TL;DR
- Your brand stopped matching the company somewhere between raises, and you usually notice when it costs you a hire, a deal, or a round.
- Alignment comes first. A prettier logo on an unsettled story doesn’t hold up under growth.
- We work embedded, not handed off. We sit close to your team, find where smart people quietly disagree, and stay after the guidelines ship.
- The first step is small: an alignment read with your leadership team that shows you the real gap before you commit to scope.
- Best fit: funded startups, roughly Series A through D, earlier if you’re building a category — founders and CMOs who feel the drift, and category creators building language for something new.
You’ve Outgrown Your Brand
Somewhere between the last raise and the next one, the story stopped fitting. You might not notice until it’s costing you a hire, a deal, or a round. Sales describes one company, the site describes another, and the exec team each has a slightly different version. The brand that got you here is quietly holding you back.
That’s the moment we’re built for.
What We Do
We do brand, design, and creative strategy — alignment-first. That order is the whole point. Before we design anything, we get the company clear on what it actually is now: the customer, the promise, the words everyone will use. Then we express it, in an identity and a system that hold up under growth.
The result isn’t a prettier logo sitting on an unsettled story. It’s a brand that matches the company and makes it easier to sell, hire, and raise. And saves a lot of back and forth, time, and headaches in the process.
How We Work: Embedded, Not Handed Off
Most agency relationships run on a handoff. You write a brief, the agency disappears, and weeks later something arrives that’s technically correct and somehow not what you needed. Everything that didn’t fit in the brief — the disagreement no one mentioned, the customer the deck doesn’t describe — gets lost.
We work embedded. We sit close to your team, learn how you actually talk about the company, and find where smart people quietly disagree. That closeness is why the work lands: we’re not guessing at the problem from the outside.
And we stay. A brand isn’t finished the day the guidelines ship. As you raise again, enter a new market, or change how you sell, the story needs to move with you. We grow with the company instead of restarting the relationship every time something changes.
How a Partnership Starts
It starts small and low-risk: an alignment read. We spend focused time with your leadership team — working through the mission, vision, values, and who you’re really for — surface where the story has drifted, and show you the gap between how the company is described internally and how it shows up outside. You get a clear picture of the actual problem before committing to a larger scope.
From there, the work scales to what you need: messaging, identity, brand system, ongoing creative partnership.
Proof
We’ve helped cyber security, fin tech and a developer tool SaaS start-ups create a new market category from the ground up — building the brand, communication and language for a space that didn’t have a name yet.
We’ve partnered with founder-led entertainment brands to turn scattered creative into a coherent system as they scaled and personally reached higher recognition.
Different companies, different industries, same pattern: the work started with alignment, and the brand followed.
Who It’s For
We work best with funded startups, roughly Series A through D — earlier if you’re building a category — that have outgrown their original story. Especially:
- Founders and CMOs who can feel the drift but can’t yet name it.
- Category creators building a brand for something the market doesn’t have language for.
- Teams that want a partner embedded in the work, not a vendor completing a task.
If you want a one-off logo and nothing more, we’re probably not the right fit. If you want your brand to keep pace with the company you’re building, we are.
Start a Conversation
Tell us what’s shifted lately — a raise, a new market, a story that stopped fitting. We’ll tell you whether an alignment read makes sense. Start a conversation.
FAQs
How much does a brand partnership cost?
It depends on scope, so here’s the shape of it.
Start here:
Alignment Read | Short, high-level diagnosis | From $7,00
Alignment Sprint | We dig in and settle the story | From $35,000
Continue:
Brand Work | Messaging, identity, brand system | From $20,000
Ongoing Partnership | Embedded, retained monthly | From $10,000/month
Most companies start with the read. We’ll give you a real quote for anything before you commit.
Who does the work?
Melissa, our founder, is in the room for every alignment engagement, alongside your lead account manager and our head of creative. Three senior people, which is most of why the alignment work costs what it does. After alignment, Melissa stays on strategy and the team runs production — and you keep the same account lead the whole way, so nobody gets re-briefed on your company six weeks in.
What's an alignment read?
Focused time with your leadership team working through mission, vision, values, and who you’re really for. We surface where the story has drifted and show you the gap between how the company gets described internally and how it shows up outside. You get a clear picture of the actual problem before scoping anything larger.
How long does the work take?
The Alignment Read takes 2 weeks.
The Alignment Sprint runs 4-6 weeks.
Brand Work — messaging, identity, and the system — runs 8-12 weeks.
Read to finished brand is about four months end to end, and you’ll have dates against your own deadline before you sign anything.
Can you move faster than that?
Sometimes, by narrowing scope. What we won’t compress is leadership time — alignment only holds if the people running the company are actually in the room. If a board meeting or a launch is driving your date, tell us the date first and we’ll scope backward from it.
What do you need from us?
Between 3-6 hours across two weeks hours of leadership time during alignment, access to the people who talk to customers, one lead from the product team and one decision-maker who can settle a tie. The embedded model runs on that access. It’s the most common reason timelines slip, and it’s the part we can’t do for you.
What does "embedded" mean in practice?
We sit close to your team rather than working from a brief and disappearing. That means access to the people who talk to customers, presence in the rooms where positioning gets argued, and enough time inside the company to find where smart people quietly disagree. The closeness is why the work lands.
We already have an in-house design team. Where do you fit?
Usually at the layer above execution. In-house teams are often producing well against a story that no longer matches the company, and they’re too close to it to see the drift. We do the alignment and the system; your team runs on it every day.
Can you do identity only? We already know who we are.
Sometimes, yes. If the leadership team genuinely agrees on the customer, the promise, and the words, we can go straight to expression. The alignment read tells us which situation you’re in — and it fairly often finds a disagreement no one had named out loud.
We're pre-seed. Are we too early?
Usually, yes. This work pays off when there’s a company to align — customers, a team, a story that’s had time to drift. Before that, a lot of what we’d do is guesswork you can do faster yourself.
Two exceptions. If you’re creating a category, you need language before you have customers, because the language is how you get the first ones. And if the founders don’t actually agree on what they’re building, that’s cheap to settle now and expensive to settle after you’ve hired thirty people around the disagreement.
If either sounds like you, start with the alignment read rather than a sprint. Two weeks and a clear picture is the right size of bet at your stage.
What happens after the guidelines ship?
We stay. As you raise again, enter a new market, or change how you sell, the story has to move with you. Ongoing partnership means the brand keeps pace instead of you restarting an agency relationship every eighteen months.
