Brand story and character
- Early visual identity and sensory cues
- Verbal identity and messaging architecture
- Competitive and category framing
- First consistent brand expressions
Customer Creation
Traction becomes repeatable growth
Objective
Drive demand, test scalable acquisition: brand shapes a category where you are the default choice.
Brand focus at this stage
-
Roll out the full brand across website, pitch, product, and marketing
-
Align all customer touchpoints into one coherent experience
-
Translate brand intent into behaviour, culture, and daily decisions
What this gives you
For founders
- More predictable growth as trust builds over time
- Lower acquisition friction through familiarity and credibility
- Clear cultural cues that guide decisions as the team grows
For customers
- A consistent experience across product, marketing, and service
- Greater confidence in choosing and staying with the brand
- Stronger emotional connection beyond functional value
Investor perception
- “This company knows how to turn demand into growth.”
- “Their story holds together as the organisation scales.”
- “The brand supports execution, not just marketing.”
Typical brand outputs at this stage
- Consistent brand expressions across website, product, and sales
- Go-to-market playbook aligned with positioning and brand logic
- Customer experience principles across the full journey
- Internal brand guidelines that support culture and behaviour
- Employer brand signals that attract the right talent
company Building
Scaling with consistency, culture, and a brand that becomes your moat
Objective
Scale the business without losing coherence, culture, or trust as complexity increases.
At this stage, growth is no longer the challenge. Consistency is.
The brand must now function as an operating system: guiding decisions, shaping culture, and protecting value as teams grow, markets expand, and founders step back.
Brand focus at this stage
-
Operationalise the brand across systems, culture, and governance
-
Use brand logic to lower CAC, improve retention, and support pricing power
-
Extend the brand into employer brand, brand architecture, and long-term moat
What this gives you
For founders
- A business that scales without the founder in every room
- Clear structures that keep decisions aligned as complexity grows
- A brand that actively supports pricing power and long-term value
For employees
- Clear cultural cues for “how we do things here”
- Confidence to make consistent decisions without constant guidance
- Stronger identification with the company as it grows
Investor perception
- “This brand is defensible — it adds real value to the business.”
- “The company can scale without relying on individual founders.”
- “This looks ready for international growth or acquisition.”
Typical brand outputs at this stage
- Scalable brand system (guidelines, governance, activation tools)
- Brand-led culture framework and internal alignment
- Brand architecture across products, markets, and regions
- Employer brand integrated into hiring and onboarding
- Brand-led moat strategy and IP protection
At this stage, the brand is no longer just a growth accelerator. It becomes a strategic asset that reduces risk, increases valuation, and protects the business as it scales.