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10.01.2024 Avant View

Build Your Brand Early: A Guide for Technical Founders

As a technical founder, you’re likely focused on developing a groundbreaking product or service, perfecting your technology, and securing your first customers. However, one crucial aspect that often gets overlooked in the early stages of commercializing is building your brand. Establishing a strong brand early on is not just about having a catchy logo or a sleek website, it’s about laying the foundation for how your company will be perceived in the market, differentiate, attract customers, and ultimately, achieve long-term success. Here are some topics and tips we’ve learned from working with and tracking those that really stand out.

1. Understanding Your Brand Archetype

A brand archetype is essentially the persona that your brand embodies. It defines how your brand communicates, behaves, and connects with its audience on an emotional level. Some brand archetypes include the Hero, the Partner, the Sage, and the Creator. For instance, if your startup is pioneering a disruptive technology, you might identify with the “Outlaw” archetype, which is all about challenging the status quo. If your organization has unique domain expertise you may want to position as the “Sage”, educating and sharing valuable information to help clients feel empowered. All of these archetypes have downstream implications, the Sage for example, needs to create educational or technical content regularly to assume the role.

Recommendation: Take time to identify the archetype that best aligns with your company’s mission, values, and target audience. This will guide your branding decisions, from your logo and tagline to your messaging and tone of voice. There are countless online brand archetype quizzes which can help you determine the most fitting archetype for your brand.

2. Crafting a Clear Messaging Strategy

Your brand message is the story you tell your customers about who you are, what you do, and why it matters. It should be clear, concise, and compelling, and it should resonate with your target audience. This includes your value proposition, which clearly outlines the benefits customers can expect from your product or service.

Recommendation: Start by developing a core message that encapsulates the essence of your brand. This message should be reflected in all your communication channels – website, social media, email marketing, etc. Remember, consistency is key. Regularly revisit and refine your messaging to ensure it stays relevant as your company an dproduct offering evolves.

3. Defining Your Value Proposition

Your value proposition is a succinct statement that highlights the unique benefits your product or service offers to customers. It answers the question, “Why should customers choose us over the competition?” A strong value proposition is crucial for differentiating your brand in a crowded market.

Recommendation: Focus on the specific pain points your product or service addresses and the tangible outcomes customers can achieve by using it. Include case studies and social proofs so clients can envision how your product will actually address their issue. Your value proposition should be prominently featured on your website’s homepage, in pitch decks, and in all marketing materials. It should form the fabric of all content that is produced.

4. Leveraging Social Media Early On

Social media is an indispensable tool for building brand awareness, engaging with customers, and driving growth. However, many technical founders overlook the importance of establishing a social media presence early in the startup journey. Here are some persuading statistics on this topic:

60-70% (depending on market segment) of a B2B client’s journey and decision process is made completely online before contacting a vendor. A significant component of this online research is the information they absorb organically via social media.
96% of B2B marketers are using LinkedIn for organic content sharing (LinkedIn)

Recommendation: LinkedIn has powerful tools for targeting, lead generation and advertising, but this does require dedicated attention and budget. For a time and/or resource limited founder, stick with the basics. Consistent and authentic engagement through frequent posts is key. Use these platforms to share your story, showcase your expertise, and connect with potential customers and industry influencers.

5. Content Marketing

Developing a content marketing strategy early on can position your startup as a thought leader in your industry. Blogs, whitepapers, and case studies are excellent ways to showcase your expertise and provide value to your audience. Developing content is a labor-intensive process, and a requirement which should be planned for. Think about your own experience researching a product or service, how likely are you to make a purchase if you cannot find any articles, technical information or collateral from that business?

Recommendation: Videos are brilliant alternative to long form content, plus LinkedIn indicates they generate 4-5x more engagement compared to other types of posts. Thanks to the video quality of mobile devices and the cultural trend towards a more realistic video format, founders can easily record a short series of clips on any number of relevant subjects. Their organization is likely filled with millennial researchers who are more than willing to produce short clips about their work.

Also, build a content calendar including video content, LinkedIn posts, blog pieces etc. Many CRM platforms have content calendars built in, but even a simple spreadsheet covering the next 1-2 months will do. Even if dates shift, having the calendar and assigning owners brings accountability to the process and will certainly improve the cadence at which material is produced.

Common Mistakes and Pitfalls

Failing to establish a brand early on can lead to several challenges down the road:

Lack of Differentiation: Without a clear brand and differentiated message, your startup may struggle to stand out in a competitive market.

Inconsistent Messaging: Inconsistent messaging can confuse potential customers and weaken your brand’s credibility.

Not seeing and presenting the big picture: Too often we see founders focus on the technical aspects of their product, such as a key specific specification rather than the ultimate value it brings. We often recommend founders read The Elements of Value by Harvard Business Review to better understand the pitfall of this approach and how to move their message up the value pyramid.

Not elevating the thought leaders of the company on social media: As companies expand their team, founders sometimes take a back seat to the marketers or other client facing members of the team to promote on social media. It is highly likely the technical founder has some sort of domain expertise or personal stary that their audience would benefit from hearing firsthand.

Missed Opportunities: Delaying brand building means missing out on opportunities to connect with your audience and establish trust. Most founders in our space have developed products and services having long sales cycles. Getting on the radar of potential clients early on and keeping them engaged as the brand builds, helps persuade them to purchase when the time comes.

Final Thoughts

Delaying brand building means missing out on opportunities to connect with your audience and establish trust early on. As a technical founder, it is easy to get caught up in the technical and business aspects of your enterprise but remember that building a strong brand is just as important. Investing in your brand now will pay dividends later as it helps you connect with customers, differentiate yourself from competitors, and create a lasting impression in the minds of your audience.

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PRIVACY POLICY

Avant Bio LLC, together with its affiliates and clients (“Avant Bio”, “us”, “our” or “we”), have created this Privacy Policy to explain how we collect, use, store, share and transfer personal data and information (“Personal Data”) we obtain through our website located at www.avant.bio (the “Site”), the Internet services that we offer (together with the Site, “Internet Services”), as well as through other means, as described below. Investors, employees, contractors and job applicants may receive a supplementary privacy notice and, in the event of any conflict with this Privacy Policy, the terms of such supplementary privacy notice will control. When we use the term “Personal Data” in this Privacy Policy, we mean information relating to an identifiable individual person.

Where permitted by law, by using the Internet Services you consent to such use of your Personal Data and agree to the terms of this Privacy Policy.

Depending on where you are located and your interactions with the Internet Services, certain processing of your Personal Data by Avant Bio may be subject to data protection and privacy laws, including the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”), the UK Data Protection Act of 2018 along with the “UK GDPR” as retained as UK law by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (together, the “UK GDPR”). and the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act (together, the “CCPA”). For example, this may be the case where Avant Bio processes the Personal Data of individuals in the EU and the UK who use the Internet Services (the “EU/UK Processing”) or of users of the Internet Services who reside in California (the “CCPA Processing”).

This Privacy Policy makes clear where its disclosures apply only to the EU/UK Processing or to the CCPA Processing. All other disclosures in this Privacy Policy relate to Personal Data to which the GDPR, the UK GDPR and the CCPA do not apply, as well as to the EU/UK Processing and the CCPA Processing. This Privacy Policy was updated as of December 2023.

Personal Data We Collect
We collect and use Personal Data in a number of ways, depending on how you interact with us. These include when you interact with us on Internet Services, when you contact us by email, telephone or by other means, and when you visit one of our offices. If you provide Personal Data about any person other than yourself, you must ensure they understand how their Personal Data will be used and that they have given their permission for you to disclose the Personal Data to us and our outsourced service providers to use.

Information You Submit Through the Internet Services. When you interact with any Internet Services, we may collect information you voluntarily provide to us, such as when you complete one of our online forms, join our mailing list or login to our investor portals. This information may include:
(1) Identifiers, such as your name, user name and password, as well as contact details, such as your personal or work postal address, email address and phone number;
(2) Personal Information categories listed in the California Customer Records statute (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e)), such as name, address and telephone number;
(3) Sensitive Personal Information such as your account log-in;
(4) Information about your communications with us, including the Personal Data you provide to us in email or in conversations with our employees and personnel; and
(5) Your marketing preferences, including any consents you have given us.

Information We Collect Automatically Through Our Internet Services. We automatically collect certain Personal Data including internet and other electronic activity information to help us understand how you use the Internet Services (which we will refer to in this Privacy Policy collectively as “Usage Data”). For example, each time you visit the Site, we may automatically collect your IP address, browser and computer or device type, access time, the webpage from which you came and the webpage(s) that you access during your visit. We may combine Usage Data with other Personal Data in a manner that enables us to trace Usage Data to an individual user. Some web browsers may have “do not track” settings. The Site does not honor “do not track” settings.

Information We Collect From Third Parties. On occasion, we may receive Personal Data from third party sources, such as where our trusted suppliers provide web analytics and reporting services to us.

Information We Collect When You Visit. When you visit Avant Bio’s offices, we may collect Personal Data from you, including identifiers such as your name and official identification when you sign in with reception, and visual information collected through security cameras.

Sensitive Personal Information. We may collect information that is considered “sensitive” under some laws including the CCPA, such as your account log-in if you log into our portal. When we do so, we use such information only for lawful purposes in compliance with the CCPA, GDPR and other applicable privacy laws, such as to perform the services or provide the goods requested by you and to resist malicious, deceptive, fraudulent or illegal actions. Where required by applicable law, we will obtain your consent prior to processing.

Cookies. We may use cookies (which are small amounts of data sent from a web server to your browser that are stored on your computer’s hard drive) to keep track of your use of the Internet Services, to validate your identity, to remember your password and preferences, to tailor the Internet Services to your account and to meet your interests and to improve the quality of the Internet Services. Generally, you can set your browser not to accept cookies or to notify you if you are sent a cookie, giving you the opportunity to choose whether or not to accept the cookie. Please note that if you do set your browser not to accept cookies, certain Internet Services may not function properly. We use Google Analytics to understand Site traffic. To learn more about the use of Cookies by Google for analytics and to exercise choice regarding those Cookies, please visit the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on.

Children. We do not knowingly collect Personal Data from minors under the age of 16 nor do we target the Site to minors.

Our Use of Personal Data The following table describes the purposes for which we process the Personal Data referred to above, and any information you give us, as well as the legal basis for the use of Personal Data that is subject to the EU/UK Processing.

Purpose of Processing	EU / UK Disclosure: Legal Basis
• Verifying your identity. • Communicating with you in relation to the product and service we provide (including the Internet Services).	• Where necessary to fulfill a contract or purchase, or take steps linked to a contract or purchase.
• In response to requests from government law enforcement authorities conducting an investigation.	• Where necessary to comply with a legal obligation.
• Providing services to our client and other individuals. • Promoting our services (including the Internet Service ) to clients, potential client and other individual and advising you of news and industry updates. • Monitoring the use of the Site and using Personal Data to help us improve and protect the Internet Services, both online and offline. • Investigating any complaints received from you or other about the Internet Services. • In connection with legal claim and for compliance regulatory and investigatory purposes.	• Where necessary for Avant Bio’s or another party’ legitimate interest and where those interests are not overridden by your data protection rights.
• Sending you direct marketing by email in relation to our service. (including the Internet Service ). • On other occasions where we ask you for consent, we will use your Personal Data for the purpose(s) that we explain at that time.	• Where you provide your consent.

EU/UK Disclosure: We will not use Personal Data to formulate a decision based solely on automated processing (including profiling) which produces legal effects or similarly significantly impacts you. Where we require Personal Data to comply with our legal or contractual obligations, the provision of such Personal Data is mandatory. If it is not provided, then we may not be able to provide the Internet Services. In all other cases, the provision of requested Personal Data is optional..

Our Personal Data Sharing Practices

We employ other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf, such as for analyzing data and providing certain of the Internet Services. These third-party service providers have access to Personal Data needed to perform their functions, but we require that they do not use Personal Data for other purposes. Personal Data is not shared with any unaffiliated third parties for their marketing purposes unless we have obtained your consent to do so in accordance with applicable law.

We may share Personal Data with third parties: (1) as necessary to comply with applicable law, in response to subpoenas, court orders, regulatory requests, or legal process, to establish, protect or exercise our legal rights and interests, or to defend against legal claims; (2) if we believe it is necessary in order to investigate, prevent or take action regarding inappropriate or illegal activities, fraud or situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person or property; (3) if we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent or take action regarding inappropriate use of the Internet Services; (4) to our subsidiaries, joint ventures or other companies under common control with us (in which case we will require such entities to honor this Privacy Policy); and (5) as part of a corporate transaction with a successor or affiliate or in connected with any acquisition, merger or sale of assets.

CCPA Disclosure: We may disclose the following categories of Personal Data to third parties for the business or commercial purposes described above: (1) identifiers, including your name, user name and password and contact details, such as your personal or work postal address, email address and phone number; (2) commercial information, including your marketing preferences and any consents you have given us; (3) Internet or other electronic network activity information, including information related to the browser or device you use to access the Site, your IP address and your cookie preferences; (4) professional and employment information, such as where we are making employment references; and (5) visual information collected through our security cameras for legal or regulatory compliance or investigatory purposes. We do not sell your Personal Data, nor do we share it for purposes of cross-context behavioral advertising, and we have not done so in the last 12 months. We do not sell or share the Personal Data of minors.

EU/UK Disclosure: Your Personal Data may be transferred to, processed in and accessed from jurisdictions outside the EU and the UK by Avant Bio and the third parties with which we share your Personal Data. Specifically, your Personal Data will be transferred to Avant Bio entities and third parties in the United States of America. When we transfer your Personal Data among Avant Bio entities, or to other third party organizations, we will do so in accordance with the GDPR and/or the UK GDPR, including through the use of European Commission-approved standard contractual clauses, a third party’s binding corporate rules or we where are entitled to rely on one of the other safeguards permitted by the GDPR and/or the UK GDPR.

Your Rights

We have controls in place designed to ensure that the Personal Data we collect and process is relevant, accurate and appropriate for the purposes it is used. If you believe that any Personal Data about you is inaccurate, please let us know by contacting us at privacy@avant.bio. Please note that any Personal Data we have copied may remain in back-up storage for some period of time after your request, and that if you delete certain Personal Data, you may not be able to use the Internet Services in the future without re-submitting such information. Please also note that we will maintain Personal Data whenever we are required to do so by law or regulation.

Individuals in a number of jurisdictions may have certain rights in relation to their Personal Data. These rights vary, but they may include the right to: (1) request access to and rectification or erasure of their Personal Data; (2) restrict or object to the processing of their Personal Data; and (3) obtain a copy of their Personal Data in a portable format. Individuals may also have the right to lodge a complaint about Avant Bio’s processing of their Personal Data with a data protection authority. The rights described herein are not absolute and may not be applicable to you. We reserve all of our rights available to us at law in this regard. If you wish to exercise any of the rights described in this Your Rights section, please email privacy@avant.bio or call telephone: _________________.

If you wish to exercise your rights, we will need to verify your identity. To do so, we will request that you match specific pieces of information you have provided us previously, as well as, in some instances, ask you to provide a signed declaration under penalty of perjury that you are the individual whose Personal Data is the subject of the request. If it is necessary to collect additional information (including Personal Data) from you, we will use the information only for verification purposes and will delete it as soon as practicable after complying with the request. For requests related to particularly sensitive Personal Data, we may require additional proof of identification. If you make a request through an authorized agent, we will require written proof that the agent is authorized to act on your behalf. We will process your request within the time provided by applicable law.

EU/UK Disclosure: You may be entitled to ask Avant Bio for a copy of your Personal Data, to correct, delete or restrict processing of it, and to obtain the Personal Data you provide in a structured, machine-readable format and ask us to share this Personal Data with other organizations. You may also have the right to object to processing in some circumstances and can ask us not to send you direct marketing or to carry out profiling at any time. You have the right to lodge a complaint about Avant Bio’s processing of your Personal Data with a data protection authority in the place you live, work or where the breach occurred. Where we have asked for your consent, you may withdraw consent at any time. If you ask to withdraw your consent to Avant Bio processing your Personal Data, this will not affect any processing that has already taken place. These rights may be limited, for example, if fulfilling your request would reveal Personal Data about another person, where they would infringe the rights of a third party (including our rights) or if you ask us to delete Personal Data that we are required by law to keep or have compelling legitimate interests in keeping. We will inform you of relevant exemptions we rely upon when responding to any request you make.

CCPA Disclosure: If you are a California resident, you may be entitled to request access to the categories or specific pieces of Personal Data that Avant Bio collects about you, to request that Avant Bio deletes or corrects your Personal Data and to opt out of the sale and/or sharing of your Personal Data. Although California residents may have the right to opt out of the sale and sharing of Personal Data, Avant Bio does not sell or share Personal Data as the terms “sell” and “share” are used under the CCPA to third parties, including Personal Data of individuals under 16 years of age, and we have not sold or shared such Personal Data in the last 12 months. The CCPA prohibits Avant Bio from discriminating against you for exercising your applicable CCPA rights.

If you wish to exercise any of the rights described in this CCPA Disclosure section, please email privacy@avant.bio or call telephone: _____________. In order to respond to a request, you will be required to supply a valid means of identification as a security precaution. Depending on the sensitivity of the information in question, we may require additional proof of identification. We will not disclose or delete any information until the individual’s identity is verified. If an agent makes a request on your behalf, they will be required to verify the request by submitting your written authorization, and we may still ask that you verify your identity with us before we can proceed with the request. We will not honor any requests from agents until authorization is verified. We will maintain records of consumer requests made under CCPA and how we responded to those requests in accordance with the CCPA.

California Shine the Light Disclosure: Under California Civil law, Californians are also entitled to request information relating to whether a business has disclosed Personal Data to any third parties for the third parties’ direct marketing purposes. If you are making a request for access, we may not be able to provide specific pieces of Personal Data if the disclosure creates a substantial, articulable and unreasonable risk to the security of your Personal Data, your account with us or our systems or networks. If you are making a request for erasure, we will ask that you confirm that you would like us to delete your Personal Data again before your request is submitted. To make a request, please contact us at the contact information below.

Retaining Your Personal Data

Where we process your Personal Data in connection with the Internet Services, we keep the Personal Data to comply with our legal obligations or to communicate with you because you still have another connection with Avant Bio. Where we process your Personal Data for marketing purposes or with your consent, we process the data until you ask us to stop and for a short period after that (to allow us to implement your requests). We also keep a record of the fact that you have asked us not to send you direct marketing or to process your Personal Data so that we can respect your request in future. We maintain administrative and financial records and use multiple methods to back up our data and systems to ensure reliable data recovery in the event of a significant business disruption, and we retain this information in accordance with our Personal Data Retention and Destruction Policy. We retain all other Personal Data for the time necessary to achieve the purposes outline in this Privacy Policy, taking into account the statute of limitations period and record retention requirements under applicable law.

SEC Regulations S-P, S-AM and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

Some regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.K. Information Commissioner and the Federal Trade Commission, have adopted rules that require financial institutions, like Avant Bio, to provide privacy policy notices to their clients. If you are a natural person who invests with us, that notice will govern how we use your Personal Data for the purposes specified in that notice.

Security

We have implemented measures to help protect Personal Data from loss, misuse or unauthorized access or disclosure. While we strive to protect Personal Data, we cannot guarantee its security.

Vulnerability Reporting

If you believe you have found a vulnerability or security concern with any Avant Bio application or product, please submit a report to our team at security@avant.bio. Please include the type of issue, the name of the application or a URL, a proof of concept and the detailed steps required to reproduce the issue. We take all vulnerabilities and security concerns very seriously.

Links

The Site may contain links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of any such other website (whether accessed through an advertisement, service or content link) and urge you to review such practices prior to submitting any information or Personal Data to such websites.

Changes

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in our sole discretion and encourage visitors to review this page frequently for any changes. Any updated version of this Privacy Policy will be effective as of the date set forth therein. If you are located in the United States of America or otherwise outside the EU or the UK, by continuing to use the Internet Services after such updates, you expressly agree to the terms of the updated Privacy Policy.

Questions

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please feel free to contact us by e-mail at privacy@avant.bio.

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