How founders build a brand people trust
For most founders, the brand is whatever shows up when someone searches their name. Investors do it before the first meeting. Buyers do it before they answer a cold email. If the search comes back empty, people notice.
Start with what people find today
Search your own name and your company’s name in a private browser window. Then ask an AI assistant who you are and what your company does. Whatever comes back is your brand right now, planned or not.
When a founder’s name returns nothing on Google, investors and buyers draw their own conclusions. Seven articles changed that for a seed-stage founder we worked with, in four months.
Pick one or two topics and stay with them
The founders who become go-to voices pick one or two topics and stick to them. Spread across ten topics, no one remembers you for any of them.
A good topic sits where your work meets your buyers’ problems. A payments founder can own cross-border fees. A clinical lead can own what patient data says about sleep. A good test: could you talk about it for an hour without mentioning your product, and would your buyers want to listen?
Write your topics down in one sentence each. If you can’t, they’re too broad.
Have opinions you’d defend
Editors publish points of view, not mission statements. “We believe in innovation” won’t get a reply. “Most companies in our market overpay for X, and here’s why” might. Pick two or three opinions on your topic that you’d be comfortable seeing quoted, and that someone in your industry might disagree with.
You don’t need to be famous
Thought leadership sounds grand, but the goal is modest: be the name a journalist, buyer or investor finds when they search your topic.
A CFO-turned-founder we worked with had deep expertise and no public profile. A CIO mention and two features made her a source journalists now contact directly.
No company news? That’s fine
Solopreneurs often think they have no story because there’s no company news. A one-person skincare practice we worked with had a method no one had written about, and it became a WWD feature.
Smaller formats count too. A CEO quote in someone else’s trend piece can go live faster than a full feature, and it still puts your name next to the topic.
Say the same thing everywhere
Trust comes from consistency: the same story and the same facts in every outlet, on LinkedIn and on your website. If your bio says “fintech infrastructure” in one place and “payments app” in another, readers notice, and so do the AI assistants that summarize you.
Keep one short bio and one company description, and use them everywhere: speaker pages, LinkedIn, your About page and every article.
A 90-day plan
- Weeks 1 to 2: pick your topics, write your opinions down, update your LinkedIn and About page so they match.
- Weeks 3 to 10: the first articles go through topic approval, writing and the outlets’ schedules.
- Weeks 10 to 13: share each article on LinkedIn, add it to your website, and use it in sales and investor emails.
What to prepare before you start
The founders who get published fastest send three things upfront: a short bio, a headshot, and two opinions they’d defend in public. It sounds basic, but missing ones have held up more than one article by a week.
Then plan in months, not single hits. One article helps. Several, spread out, change what people find when they look you up.
If you want help choosing your topics, get in touch. New to PR? The Founder’s PR Guide covers the basics.