Selected Writing
Why Architects are Super Well Suited for Startups, Arch Daily
Open Letter to technical SaaS founders about to hire their first designer
This is part of a series of open letters to founders called ‘Howdy Founder’ addressed to startup founders in search of a designer.
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Minimum viable branding (MVB)
Howdy Founder 👋🏻
Say you have an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that’s getting great traction and solidifying its user base or community…Maybe you have a contract designer on your team, but don’t have a full time designer on your team yet. You may be ready for MVB work if…
You and your Eng team have built a simple product with DAU or MAU charts going up and to the right. It’s gaining traction with a core set of users and retention seems to be happening without paid marketing efforts.
You’re starting to have these conversations with your team, “Should we hire a full time designer?” “What kind of designer?” “Should we invest in branding before going out to raise our Series B (or A) in a year?”
Your app / website / product is functional now, but let’s say it’s not going to win any WWDC Awards anytime soon 😬
You do NOT want to (or have the budget to) hire an agency to create a 200 page brand book and spend $200k in branding right now.
You want to stay as lean as possible to keep your options open.
So what is MVB — Minimum Viable Branding? First, let’s take a step back to look at some of the most foundational design needs at an early stage startup. In order to begin any kind of design work that refines your prototype, an early designer is going to want to know what kind of design language they’ll be working in. It’s ok if you don’t have a fully built out design system yet.
As your first staff designer rolls up his / her sleeves, they will begin to think through the components, colors, fonts and language (written tone) that will help your product express its intent to its users and community. To create this language, they need “first design principles” to work from. What is your position in the market? What distinguishes your brand / identity from others? As you start to articulate these principles, your designer will build things that move from abstract to concrete: core identity => first (design) principles => product tone and language => product components => product features / screens / flows. NOTE: Non-designer founders are usually less versed in the earlier, abstract stages but stick with it til the end — it’s worth it!
If you do too much branding before product market fit (i.e. that 200 page branding book I mentioned), your startup ends up looking like this👇🏻
Photo by Alex Finch
A baby wearing a of designer clothing…but that doesn’t necessarily know where it’s going. This is fine post product market fit, but if you have to pivot and stay nimble, it’s hard to shed all that bling 😆(Also #sunkcostfallacy)
Remember, producing MVB has an advantage over expensive agency work in this phase of your startup in that:
1) your designer is in-house and owns the work, rather than an agency that drops in for a few short months and then leaves you with a design baby to raise on your own; 2) You want to do enough brand / identity work but not so much that you feel weighed down by it when you invariably have to make small changes — or large pivots — to your product as you learn more about your users.
The key is to stay nimble so you can move quickly as you discover new things about your market and users. That is one of your key — and only advantages over incumbents and entrenched heavy hitters in your market.
What are examples of pivots that affect branding?
1) Let’s say you build a consumer-facing app that offers affordable mental health services. But a few months after launch you realize that companies are the core customers. So you pivot from a consumer product to a B2B product. Your target audience changes from millennials who find out about you on instagram, (your initial hypothesis) — to the Head of HR of major companies. Some key elements of your language, brand and identity will have to change to reach this new audience. Rather than hiring another agency for another RFP / scope of work, it makes more sense for the designer who originally architected the MVB, to intelligently steer your design work in this direction.
2) Agency work is designed on a scope-by-scope basis, which means that you would have to define, negotiate and pay for another scope of work each time your brand / identity work needs tweaking. That’s a lot of time and energy for founders to be investing in this when they could spend that time talking to users.
What are the key design priorities and projects needed to complete a MVB project? That will be outlined in Part 2.
Cheers for now,
J
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Howdy Founder 👋🏻
So let’s talk in plain, simple terms. What are the kinds of projects that you will undertake as part of this MVB process? Every startup is different, and most have usually invested in some design work, whether they know it or not. They also have varying degrees of design debt that they’ve accrued by kicking the can further down the road on some of this brand and identity work. Maybe you’ve jumped in and licensed fonts, chosen colors for your app — but don’t have a clear brand identity yet or understand when and how to apply those fonts or color palette. That’s ok. Every startup has to begin somewhere, and you needed to make some design decisions in order to get something out in the market to test. That’s great.
The next step is refining that product so that the intent is even clearer to new users and the value prop stands out from other tools / products they could be using.
My questions for you:
On brand differentiation and identity: If someone were to come along tomorrow and scrape your database, copy your app, and steal some of your users -- what is something about your product or brand that they could not replicate? What is the unique ‘soul’ of your brand that they could not steal? It’s worth thinking through brands that have this defensibility or ‘moat’ from competitors. eg) Ask yourself, what is it that Airbnb has the VRBO doesn’t? What about booking on Airbnb feels like an experience and passport into a community? What makes it delightful / fun / cool to be a part of, to tell your friends you booked? “I just booked an airbnb” feels ubiquitous and synonymous with “I just booked a cool trip.” But saying, “I just booked a VRBO,” is not the same.
MVB Projects and Process
Can you afford to have at least 1 brand designer and 1 product designer working collaboratively and in tandem, so as to develop the brand and initial MVB and MVP together?
The goal is to get some core identity work and design principles hashed out so that we don’t have to ask what they are every time we make design decisions or begin a new design project. Some of these early convos will feel like going to design therapy (“Who are we?” “What are we about?” “What’s our purpose ?” 😬 ) But bear with it because…
Once we have those principles solidified, we have something to work with now, and can prototype with tangible design elements in the actual product. A good place to test out some of these design concepts are on: a) landing pages or any ‘value prop’ screens that users see for the first time. b) refining the home page of your app / product; c) refining the onboarding flow or educational flow for your users; d) defining a lightweight visual social media / content strategy; e) testing messaging and early designs with core users and early adopters; f) redesigning your deck and other externally facing materials.
How long will this take? That’s depends on the scope and the team… What’s the design headcount? How quickly can the founders align, make decisions, and unblock design? Should the design team not be able to work in tandem, work remotely, etc., it may take longer or less time, depending.
Get feedback from users as you engage in this design process. Getting as much feedback as you can in real time, through the app (rather than focus groups) will keep things agile and you’ll stay in tune with your core users.
It’s also a good idea to do a portion of the scope, stop and take stock as a team on how it’s going. A team retro to talk about process, relationships and methods is always a good idea in addition to existing working sessions.
Cheers for now,
J
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