Ben Larson is the Founder and CEO of Vertosa, a company based in the San Francisco Bay Area, specializing in the extraction and infusion of cannabis oil into beverages. Ben has been an entrepreneur for almost ten years, during six of which he has led Vertosa. Exclusively for Follow the Founder’s audience, Ben shares advice on the importance of branding, fundraising, and much more.
Having a clear set of values driving your business is crucial for success. Defining this basis early on lays the foundation of your company’s ethos and culture. It also contributes in a much broader fashion. Your values drive your processes and procedures and are part of a stable backbone when needing to make decisions. After six years in business, we ask Ben what Vertosa’s mission is and what values he keeps in mind when making decisions.
“Vertosa is an ingredient technology company. We specialize in nanoemulsion. This is a way to take the oil extracts from the plant and make them miscible or friendly in water. So our specialty is beverages. We believe that the way the mainstream consumer is going to consume cannabis in the future is through beverages, because who doesn’t like to have a beverage in their hand?
“I’ve coached a lot of startups and will try not to exaggerate when I say thousands. What I always started with was encouraging or demanding that they start with a brand foundation. In that brand foundation is your purpose.
“Our purpose is to unlock the healing powers of the plant by making it accessible to all. This bleeds into the whole beverage concept. Beverages are incredibly accessible and very approachable. We shorthand this to “Infuse The World” to make it easier for everyone to remember.”
The moment to build this solid branding foundation is at the beginning, when you start dreaming up your business. In that way, it becomes the unifying thread holding everything together even when the dreams become reality and when that business goes through iterations of identity. Studies support this too: 65% of consumers report that a brand and CEO influence their decision to purchase a product or engage with a business [1].
“You have to distill down the company at the very beginning. It makes future decision-making very easy. It also gives the company its own persona. Some people call this a culture or a brand image or whatever. But it is something much deeper than a pretty ornate logo.”
Building a brand identity is incredibly important, especially for solopreneurs. It separates the Founder, the individual, from the business. Your business needs to have its own values, life, and trajectory that your future employees and clients can connect with.
“If you’re not going to be a solopreneur, then you’re probably going to want employees who are going to want to embody this brand foundation. So it does immediately have to start living beyond you and inspiring not only your employees but everyone around you.
“If you read our brand foundation, there’s a particular phrase in our persona. We are cool cannabis nerds. Also, we’re thoughtful. It was really important for our company to be human. It’s okay if that persona very closely describes you, but at the end of the day, you have an opportunity to build a legacy.
“We are a B2B company. We work with labs, manufacturers, brands, and regulators. So we need all of these people to truly understand what Vertosa stands for.”
Your mission and brand identity are the intangible drivers behind your very tangible product or service. It should be intended to drive connection with potential customers, clients, and/or business partners. Having a clear narrative behind your mission and brand is how your company sets itself apart, how you turn those connections into relationships in the world of business.
Next, we ask Ben how having this stable brand and values has helped him with crucial decision-making.
“Recently, our chief scientists had an idea which didn’t fit into what we were doing. So I just screenshotted two clauses in our brand foundation and posted them back in Slack. I said, ‘I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but if we do that, we have to answer these questions. Does it fit within our brand foundation?’. It was a very easy ‘No’.”
While new ideas can be exciting and potentially lucrative, you want to ensure they are productive. If the answer to Ben’s questions had been a ‘Maybe’ or a ‘Yes’, his colleague and him would have had to put the idea through a series of steps to re-evaluate. It is amazing to create a work environment where everyone feels safe to express their ideas. However, combining this with the understanding that your team would need to evaluate their ideas against the company mission and determine their merit would excel your company more, saving you money and time too.
Finally, we tap into Ben’s fundraising experience. It is no secret that one of the biggest obstacles to many people starting their own businesses is a lack of funds. Therefore, aspiring and new Founders often resort to looking for external investment and support. As someone who has coached a multitude of startups, Ben tells us when this would be a good idea and when Founders should think of a different route ahead.
“If you are raising venture capital, you have to know that there is a very small segment of companies that are venture scalable. What I mean by that is that every dollar you put in has to have the opportunity to return a hundred or one thousand dollars. Most times, this is unlikely.
“Generally, the storytelling is the same for VC or any other way to bring capital into your company. You want to make people feel that you’re inevitable, that the train has left the station. You want them to feel like they’re running to grab onto the railing of the caboose just so they can get on this exciting train that’s going somewhere they didn’t even know existed. If you can achieve that, you’ll have plenty of capital dropping on your desk.
“The other aspect is them believing you’re worth putting money in. It comes down to de-risking the opportunity for them by truly making them feel that they’re the last piece before this thing takes off, the last bolt before the rocket is allowed to go off in orbit. This means showing you’ve already done all the things humanly possible, you know the customer, you built the product, you have the model. So the last thing you need is capital to ignite the opportunity. That it will be automatic. You don’t want investors to feel like they’re putting money into a product they might get returns on three years from now.”
So unless you’re in this place, you’re ready and fully prepared, you should look at alternative ways to fund the business. Another downside of fundraising is that it not only comes with expectations, it also means you get more people involved in your company. This can water down or affect your mission and values and add extra pressure. So in some ways, self-funding is the best start. There is no shame in bootstrapping. In fact, having to bootstrap is an invaluable learning opportunity. It will push you to get to know your business inside and out. Many investors are going to want to see you have skin in the game too. It will make you a resilient and successful Founder.
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References:
[1] 33 New Branding Statistics and Trends for 2024, Josh Howarth, https://explodingtopics.com/blog/branding-stats
