Anatomy of a startup's brand personality (tip for early-stage founders & teams) ft. Arielle Jackson

What’s the hardest part about starting up, you ask? Plenty of them. And topping the charts, amongst the top three things, would be—nailing the branding and go-to-market strategy. While our entire focus is on the target audience all through the stage of building the product, there are quite a number of slips and shaky edges that take our path away from the ideal audience. So how exactly to build a brand, get those first few users to understand our product, nailing the messaging, and getting better at distribution?

Arielle Jackson is currently the Marketer in Residence at First Round Capital. Arielle helped grow Gmail, Square, and Cover during their early stages—whether it was hitting 1M+ users or getting distribution to 30k doorsteps. She's worked with 100+ early stage companies — including Patreon, Loom, Front, Bowery, and even Maven — on their foundational messaging.

In this video, Arielle and Aishwarya chat about the role of personality in a startup's brand strategy, and what it means to stick to a personality whenever a brand is signified. Arielle walks through a series of examples such as Google, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and more, and we did a little framework that covers about 5 categories of which founders and early marketing teams can pick two, and proceed to then build their own (and brand's) personality style and tone.

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