As presented to founder institute sydney cohort march 2021

1. Founder Branding
As a tech startup founder I want to be able to give my startup a
meaningful brand and visual identity that appeals to my target
customer segment, our team, strategic partners and other stakeholders
like regulators and the wider community..
Pete Cooper - twitter.com/pc0
Cooper & Co / The Start Society
Sydney Australia & Yangon Myanmar

2. Slideshare
The Start Society on SlideShare
Branding & Positioning Strategy for your Tech Startup c 2015
https://slideshare.net/peterjcooper/branding-positioning-60446077
Founder Vision for your Tech Startup
https://www.slideshare.net/peterjcooper/founder-vision-for-fi-sydney-by-pete-cooper

3. Today’s
10
Agenda
Brand Essence
Branding is Complex … but ultimately - Simple Short Sweet
Relax - Don’t Worry
Why - Unique Differentiated & Align w unique value proposition
Cold Beer Example - Generate And Cull - Iterate Exercise
Channels and Segment Appeal
Coincise Language Tips
Fav Brands Exercise
Protect Your Brand - Culture; Domains; Process; Policy
Also… Too narrow / technical; Unprompted brand awareness;
Channel Naming Hacks (Social, Domains, Bots); Visual Identity

4. WHAT IS
YOUR
BRAND
ESSENCE?
WHO ARE
YOU?
Usually related to your personal story or your passion for the
problem you are solving.
Often best covered by stories or examples or typical use cases.
Almost always tied back to your passion or raison d’etre.
Usually emotive but can be the the opposite. e.g Do you want a
heart lung transplant surgeon who is a greater hugger, high
empathy and delightful bedside manner or it is simply better to be
expert with a knife?
Can be shaped by early team members but is usually better to be
shaped by customers and problems. Bigger the better.
You can’t always shape it, eg early PR success or (to a lesser
degree) customer failures or successes or partners can all aid or
taint brand essence especially in domestic markets or narrow
global ones.

5. IT IS NOT
HARD... OR IS
IT?
So many
things… but
also so few
Varies
immensely...
Simple
Unique
Relevant / Memorable / Relate
Short
Sweet
Pub / cafe test
When branding doesn’t matter eg remote highway petrol burgers cafe cold beer
Slogans vs 30 second elevator pitches
Domain hacks - add get or go other short prefix - don’t forget alts eg .io .co
Social hacks like domains but use geo or cultural or macro geo or segment
Readability
In the field eg coke fridge back
Segment channels drive discover ability eg urls mean brand can be irrelevant
Protect your brand
Google trends name appeal test
Experiment
Competitor analysis name colour shape
Evocative
Brand analysis matrix
Unbranded businesses low profile
Consumer vs business
Discoverability using segment or geo or keywords
Business vs consumer models chance of success
Premium vs authentic vs hipster
Quality is relative
Associations deliberate or not
Brand essence. Unprompted brand awareness.
Some exceptions eg phrases and cultural long forms
Examples
Apple
Google
CB Bank
KBZ Bank

6. RELAX
YOU’VE
GOT
THIS
The world has not heard of you. Yet. This is a good thing. Enjoy this moment.
A lot of this stage of business building is repetitive so grab a coffee and some good
founder peers and roll around in it. Enjoy the journey.
You can make a lot of mistakes, particularly for global narrow products, before
anyone even remembers you. Your unprompted brand awareness is 0.000001%
…likely less.
So experiment and try stuff in new segments, channels. Reaching the customer and
UVP is often more important in the early days.
Prioritise speed/ease of testing.
Mistakes are fine as long as you learn fast.
Some experiments will simply yield bad data. Redesign and retry.
Haters are gonna hate - so listen and just move on. If it is a wave then listen
otherwise keep swimming elsewhere.
Negative feedback will be the norm so don’t let it burn your energy. Ask what would
you do and look for useful insights.

7. VISION
RECAP
ALIGN
WHY?
Does my startup / product need a vision?
No. Especially if you are highly commoditized. But -
- Differentiation makes selling product and attracting talent,
investors, advocates much easier… Do you really want to be the
4th best paperclip saleswoman in Kansas? Or cure cancer?
- Inspire. Be Remarkable. PR largely free - at a time when you
have no capital
- Influence. Leadership. True North. Guide rails. Focus. Energy
Energy Energy.
- Culture eats strategy for breakfast. Vision shapes culture and
brand essence.

8. WHY
HAVE
AN
IDENTITY
&
BRAND?
Does my startup / product need a brand at all?
Just one? Or two (one each)? Or more?
- Generally yes…
- People need something to trust and to talk about and to
search or share or trust to click or return to
- but if you have the right channels and can drop a link in front
of your precisely targeted customer then
genericstartupname1234567.com CAN work for some low
priced predictable quality or highly targeted commoditized
(generally e-only) products/services
- But do you really want to be in the non-unique product
business?
- Since you have only one product and one business right now
keep the same ONE brand for BOTH product and business
- If you add or acquire more products later (or experiments)
you can pick a new name later or just pre-fix them with
business name eg atlassian.com family - trello.com; jira.com;
confluence.com

9. Cold Beer Now - 873m search hits

10. HOW?
Generic to category to locale takes hits from
603m to 11m.
Unique national to global brand to channel to
micro locale takes hits from 7.7m to 16
misspelt and then only 8.

11. BRAND
ELEMENTS
(Align with
Vision Elements
from last talk)
Clarify Positioning - Generate and Cull - Repeat...
Segment.
Geo.
Unique benefit.
Features vs Benefits.
Often defined by what it is not. But is that enough? Eg: I can’t believe it
is not butter
Often centred around a personal experience or first hand problem
visibility or insight
Clarity
Emotive / Aspirational
Remarkable eg word of mouth, media, controversy, story, origina
Learn from the greats - research to do. From competitors maybe.
Leverage existing unprompted brand awareness
eg startup ecosystem ‘Mary and Jane’s fintech thing’

12. ITERATE
Learn. Refine. Repeat.
Similar to vision but less artistic and more sheer work/ideation.
Identify 20-50 (some do 100 or even 500 brands but risk of fatigue
fails).
Double words: CoinDesk. Paypal. TransferWise. FaceBook. RagingBull.
Kill fast. Really.
Value unique, simple, short, neutral.
Fractal Loop concept. Stay wide early.
Narrow in fast with instinct then test demographics. Geo. Culture.
Language. Age/Generation. Gender. Behaviour. Socioeconomic.
Consider parallel businesses.
Prioritise. Park. Return. Test.
Domains and social.
Iterate. If Domains and social become bottleneck seek peer reviews.

13. EXERCISE
30 Seconds
FAV BRANDS
In This Room?
Who has already impressed you?
Why?
Brand or visual identity or unprompted
brand awareness (vision or brand).

14. PROTECT
YOUR
BRAND
ASSETS
Portfolio Approach
Don’t over do it early, it might be a flop.
Invest as revenue arrives.
Surround the key assets eg domainname.com with .net
Don’t forget the domain registry alts there are mainy now.
Don’t over invest time and money if your channel to
segment is direct or mainly digital or doesn’t need too
much trust (eg. low value).
Time and audience limited experiments are one thing, v1
and v2 products are another. Polish up more as time and
traction and brand awareness grow.
Consider protecting your key differentiator statements
too.
Visual Identity Copyright. Unique mechanism patents.

15. CLARITY
IS
CRUCIAL
Language. Why Us.
Concise. Culture/segment sensitive.
Why is most important eg problem or motivation and ideally
differentiating benefit.
Refining the how makes the why most compelling.
Language and key concepts crucial.
Custom vs Standardised Product vs Service vs Customers vs
Productised Service
Channel vs Capability
Benefit vs Feature
Stakeholder Roles eg DM vs customer vs user vs distributor
vs partner vs team vs community vs regulator
Next 6 slides are examples of questions you will have already
answered if you get your vision right.

16. THANKS
Founder Vision
Pete Cooper - linkedin.com/in/petecooper
Cooper & Co / The Start Society
Sydney & Yangon