When Your Startup Needs Real Branding (And When It Doesn't)

Your startup doesn’t need branding. Until it does.

Most startup founders overthink branding. They want a perfectly articulated brand identity from day one, believing that an elaborate brand will somehow make their idea work. This is backwards thinking.

Building a brand requires different approaches at different stages. Get the timing wrong, and you’ll waste resources that should go toward building your product. Get it right, and you will have a brand people want.

Here’s when to invest in branding and when to focus elsewhere.

Your focus should be on building a minimum viable product with a minimum viable brand approach. This is not news, any guru out there will tell you the same: focus on fundamentals.

What does this minimum viable brand look like? It’s not about elaborate strategy presentations or expensive design systems. It’s about establishing the fundamentals that customers actually care about so they form a positive opinion of your company, which is what branding is about: your company’s reputation.

Fundamentals, to name a few are: having a clear proposition and choosing a precise audience. Provide good customer service. Be true to your word. Deliver on time. Create a good experience for the users. Etc.

The goal in this phase is getting people to recommend your product to others, creating network effects one client at a time.

These obvious things that seem like common sense will actually set you apart from most startups out there. They sound simple, but it requires patience and it’s where many fail at.

Invest in improving those fundamentals. Not on high-end branding. For the record, I sell high-end branding services, and I am telling you not to hire someone like me. Which is what I tell early stage startups that come my way.

If you are at this stage and need basic visual identity, save the headache and uncertainty of spending big money on an agency to get mediocre results.

My advice? go lean: you will get the most value by working with a freelance senior designer who has an eye for detail and brand identity work. Consider spending around $3k to $6k if you are really early in the game. This will give you credibility while you figure out what actually works.

If the common-sense strategy above works well and there’s demand for your product, you enter a second phase where it’s time to scale and level up. At this point you may have reached a ceiling and it’s difficult to decide where to go next. 

The pressure of growth and keeping the market share kicks in: Should I hire more? should I offer more products? how about subscription services? Everything turns into a race for growth and speed.

And that’s where most companies fail miserably. Because it does not matter how fast you go if you are heading in the wrong direction.

This last sentence hits home to many. I have seen so many companies that wasted incredible amounts of energy and time on irrelevant things because they had no clear direction.

And this is one of the things branding does well: providing direction and clarity both internally and externally.

This is the point in time when brand building becomes critically important. At this stage, companies face specific challenges that branding can help solve:

• Change public perception
• Raise capital for funding
• Acquire new clients and get more sign-ups
• Attract higher quality talent
• Scale and expand globally
• Turn a startup into an established brand
• Raise prices
• Be seen in saturated markets
• Provide internal direction and long-term vision

These aren’t marketing problems. They’re business challenges that determine whether your company stagnates or continues growing.

Most founders still believe that branding is about looks and that changing visuals alone will solve business problems. They hire a brand design agency, get a deck with lots of words and a good-looking brand. Yet the strategy is just words with charts but isn’t actionable. It looks good but doesn’t fix any business problem.

Sometimes brand identity design isn’t as important as agencies make you believe. Maybe it’s the customer journey. Or the tone of voice does not convey your values. Or the channels you choose aren’t where your audience is. Or you’ve been targeting the wrong audience all along. In my experience, it’s usually a bit of everything.

The mistake is treating branding like a design project instead of a business strategy. Branding is a fundamental part of business strategy, not a nice-have.

To put it simply, branding is about creating your company’s personality: with its character, ambitions, long-term future, way of being, tone of voice, and ultimately how it looks. Branding provides consistency and long-term vision, helping you focus on the right things and improve decision-making.

A brand strategy creates alignment across your entire organization. It guides product development, marketing communications, hiring decisions, and customer experience. It gives employees meaning and direction. When done well, it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle.

Building a brand is a strategic business investment, not about following trends.

Building a brand should be rational and done in logical steps. You can be bold in the tactics (tone of voice, packaging, advertising, identity design, etc), but the foundation needs to be solid.

If you’re early stage: Keep it simple. Focus on your product and customer experience first. Your brand will emerge from doing the fundamentals exceptionally well. Don’t overthink it.

If you’re hitting a growth ceiling: Invest in strategic brand development that addresses your specific business challenges. Look for partners who talk clearly, understand that branding brings clarity through long-term vision, and focus on solving real business problems.

For strategic branding work, pricing varies considerably depending on scope and expertise, but expect to invest at least $10k with external partners. This typically covers strategy and overall direction. Many founders establish a partnership over the long-term if they like what they see.

You could also hire a head of brand or a creative director to work in-house, especially if you’re serious about growth and have a complex organization.

The key is knowing which stage you’re in and investing accordingly. Get the timing right, and branding becomes the advantage that separates growing companies from those that plateau.