Branding a tech company: what really matters

I’ve been buying vegetables from a local shop across the street for years now. I’ve spent thousands of euros there and I have no idea what the shop is called.

Tech startups are not that lucky. It is not enough to have good products at a good price and easy access. Clients don’t just walk into your store. You need to be known for the very thing your clients are looking for.

Yet, when you look at an average Seed or Series A business plan, few of the companies with a strong product are planning for a substantial investment in building a brand.

As a tech start-up, you may already have a solid technology and continue experimenting with your product or testing different ways of pushing the technology to the market. Your product is unstable, and you will end up throwing away prototypes and even versions of your product until you reach the market fit.

If you wait to reach the market fit before investing in publicity and brand, it might just be too late.

On the other hand if you start investing early in getting to be known, you will have:

• an easier access to clients. Even if you completely pivot to another market, the fact that you have some notoriety and visibility will help you get access to new clients,
• an easier access to investors, top-notch employees and in general better chances of getting your company supported by the best people in the ecosystem,
• over time, an asset, your brand, that will be important when planning for an exit.

If you observe software companies around the world, in different markets, B2B or B2C, you will see how they all have very strong brands. While they typically have great products, it is to a large extent also because they started investing in the brand early and because it was an absolute necessity in order to survive in the light of fierce competition.

If you are a tech founder, you need to think about how to steer certain expenses to pay into your brand, so that it will yield dividends or goodwill further down the road.