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05Sections
When a company ends up with polished materials and no clear next step for the customer, the project was usually scoped around outputs before the business decisions were made. Our guide to when a climate startup should invest in branding helps you judge whether brand work is early, on time or overdue. This guide is for the company that needs material now while some decisions are still open. It sets out what to build first, in what order, and what to hand to a designer.
Start with one page of decisions
Before anyone designs anything, write one page that answers seven questions.
The one-page decision sheet
- Primary audience
The first person whose decision matters this year.
- First offer
The product, application or bounded first commitment that person can take up now.
- Today's alternative
What the reader uses or does instead today.
- Evidence held
The results, conversations and commitments the company can show, each with its conditions.
- Open uncertainty
What the company does not yet know and is working to find out.
- Next commitment
The step you are asking the reader to take.
- Wider ambition
Where the company is heading, kept apart from what the reader can act on now.
The free Brand Strategy System covers the same ground in more depth, across seventeen decisions. It records a confidence score from 1 to 10 against each one and flags any decision below seven. At an early stage, that flag is the useful output. It shows which decisions are stable, which are assumptions and which would change the work if they moved.
Build in the order that limits rework
- The proposition
Write a plain statement of what the business does, who it serves and why the claim is credible.
- The evidence record
Gather technical results, customer conversations, regulatory status and commercial commitments, each with its conditions and an owner. A result keeps its conditions when it reaches the website.
- The investor narrative
Build a short argument around the financing milestone and the risks it should reduce. A polished template leaves an unclear capital plan as unclear as it was.
- The website
Make the few pages visitors need, often home, product or application, technology and evidence, company and contact. Where nothing is on sale yet, name the route that is open, such as a partnership discussion, a technical evaluation or an investor conversation.
- The identity starter kit
Set enough typography, colour, layout and illustration guidance for the materials to hang together, and hold it loosely while the proposition is still moving.
The order can bend. A company heading into a consequential investor meeting may need the deck first. What holds is that each asset takes its facts from the one-page sheet, so none of them invents its own story.
Aspyre Foods grows duckweed to produce functional proteins for food producers. When it came to us, its pitch rested on one product and its website was a single page of text. The positioning came first, across four rounds of the pitch, as interest from food producers moved towards Rubisco. We then wrote the full 32-page investor deck and cut the teaser from it, so every claim in the short version traces back to the long one. The first website stayed a single page, now opening on what the platform makes possible, and we refined the existing identity for the site and the deck. Read the Aspyre case.
DNAir, which captures DNA from the air, followed a similar shape. Its founders kept the name, and a new wordmark solved how to write it. The website is one landing page. We gave the founders the basis for three entry offers, from a feasibility study to a pilot, so organisations new to air eDNA have a first step. Read the DNAir case.
Decide what to leave for later
A fifty-page website, a brand film and several product sub-brands can wait while the first commercial buyer is still unknown. Six customer interviews, one tested route to a sample request and a clear investor narrative may do more for the company now. Joel Tasche, founder and CEO of CleanHub, gave founders the same order in his interview with us.
“Once you have an idea, don't waste time on building the perfect website, finding the perfect logo, or creating the perfect name. Instead, get on the phone and try to sell your product.”
The reverse also holds. An established technical company entering several markets with several buyer groups will outgrow a lightweight homepage quickly. Scope follows the decisions the company has to support now, whatever its age.
Keep a confidence score on every claim
For each claim the materials make, record how confident the team is and why. A market hypothesis backed by two interviews and a signed supply agreement sit at different levels, and the record should say so. Carry that list into the brand system as the claims due for regular review.
As evidence changes, revise the position, the pitch and the site from the same source. Our free Story System works this way, with each story written once in depth and cut for the room. Nathan Bonnisseau, co-founder of Plan A, which makes carbon accounting software, described what growth asked of the company's work in his interview with us.
“What worked for one size may no longer be effective for another. As a result, you must be patient and ruthless with your own work. Things need to be constantly updated and upgraded.”
A small system built from one source is easier to update than a large one built from several.
The minimum handover
The minimum handover kit
- One positioning page, from the decision sheet.
- A short proof register, with an owner for each claim.
- A pitch outline that ends on the ask.
- A sitemap with the priority of each page.
- An identity starter kit.
- A named owner for changes to any of the above.
A designer or developer should be able to work from this kit without deciding the business model on the founder's behalf.
If the decision sheet is hard to fill, work through the free Brand Strategy System before you commission anything. Its seventeen decisions run in the order a strategy needs them, and the seven briefs it builds, including one for the homepage and one for the pitch narrative, give a designer most of the kit above.
Sources and further reading
- Aspyre Foods case study, Brighter Future
- DNAir case study, Brighter Future
- Joel Tasche, CleanHub, founder interview, Brighter Future
- Nathan Bonnisseau, Plan A, founder interview, Brighter Future
- When Should a Climate Startup Invest in Branding? A Decision Guide, Brighter Future
- How Deep Tech Brand and Pitch Work Is Scoped, Brighter Future
- The Brand Strategy System, Brighter Future
- The Story System, Brighter Future
Brighter Future worked with AspyreRead the case study
Free course lessonThe Brand Strategy System, what you sell and how it fits
Tell us what needs to move.
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