Founder Branding Tactics for Startups

Hey there,

It’s Saïd from Stimpack,

Welcome to the first edition of 99founder-tactics, I’m thrilled to share this issue with you.

First of all, Happy New Year and all my wishes for 2024🎉🎉

If you received this newsletter from a friend, and would to get it directly in your inbox, here’s the link. I would love to have you with us.

This first issue is about founder branding and why it plays a crucial role in today’s social landscape. More brands need to master and leverage founder branding to their advantage.

What you’ll learn:

• 🎭 Brand identity: founder brand vs. startup brand

• 🚩The attention-span problem

• ❤️ Why people want to see human faces instead of brand assets

• ✨ How to craft compelling personal stories

• 🤝🏼 How to partner with brands

•  🦄Treating yourself as an exclusive acquisition channel

• ➡️ And more

Reading this issue will take ~ 4 minutes.

Let’s dive in!

It all started with this tweet:

Brand identity: founder brand vs. startup brand

Brand identity 101:

• Brand identity plays a pivotal role in how companies are perceived.

• Founder brands revolve around the personality and story of their creators, famous examples:

  • 🍎Apple = Steve Jobs

  • 🚗Tesla = Elon Musk

• With literally the “=” symbol

🚩Problem: Brands are perceived as lacking humanity. It’s even worse in the era of democratized AI and automation. “Who the hell is writing to us behind the keyboard?”

So, should one separate their startup brand from their personal founder brand?

Assuming your goal is to sell things, or increase conversions; you have to either persuade or convince potential customers to buy your product or service.

[1] Tactics:

• Separate founder vs. startup brand: different topics and niche keywords. Use different accounts.

• Re-target, re-post, and re-purpose your content cross-accounts.

• Founder brand: lean on personal connections.

• Founder branding plays a crucial role when raising VC.

• Startup brand: emphasize the company's values.

More: Define 1 or 2 values your company aspires to personify.

• 🇩🇪German brands = quality.

• 🍎Apple = high social status.

• 👖Abercombie & Fitch - elite & privileged.

The attention span problem

The problem with people’s attention is that it’s extremely limited. We all have a short window span in which we can fully focus on a given task before distractions lure us away or mental fatigue sets in, diminishing our ability to focus.

The case of Ads:

• 95% of our decision making is subconscious.

• Ads have to make to most of “the attention economy”.

  • 💸Because ads monetize attention.

  • 💸Ten-year ad spent per individual ~ $2.5k - source

Fact: We just have a fraction of time ( < 1 sec) to decide whether we wanna give our attention⏱️💨

Why people want to see human faces instead of brand assets

A couple of experiments were conducted in the field of marketing: they all A/B tested marketing assets such as landing pages with graphical designs vs. versions of the same assets with human faces😊🎭

Result - conversions wise:

• Almost +100% conversion overall with human faces, impressive🤩

• Highly correlates with my experiments

  • 📸Posting photos/videos on social media → almost x2-3 engagement boost

  • 👨‍💻Possibly biased by timeline algorithms (at least on X).

• The first experiment called “cartoon vs. human faces” shows impressive results too:

  • 🎯Sign-ups: 1% more

  • 🎯Sales: 3% more

  • 🎯Average purchase: 6% higher

  • 🎯Total profits: 9% higher

📚Fact: faces are recognized extremely well and fast by humans

[2] Tactics:

• 🎭Show photos of you or other team members/partners whenever possible: on social, on your landing pages, basically anywhere you want to convert.

• Apply A/B testing techniques & measure conversion rates.

• Make use of more advanced CRO techniques (conversion-rate optimization):

  • ✂️Hyper-Personalization.

  • 🤖Chatbots & LLMs.

  • 📋Short forms, make it a reflex.

  • 💬UGC - probably the best vector for virality.

💡Note: This also applies to human voices.🗣️

How to craft compelling personal stories

Why would one want to write stories after all?😅

• Lack of authenticity & identity on social media + online →fun study of the Instagram case.

• Identification is an important process, that occurs just before projection & conversion.

• To communicate passion & a sense of purpose, people crave it.

🚩Problem: lack of inspiration, lack of time.

[3] Tactics to tackle this:

• Mapping a value to symbolize/personify, example: “Creativity” or “Innovation”.

• Think of your story as a recipe with irresistible ingredients.

• Use a framework, for example “the hero’s journey”.

🎸Music bands are good examples of storytelling and it all starts with the inception of their names.

Partner with related or complimentary brands

Telling a story is even more interesting when then are more protagonists to it → partner with the right people/brands.

Fun fact: “92% of consumers want brands to make ads that feel like a story.”

How

• 🏆Seek a win-win situation. Be transparent, tell your expectations.

• ⌛Be time-efficient.

• ❤️People love “group of people”, aka co-influencers. You have many of them hosting spaces on X. I’m personally looking for equally-minded folks (shameless self-promotion)🤗

[4] Tactics:

• Identify relevant partnerships.

• Jump in people’s DM, don’t hesitate, and be annoying sometimes if necessary.🤦🏻‍♀️

• Ask for cross-promotions, and negotiate when necessary.

Treat yourself as an acquisition channel at the service of your company

Founder branding has emerged as an influential acquisition channel for several reasons:

• 🤝🏼Focus on building: trust/credibility.

• ✅Create solid foundations for authority/admiration.

• ❤️Connection comes from identification - “we are alike”, or “I wanna be like you”.

• You are somehow a funnel too😲

  • Top of the funnel: “You are a founder, I’m a founder too”.

  • Bottom of the funnel: “I’ll buy your solution”.

  • Funnel stages: we simply call this trust or credibility (the dual process of identification+projection).

Your founder branding should not be able to actively drive customer acquisition in a more organic and trust-based way.

[5] Tactics (experimental): Basically, treat your founder brand as a funnel😅 - let us know what you think about this.

📚 More resources

• Ultimate storytelling guide.

• A fun compilation of story infographics.

• Fun fact about “the dating world” and the importance of voice😂

• A study about the attention span problem.

• More about CRO.

We are still small, but looking for partners.

🙌I would love your feedback on this very first issue. If you like it, feel free to tell your friends and partners about it. I also aspire to engage with all of you on a personal level: feel free to send me DMs on social media.

I’m also involved in various projects, such as an early-stage product growth platform called Stimpack; as well as a micro-launchpad comparable to Product Hunt (to be announced).

That’s it for this time! Thanks again, see you soon and take care.🙏

Saïd