Angular’s brand strategy
Revisiting our brand as we launch our new website
We are absolutely thrilled to launch our new web presence at www.angularventures.com, and I thought this might be a good opportunity to talk a little bit about our brand strategy and journey to date.
A team effort
Before going into brand strategy, I want to thank the team that put our website together. First of all, our head of platform, Anne Blum, did an outstanding job quarterbacking the entire effort and getting the site launched smoothly and quickly. More importantly, the site reflects a lot of the amazing work she is doing in terms of our content strategy and advisory partner program. More on that soon!
Our resident branding guru and advisory partner Uri Baruchin played a critical role in helping us navigate the design & branding decisions we faced on the way to the final product. Uri works with us on several of our portfolio companies to help them solve their branding challenges. He’s an incredible asset — and I can’t recommend him highly enough.
Finally, our incredible designer Christoph Stolberg brought our brand strategy to life with a stunning design, and the team at Designers Friend up in Edinburgh built it super efficiently.
What’s in a name?
Angular’s brand journey began with the name itself. In selecting a name back in 2015, we had a few criteria that were essential:
- Enduring. The name had to be consistent with an enduring international brand. We didn’t want anything too cute, too trendy, or too much of an inside joke. If we succeed in building Angular as an enduring firm, we need this name to sound good on Angular Ventures XI in 2032.
- Global. So much of what we do is “geographic” in the sense that we are focused on European and Israeli startups and helping them succeed in the US market, that it was essential that our name not be geographic. Many VC firms have names that anchor them to a region (Northzone), a country (Aleph), a city (TLV Partners), or even a street (Air Street, Balderton). Being grounded to a specific geography is a great thing, but in our case it’s essential that our name be global in relevance — reflecting the cosmopolitan approach that underpins our take on venture.
- Available. We wanted something that was available as a straight-forward “_____ventures.com” domain name, with no trademark issues.
- Easy. We wanted a name that was a regular English word, easy to spell, and not confusing in any way.
- Meaning. Most importantly, we wanted a name that had a meaning — something that could lead to a meaningful brand reinforcement moment if ever anyone bothered to ask where our name came from.
Why Angular? We ultimately chose Angular because it fit all of the above criteria — and had a meaning that resonated with us. To us, the name reflects a collection of meanings and interpretations:
- Angular founders & Angular companies. We look for special cases — founders and companies that are characterized by at least one dimension in which they are true outliers. This could be a technical capability, it could be a unique take on a market, or it could be deep domain expertise. “Angular” founders are the opposite of “well-rounded” founders. They are high-conviction, unconventional, fearless, and all-in.
- Distances. The distances on the globe can be measured in latitude and longitude, which are measured in angles. In our mind, “Angular” captures the idea of bringing points on the global together — closing the distance between the origin point of a technology and the coordinates of its ultimate customers.
Our investment critera
We’ve decided to put our investment criteria front and center on our site. It’s the first thing you see as you start to scroll. The logic there is that our entire raison d’être is to optimally serve a specific type of founder as a specialist investor. That specialty is broad enough to include a wide range of businesses and sectors, but it is specific enough to allow us to see opportunities others might not, to add real value, and to differentiate ourselves from others. Our content, our advisory partners, our expertise, and our nearly 20 years of experience in the industry are all consistent with this specialist focus.
We felt it was important to communicate what we look for and how we can help up front — as clearly as possible. In all things, we believe in clear, honest, straight-talking communication — and our web presence is no exception to that.
What’s with the image of the plane wing?
Since inception, we’ve incorporated the image of an airliner wing in a lot of our materials — and this continues to feature on our site today. As of the time of writing, travel is still severely curtailed due to the Coronavirus pandemic, but we’re optimistic that travel will return to our lives soon, albeit perhaps in a slightly less manic way.
We like the way the winglet shape mirrors our logo, and we like the suggestion that we support our portfolio companies and founders the way wings support an aircraft, but that’s not why that image is there.
The wing imagery expresses what we believe is a universal experience common to any founder of an international business: that moment of reflection on a long-haul flight from Tel Aviv to New York or from Paris to San Francisco; on the way to meet a big potential investor or a big potential client. It captures the sacrifices made by founders in the service of their business, in the service of bridging geographic gaps to look a prospect in the eye and establish the trust necessary to partner to do great things together. It reminds us of those moments of doubt that all founders face when it is just you, alone, in seat 41K, hurtling through space to an unfamiliar destination that is impossibly distant but where you will determine your own fate. Angular seeks to be a partner to founders on that lonely entrepreneurial journey, and we hope our new site design evokes that ethos and commitment.
If this is the type of journey you find yourself on, please consider reaching out to us to let us know what you are working on.
