Choose the agency that asks what has to change first, not the one that offers to redo everything at once. After a raise, I’d say most startups only need the few things investors, new hires and customers see first to catch up with the company. A good branding agency helps you put those in order before anyone draws a logo.
Should you rebrand everything right after you raise?
Usually no. I get why it’s tempting. The money lands, the old logo suddenly feels embarrassing, and you want it all fixed by next month.
But a full rebrand is a lot of surface area. Every new asset is another thing to approve, and your team is also trying to hire, ship and spend the round well. So I’d start with a smaller question: where does the gap between how good the company is and how it looks cost you the most right now?
What do investors, hires and customers see first?
It’s different for each of them, which is why the order matters.
- 01Investors and partners: your deck and your homepage. If either one undersells the company, begin there.
- 02A candidate you want to hire: your site and your LinkedIn page, usually before they reply to you.
- 03Customers: whatever you put in front of them first, which might be a product screen or an ad.
- 04Merch, a brand book and patterns on a billboard can wait a few weeks.
A pitch deck or a website can often carry the first phase on its own, as long as the identity underneath is solid. If it isn’t, fix that first, because the site will just inherit the problem.
Do we refresh the brand we have or start from scratch?
It depends on whether the name and the recognition are working for you or against you. The most useful thing an agency can do here is tell you honestly, even when starting over would be the bigger invoice.
One fintech we rebranded had already proven its product. Its identity just hadn’t kept up with the company, and it lacked cohesion and authority. The job was to make it feel professional and trustworthy without losing its creative edge, so we evolved it instead of tearing it down. That was the right call there. It would be the wrong one for a company whose brand is actively confusing people.
Ask any agency how they decide between the two. If the answer is always "start fresh", you’ve learned something.
What should a good agency ask you before it shows any design?
When I first started designing, I jumped straight into Figma. New colours, new typefaces, a layout that looked right. It felt productive. What I learned is that speed means nothing if the direction isn’t clear, and most design problems don’t start in Figma. They start in unclear thinking.
So now I ask a lot of questions before I touch a frame. What problem are we really solving? What do we want people to feel when they first land? What does success look like for the business? What story are we telling, and what are we trying to avoid?
When you’re picking an agency, listen for that. If the first call is mostly them showing you work, that’s a sales call. If they’re asking about your investors, your next hires and what’s still unfinished in the product, they’ve started the brief.
What does the work look like in the first few weeks?
Messier than the final result, and I like it that way. For a brand sprint we ran for a VC firm, the fun part was the sticky notes, the messy sketches and the half-baked ideas that slowly turned into something cohesive. The brief was a brand that felt grounded, credible and forward-thinking. It had to sit comfortably in global conversations and still nod to its African roots.
It went through layers of thought and feedback before it settled. VC brands often lean too corporate or too abstract, and we wanted something in between. The logo, once it landed, didn’t need much convincing. It just fit. The colour palette had the same tension: bold enough to make you feel something, restrained enough to say the right thing.
The pattern work is always interesting to me. Most people barely notice it, and it quietly ends up being the thread that ties the whole system together. You only get to that kind of detail when the early phases weren’t rushed.
So when an agency walks you through its process, ask what you’ll see in week one and week two. You should be looking at real directions early, shown in real use and not just on white. Our own brand identity work has a review every week for that reason, so nothing arrives as a surprise at the end.
What if the raise puts us on a tight timeline?
Say so on the first call. A launch or an investor meeting changes the order the work should go in, and it’s much easier to plan around in week one than to find out about in week four.
Also ask how the quote works. We give every project a fixed quote, so you know the number before you commit to anything. If you want to see what a full identity usually covers, I wrote it down in what a brand identity includes.
If you’ve just closed a round and want a second opinion on the order, book a call and bring that list.
Founder of Rvysion. Has led brand refreshes and new identities for Honeycoin, Voxtell, Lateral Frontiers and Idara.