QC#91: Brand vs. Product: What matters more?

10 years back, you know, the reality was there were only so many products on the App Store. So you build a good product, you would have some some free attention that that came your way and then you got seen, right? But that's not, that's not the case anymore. The moment you decide to be an entrepreneur is the moment you probably should start thinking about your own brand. All right, everyone. Welcome back to Quick Coffee, another week, another episode. We are back here recording and I'm super excited to dive into today's topic. We will have to start with a different topic. First, of course, many listeners are going to expect that we talk about the new iPhone as we have done in the past. But we're going to come to that in a moment. Over to you, Felix, how's it going? Doing good, good to see you, Pat. It's nice that we take time to bring in, like, bring back Quick Coffee. That's been a project we've not been doing for three years, four years, insane. Now, like, looking back into like the early Quick Coffee episodes, you can clearly tell, you know, we've been, you know, we had very, like, we usually had a lot of tries and errors to, like, get this going. And it's so funny, right? I mean, if you, I always love looking at Quick Coffee as our, like, live journal. You look back and you're like, what the fuck is, you know, like, who are these two dudes? I mean, you know, when we started, you didn't even have kids, man. I mean, that's insane. How do you have two kids? What's going on? It's crazy. But people might have noticed we've switched at least for now to, like, a bi-weekly schedule. So we're going to record every, every other week. We want to kind of keep it up. But then also, you know, not overload ourselves and really, you know, turn things into a great episode. In the past, we have always covered every Apple major Apple release with a hot tech from your site. I mean, you're, you're now known for hot techs on, on, on, on, on. Interestingly enough, like, like, I have, I have, I have an unexpected hot tech today that I would like to share. And that is the new, the new Stripe logo. Okay. Okay. Wait, let's start there. Before you give the design opinion, it tells me nothing. It is the most boring product. It's the most boring logo for an absolutely amazing company I have ever seen. The one thing is, do you think it's genius? Yeah. I actually, I, I, I mean, they can tell you why. Okay. So my take is there is one, there is one meaning that I can find which is kind of like this shape going up. And I'm going to, I'm going to pull it up on a screen for people to see, you know, there's this shape kind of going up where it's like, okay, your revenue is increasing. You're making more money as a company. It tells, it, it tells me, it tells me as a viewer, it tells me no, no story. But I hope, I hope that you can give me, I'm going to pull it up here while, while you talk, I hope you can give me the deep meaning of this logo. The best logos in the world are the most simple logo, right? Like think about Apple. It's a simple Apple. Like, you know, don't overthink it. Like just be incredibly simple and reduce it to the absolute minimum. That's the same striped it. They've designed a stripe. That's it. That's a stripe. You know, what else I use? It's a stripe. You've got to ask like, as like Alida's having it's a stripe. It's like, yeah, it's a stripe. That's it. It's a stripe. And I can tell you why I think it's genius. So first of all, I do believe the logo they had before wasn't that incredible either. So it wasn't, wasn't the logo was just an S, right? It was just an S. So like, you know, like let's not talk about stripe having those like insane logos, right? I mean, you know, the logo they had initially was an S. The logo they are now having is a visual shape. And it's a stripe, you know, it's like literally a stripe, as we just said. And first of all, the amount of free marketing they're getting for this is incredible. It's costs millions of dollars, you know, to get that amount of reach for that kind of rebrand, right? Like, let's just acknowledge that for a second. But positively or negatively, it doesn't matter. It's marketing. Like basically the word the name stripe has now been appearing on every one's feet. The amount of free, I don't want to count the millions of impression impressions that this logo received, you know? And you know it yourself. It's all about distribution. It's about 100% and like, you know, having people talk about it. And you got to be bold in order for people to talk about it. And on top of that, I do believe it's actually quite a nice book. I can very bold and like thought through logo, because it's so simple. And the best logos in the world are the ones that have a hidden message. And I'm 100% sure there's like even more behind that logo than just the single stripe, which you didn't even see, which is interesting. I think most people won't see it. But then if you look at, for example, can you open up the index ventures logo for a second? Can we just one second? Can we just talk about this one? Yeah, I mean, that's a different story, but also this one is also, I mean, this one, this one is also just, I mean, we're looking at the A16Z logo. Now, the one thing that I want to say, the one thing that I want to say, I mean, we usually agree on certain things. I don't think that I will agree with the stripe tag. That's fine. This one is pretty wild in terms of just, you know, the idea, but it is, it is recognizable. It is unique. The problem that I have with the new stripe logo is I get, I get your take and I get to comparison to Apple, but the problem is the Apple logo is still, you know, it has this kind of bite and it, there is something unique to it. The problem is this stripe here, it could be any like it's a random, it's more or less a random shape. Will it get to this level of where it's actually recognizable? Like the Airbnb logo is also genius logo, but it has at least some uniqueness to the shape that you can recognize it. If you see this on a, on a, on a, on anything, you know, it's going to take a long time to connect that like box. You know, if you, if you can open up, I think it comes a lot down to like positioning and strategy and storytelling. If you look at this little stripe now being part of the main logo as well, like can you look up the actual stripe logo? Yeah. So yeah, okay, I get that. You know, it's a lot of about position this logo. Like obviously, I think it's not a smart move to introduce such a simple shape and then have it as a standalone item and put it out in the world. But if you position it smartly, I think it can actually be quite powerful. And some of the boldest brands I know are quite simple. Another example I was talking about logos having a hidden message. Can you zoom in a little bit? Yeah, but this one for me is, this one is different. This one is genius. This one I find also genius because we talked about it, right? But there is, but, but there is something to it, you know, like this stripe I'm thinking I'm looking at this box and I'm thinking it's kind of like a bit shaped, you know, up into the right, like maybe my revenue goes up for some, like I'm trying to find the message. This one, it has the message you can explain it, but the message here is, I mean, just for everyone else, like not seeing it, I think that's a lot that's always like the fun part about logos. If you look at this one or even the FedEx logo, for example, there's these like hidden things inside. So this one, for example, is a handshake, right? It's like basically a hand that you shake if you do a deal with your investors, which I find super, super interesting. And I mean, I might take with stripe and I think we should probably then like move on to our main topic for this episode. But my take with the stripe logo is it's a simple stripe and it makes more sense than the logo they had before. And I think it's bold. That's free marketing. And it's, it's a genius move. And even with a simple shape like this, you can play a lot thinking about an environment that's very emotional and dynamic. And, you know, there's so much you can do with that. And I'm very much interested in seeing their marketing team and motion team now playing with this shape, which is way beyond, you know, what you could do with a simple S. I think with that shape, you can do way more. And there's a strategy behind it. And I mean, I mean, it's really kind of like, you know, I mean, it kind of takes us into the episode, you know, with how to build a product, how to start out with the company and the AI. We want to talk about that today. But I think, you know, one of the interesting things is when you think about how important branding and distributions becoming today. It is actually, it's actually interesting that we started the episode on this topic because when we were briefly talking about the episode topic for today and kind of reflecting on, you know, let's talk about if you started a company today, a tech company in the age of AI, like, you know, how would that journey look like? And the interesting thing is if you would take, if you would go five years back, I would have told you that you probably don't want to worry that much about your brand in the very beginning, right? Because you can just, you know, we were even joking, you know, but like people, you know, creating 10 logos, but they don't even, they haven't even figured out the product. Now, the world is kind of changing in a sense that with distribution and branding and the uniqueness that is not software anymore, becoming so important is actually, you know, even kind of my personal opinion has changed a lot around that in terms of like, you probably want to be spending a lot of time, you know, you know, thinking about your design and your brand and how you're going to present yourself to the world and what values you're going to have because the difference is not in the product anymore. So, all right, let me just say one thing about like building product in the age of AI. I do believe that basically building the brand is potentially even as important or maybe even more important than, you know, building the actual product. And the reason is, you know, a brand is very much defining how people feel while they use your product, right? And especially in a crowded market where everyone can build, everyone can put something out there. The question is, how do you stand out? And how do you make people use your product instead of a different product? And they're great examples for it, right? I mean, not sure if you saw it, but like sauna labs from Stockholm, right? They just got acquired for, I don't know, like, $1.1 billion or something like that. Crazy. Incredibly, like, it's insane. And I guess, you know, but one thing stands out, they're brand, you know, I mean, their product is strong for sure. But, you know, what is it that, you know, makes them so different? I think it's the culture they've built, the community they've built, the way people look at, you know, they're kind of, they're brand from an outside perspective. And that's super strong. And so, thinking about starting something, I would probably think about what is the brand I'm building? What is it that I want people to feel while using my product? Because I do believe that, you know, the earlier, the earlier you start thinking about that, the better. I think it's so interesting when you reflect on, you know, what should you really be worried about in the world of AI? If you're bringing a tech product to market, I think the branding and how you're going to get users to even, you know, one thing is the distribution slide, you know, how do you get people to your, you know, even to look at your product, right? In a world where everyone can literally now with lovable build a product, right? In a world where everyone can build a product, you want to, you know, the biggest question is going to be like, how do you even get people to your app? First of all, and then the second one is, what's the branding? What's the, what's the special message that you have to people, you know, to literally to people to even engage with your with your product and have like certain association with what you're bringing to the market? And then the third thing, you know, for me, and that's, that's something that I'm noticing a lot now, you know, as we are building super scale as a product, you want to be incredibly mindful about, you know, how to be very, very specific, very, very kind of niche around the use cases that you support because you can, you can be sure that in any market in which you're building any product, there is going to be like 100 people at least, you know, building a product in that market as well, which is going to be very comparable to yours. And so you want to be getting to that point where you have a brand, you have a, you have a product that is so well defined, so, so, so, so, so specialized to like that one group. That it's interesting that people that people perfectly resonate with it, right? And perfectly feel drawn to this community. And I actually think what will happen is in the short term, it's going to be incredibly hard because everyone is building a product, everyone is building, you know, everyone is copying each other, you know, like, and all of the tools are making it even easier. But then what happens is the average quality of software drops dramatically because everyone is just like building something, not really carrying. And so when that, when that way is over, there's going to be like these few companies that really care about quality and brand, right? And they will, they will stick around. That's what I think. Do you think building a brand is more difficult or building the product is more difficult? In today's world building a brand is more difficult, 100%. And that's the thing, that's the thing, you know, five years ago, it would have been at least on par, at least. But then in a world where there's fewer products, I think it's even, it's also easier to build a brand because you can easier differentiate yourself. But now if you are in the market, you build anything, there's going to be a thousand products, every one of these products is going to have some brand. So how does your brand stand out? Now the interesting thing is what does it mean to build a brand? You know, you were talking about values, right? And I remember one of our free coffee episodes, like, I mean, some of the things that we talked about on free coffee, they're probably still relevant today, you know, even even, even the other world's changing so much. Like we talked about brand being basically your values to the outside world and culture being your values to the inside world. Now, if you think about that, those kind of values, what you, what you're, what people are going to associate your product and company with, you know, beyond the actual feature set, you know, that is, that is what it's going to come down to. I saw this new video by Claude, yeah, you know, you like, like, like, do something. Exactly. So, like, keep, I think, keep thinking or so, what's the slogan? I keep thinking, it's, it's, it's, it's remind, like they, they brought us, they brought out, they brought out this video and they didn't talk about any model, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't talk about anything. They, they, they talked about the human creativity and the human thinking. And they made kind of this case in the video for we are going to build models that are going to help someone think. And, and, and we're going to be that partner, you know, like, we're not going to replace human thinking. We're going to be that, that kind of counter part with whom you think and you do your thinking. And then as a human, you get better. Now, that story creates an association to an entropic as a company into the models. And it's differentiating itself from other storylines, right? And now you have, like, some values associated with it. I read like one comment, you know, saying like entropic is kind of like the, what Apple should have been an AI, you know, like really thinking about like how, you know, Apple kind of, you know, enshrined these values in terms of their brand. And, yeah, but that's so hard to do, right? Like, that is really that requires creativity and taste and human intuition. But I love that actually building product. I love it because it means that then basically if you want to build something in the age of AI, you should start with basically, you should think about it brand first, you know, it's a fantastic thought, right? I mean, it's so different from five years ago. Your product is one part of your brand, but it's just one part of it, right? Honestly, I mean, I'm very radical here, right? Like, if, you know, if I start a company in the future, I can promise you one thing. Well, you did, you did it like this always, you know, you literally started with the logo. I will, I will, the way I would do it is I would sit down and would think about what is the brand and the feelings that I want to design and I want to experience people while using whatever I'm building. And then I would think about, all right, how do I now translate this into every single touch point with my kind of future customers? One, the office space. You know, if I have customers visit my office, I want them to feel the exact same feelings that they feel when they use my product. Right? And it's, it's the team of sites that we're hosting, right? I want our employees feel, you know, our values and what we care about when we're on the offsite, as well as when we design the product, as well as when, you know, we run marketing campaigns, everything has to go back to brand. And knowing that that brand is the north stuff for everything, that's what you need to start with because it defines everything. It defines how you build your product. Is it, you know, is it a simple product? Is it an inspirational product? Is it a product that helps you be more productive? Like, what's the core essential value behind that product? And that changes everything because building the product, we just talked about it. That's no longer the challenge. Honestly, you just use lovable, you use a different tool, you just build it. You know, what, what will be the challenging part is differentiation and being authentic and being truly yourself, something people can connect to and building that up, that's the challenge. So you better start with that and not the 100% not the product. 100% I mean, 100% I mean, for me, there is such a simple question, right? In a world where everyone can over time, you know, of course, with a certain time investment build literally anything. How do you, how do you, how do you get anyone to care? How do you, how do you get anyone to care about anything that you're doing? Right? What is the, what is the bigger, what's the bigger message? Like, you know, the interesting thing is, you know, I talk about, I talk about this a lot, you know, when I recently sent out an email to, you know, people that signed up for SuperSky. And I had, I think people, you know, book 70 calls because like literally distribution branding is becoming like the biggest problem people have. Now, they booked a call with me. And, and I was sitting in these 15 minute calls, you know, like one after another. So if you, if you look like, you know, 10 years back, you know, the reality was there were only so many products on the App Store. So you built a good product, you would have some, some free attention that came your way and then you got seen, right? But that's not, that's not the case anymore. There's, there's, there's, you know, millions of, of, of products, you know, on the internet on the App Store now. And there's hundreds of thousands being built every day. So you have to, you have to kind of get to that point where it's like, okay, are we really going to, you know, build something here that has some, has something, some, some, you know, design or branding or some uniqueness for people to start caring, right? And I think that's, that's, that's what really comes down to. So it is a fundamentally different way for people to even start thinking about building a product because you, you get to this point where it's like, okay, you start with what do we even, how do we, how will we even get people to start caring about what we're doing? Should we talk a bit about people used to talk about most, like, minimal viable product? Should we talk a little bit about how do you build the most minimal viable brand? The, the, the interesting, so the interesting thing is, you know, when I think about the world that, that exists today, right? It's like you, you, you get to a point where you, you, you, you literally have to think about, how do, how am I going to get any one's attention for anything that I'm building, right? You, you, you need to get to that point where it's like, okay, if I, like, imagine I would put out this product, how would I get any one's attention to care about what, what I'm doing? That is literally one of the most kind of like one of the motivating factors for us to build super scale because we realized, like, there's no this world where everyone can build anything. So the only thing that matters is how do you get attention for people to use your product? So, you get to that point of like, okay, I need a minimum brand, I need to then, you know, think about how do I get them from the people, right? How do I get anyone to even, you know, see me in this ocean where there's everyone, you know, so it's a radical mindset shift that people need to have where you suddenly stop thinking about how do I build the best product because the best product doesn't automatically win anymore. And honestly, honestly, honestly, when you really let that sink in, that's one of the hardest truths I had to face this year. The best product doesn't win anymore. It's not that, that was, that was the case 10 years ago, you know, five years ago. Today, you, if you don't have distribution, if you don't do marketing, if you don't do a strong brand, if you don't figure out how you get anyone's attention and you get that momentum, you can build whatever you want. No one will see it. Yeah. Knowing that changes everything, right? I mean, it changes, it changes, it changes like how you think about it. Again, it even changes how you think about the product, you know, it like, it has impact on everything, right? Because then you then you think about, you know, we can go into that, we can go into this level of detail, you know, and like a follower episode, but it even, it, it changes about like, okay, do we have a free plan? Do we have a trial? Do you have like an opportunity for someone to try out the product? How quickly can I try the product? Is there any, you know, initial virality in like, okay, you know, I'm going to get to that, you know, I'm, I'm going to just, you know, give people something for free to get somehow to get their attention. And then from there, you know, people might remember me, you know, how, how quickly do people understand your brand? Is there any personal brand connected to a product? You know, it's one of the, one, probably one of the biggest, you know, levers that you have. Do you have a, do you have a, if your product doesn't have a brand, do you at least have a brand as a founder? Like that is, that is, that is an important, you know, that is an important, are you even as authentic as a founder, you know, for your product? So it's interesting. These are the questions that need to ask. The moment you decide to be an entrepreneur is the moment you probably should start thinking about your own brand, you know, like because it will help, you know, if you then in the future decide to build a product, it will help you because you've then been experiencing what it's like to build a brand, you know, firsthand. And even if it's just a small brand, but I think, you know, doing research on, you know, what does it take to build a brand? And I think it's a lot about just like clarity and thought and clarity and values. It's like defining what is important to you. That's the number, first step I will take, you know, I would think about what is important to me. And the second one would be what do I want people to learn from, you know, my personal brand or the product and building? What's the value others other people will get? Because that's also I think a big change, for example, with like some of the things I'm seeing in the market. If you're able to inspire people and to deliver value to others, then you automatically building this like source that people trust. Because if you give me something that I can use to do whatever I want to do, then I trust you because you're a trusted source of information and like inspiration. And I think that is a good way to start thinking about building a brand because it always has to develop, you always always have to deliver value. If you're building a product, you have to deliver value. Otherwise, your product won't be used. If you're building a personal brand on LinkedIn, on X, on SubStack, you have to deliver value. Otherwise, people are not listening to you. And you want to develop this muscle like constantly delivering value very early on. And start small, right? Just like, what's a small thing today I can do that helps others, you know, with something that I think is like the way to go thinking about building a brand. I mean, just as we are wrapping up here, right? I mean, you know, keeping it to the 25 minute quick coffee chat, you know, isn't it so interesting to think about it, to think about the fact that in basically a world that is now technologically ruled by AI, we're getting to a point where it's all going to come down to it once again, whether you're connecting as a human, right? That is such an interesting, you know, like ultimately because everything is becoming AI, the only way that you will get attention is by being like very human towards others and getting to a point where you're like, I mean, kind of constantly optimizing for how can I connect, like, can I get anyone to care and connect with myself on a human level, right? And I've had that really interesting. That's just, we'll definitely do a follow-up episode on this like more philosophical approach, kind of presenting. That could be interesting. 100 for sweet. wrapping up the episode here, we started with branding and some logo critique and then we went into basically, yeah, how the world has changed with AI coming to the picture in terms of building companies and building brands and products. We hope you enjoyed the episode and we will see you again in, yeah, latest two weeks on next week's coffee. Thank you very much for tuning in and let us know your feedback and send us a message. Thanks everyone. See you next week. All right. Cheers. [BLANK_AUDIO]