Founder branding
"Your brand is what other people say about you
when you’re not in the room."
A famously focused and inspiring Steve Jobs shaped Apple’s rise. Whitney Wolfe Herd’s vision and values underpin Bumble’s success. Single-minded and straight talking, Elon Musk has millions more followers than Tesla.
Founders with a unique mission, style, and story, build kudos and credibility with investors, employees, and customers and outperform the competition.
Why A founder'S
brand matters?
The audience was full of investors and potential clients. The founder I’d spent months working with, waited for his turn to present.
My time brand consulting for a tech startup had passed quickly. Weeks spent defining a robust brand strategy. Months spent creating messaging and mood boards, logos and landing pages. The brand was as strong as the product itself.
The time had arrived. Next to present, the founder.
Sat beside me, the eager sales team waited to hear their boss, their founder, sell the dream.
Unfortunately, we left disappointed.
My work with the company had focused entirely on the startup’s brand identity. I’d missed something critical. The person representing the brand in public – the founder.
On stage – in front of a room full of people the company needed on side – the founder crumbled.
I should have found the time to work with him on his personal brand. The message and the medium matters. I felt terrible. I’d missed it.
His presenting was unstructured and lacked energy. But you could forgive that, if he had an engaging story or powerful mission. There was nothing. Nothing to get behind. Nothing beyond a few well-designed charts, graphs, and apparently unique product features.
We, along with the rest of the audience, were left cold.
CREDIBLE FOUNDERS
GET BACKED
"The challenge for early-stage ventures, is that before you’re an established business, there’s often not much to commit to. People have to put a lot of their faith in the founder/s."
To succeed, new ventures need: commitment of people’s money (from investors, VC’s and lenders); commitment of people’s time (from employees, partners and board execs); and sometimes both (from customers and clients).
The challenge for early-stage ventures, is that before you’re an established business, there’s often not much to commit to. People have to put a lot of their faith in the founder/s.
The Foreground work with entrepreneurs from across the world. Many have built £multi-million businesses. One or two have achieved valuations of over a £billion.
Personalities and propositions are always different, but every successful founder I’ve worked with in recent years has:
- led with a clear vision and a bold mission
- had an engaging story to tell
- developed a compelling leadership style
FOUNDER-LED VENTURES ARE
WORTH BACKING
With more accountability, urgency, and autonomy, a study of founder-led companies by Bain & Company, reveals why they perform better than others:
"Companies most successful at maintaining profitable growth over the long term were disproportionately companies where the founder was still running the business."
But founder-led companies, need high-performing founders.
Road-tested by over 70 entrepreneurs at ventures now valued at over £1.5 billion, The Foreground’s founder branding workshops and consulting services will help you:
- bring your vision and your values to life
- define your leadership style
- craft a unique mission and founder story
- give people compelling reasons to back you
If you’re interested in building a strong founder brand, get in touch, we look forward to hearing from you.