This is part of a series of open letters to founders called ‘Howdy Founder’ addressed to startup founders in search of a Design Lead or building out their Design function.

* * * *

Howdy Founder 👋🏻

Let’s say you have an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that’s getting great traction and you’re seeing the user base and/or community solidify … 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👇🏻

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