Crafting a brand for your startup is complicated by the fact that your business model and your product may need to pivot a number of times as you ultimately bring your idea to market. How often does an entrepreneurial idea remain static from its earliest conception to its final success? How often does the original problem a new business sets out to solve end up getting traction in sectors of the market entirely unconsidered by the founders at the beginning?
Many funded startups set out with the goal of being acquired, even after a successful A or B rounds of funding, when investing in a more mature brand is warranted. So again, your brand’s lifespan may end once that exit occurs.
Given how fluid the startup process must be, establishing a brand is very difficult. Brands are supposed to be permanent markers that fix your identity in the marketplace. Yet in the early stages of a startup your identity is quite open ended. And your market may shift a number of times throughout the process.
Given the early stage of a startup, one may wonder whether a brand is of any use at all? Especially since whatever you might create may very well be jettisoned all together six months later.
But it is. Because at the seed stage of a startup, your real market consists of potential investors, business vendors, and other supporting relationships that you need to cultivate. And your image really does matter. How you present yourself is going to matter in your pitch. Dress well, be on time, have your numbers down pat, and wear nice shoes. We’d like to think that such superficial details are not important. But investors are only human, and first impressions really matter. And your brand is an important part of that appearance.
And during a series A raise when you’re trying to get as high a valuation as possible, the quality of your brand is going to contribute to the perception of your value, and even if your brand image contributes just one or two percentage points to your perceived value, at this level of investment that really matters.
And so all throughout the startup lifecycle a clean, professional, and weighty brand identity matters.
But at the same time, given how important preserving your runway is, and how important your time is, you don’t want to have to spend a lot of time or money dealing with branding. There are, of course, many low cost options for getting an early brand package put together. But while design and production services are a readily available and inexpensive commodities, having an experienced eye that can objectively evaluate the quality of an identity package is not so common.
That’s where RPcd comes in. We already understand the goals and purposes for branding a startup. And we know how to effectively and efficiently direct creative services and filter the process to hit the mark quickly and affordably.
That’s our pitch. Care to invest?