Project: Cold Start Ventures
Date: 2021-2022

ROLE: HEAD OF BRAND

DELIVERABLES:
BRAND CONCEPT, STRATEGY, NAMING /
mission, vision, values definition /
VISUAL IDENTITY /
Copywriting /
BRAND MARKETING CONTENT /
UX/UI DESIGN /
Investor collateral /
Internal branding /

In 2021, I joined a Venture Studio to lead the brand creative team to incubate a series of startups from initial concept discovery to finding product-market fit.

As one of my first projects, I was tasked with leading a rebrand to transform our brand identity from “Modern Ventures” to “Cold Start Ventures.”

Our nimble team developed the brand concept and delivered all touchpoints to reflect the studio’s sensibility and core value proposition: providing founders with the playbooks and resources needed to solve the world’s most complex problems from the ground up.

Thematic Tensions:

Our stakeholder and ICP research revealed a thematic tension between our intended audiences:

• Theme 01: A venture studio is rooted in innovation. The brand needs to be progressive and forward-looking in order to recruit founders and talent to the studio.

• Theme 02: In order to establish trust with institutional investors, and honour the nuance of building companies in human-centred categories like healthcare, the company must be anchored in tradition.

The Strategy:

A future that feels familiar.

We developed a brand strategy that reflects this duality and amplifies the spirit of the firm.

It is one that balances tradition with innovation. One that exudes confidence, while remaining humble and human. One that is both gravity-defying and grounded.

Why Cold Start?

When a car engine initially starts, it doesn't run at its peak performance because it's colder than its normal operating temperature. This moment is commonly referred to as a Cold Start.

”Cold Start” is similar to the process of incubating a company from scratch. The company begins cold and gradually warms as it grows.

Creative Brief:

Develop a brand identity that reflects our audience-driven strategy and leverages the competing tensions to represent the following:



01 > Forward-looking. Growth, progression and optimism for the future.
02 > People-focused. Authentic, editorial, and approachable.
03 > Quietly confident. Refined, grounded and humble.

Colour

The colour palette was developed to represent the strategic personality.

CS Blue: Traditional, grounded.
CS Red: Confidence, progressive.
CS Sand: Human, approachable, humble

Content Experience

As the primary brand touchpoint, we not only communicated the studios’ core value proposition but also designed a web experience that would highlight the human-centred narratives behind the portfolio companies.

Innovation begins with people. We focused the site experience on telling behind-the-scenes stories of creation and the experience of building companies from scratch. We wanted to emphasize all aspects of this experience; the untold journeys, the wins, the turmoil, the sacrifice, and mostly, the communities we serve with the companies we build. It’s the human elements that go beyond capital, to create something impactful.