When we had the idea for Frontman, I was 20 and a junior in college. We had a lot of ideas on how to build a brand but no firsthand experience. For the next five years, we dove into raising money, building our brand, and launching it into the market.
I’m so happy that we took the leap and started learning by doing. To say I learned a lot over this founder journey would be a vast understatement; there’s too much to document concisely.
I have many coffee chats with future founders, and it's exciting to see people starting on their Day One. These chats always have a few key themes, so I’ve compiled some thoughts here that may be helpful to others passionate about building a next generation consumer brand.
Think of a number, then triple it. We were naive in thinking that we could leanly launch a new brand while creating a new category. The easiest categories to launch into are ones where users are obligated to spend regularly because of a pre-existing habit (i.e, menstruation, dental care, etc). It’s much easier (cheaper) to create a better alternative for existing demand than to spend time and money educating someone about a new category altogether.
Yes, if you do go to those efforts in creating a category, you can have a first mover advantage and win market share. But know that it’s going to take north of $7M.
I’m baffled by traditional tech investors who scoff at a profitable DTC business simply because of its distribution strategy. Consumer investing is always first on the chopping block, disregarded for whatever bubble we’re on next. Yet DTC is part of a healthy omnichannel approach for any business. As with eggs and baskets, diversifying is key.
Some founders have taken a non-obvious approach by launching first on Amazon (see: Ju Rhyu of Hero Cosmetics), or retail, or another platform before DTC. These first go-to-market strategies are product- and business-specific. But at some point, yes, consumer brands should invest in DTC. The only questions are when and how.
One of the biggest traps for founders is believing that they are the target audience. Sure, you may start out building a solution for a person like yourself, but there are a few problems with this. Are you the quintessential example of the real target audience? Do your opinions differ from the masses?
I saw it as an advantage that I am not a young man with acne; I was very clearly not the target audience, which allowed me to disabuse myself of any illusions otherwise. Start from first principles and zero assumptions. Test and validate your theories with user interviews and research as much as you can.
As it turns out, I am not a social media influencer (sorry, mom). We had a limited budget for social media (see: point #1), and I took on the challenge of creating our social content myself (despite not being a man with acne, our target audience). Though we gave a valiant effort and had little choice, this was not my strength; a good tipoff was that I really dreaded it in my day-to-day.
As founders, it’s our responsibility to know what is and is not our strong suit and to try to fill the gap as quickly as possible. Though we are largely fast learners, at a certain point you know if a skill doesn’t come naturally.
Time and again I see aspiring founders say that they’re just “looking for the right idea” so they can start building. That’s the wrong mindset. Yes, you can and should be excited about building a company one day.
More importantly, you should be looking for a problem space that you identify with at your core and that can give you the fire to push through unexpected challenges. Don’t be an “aspiring founder”; be a problem solver.
My mental health struggles began concurrently with founding the business, centering around an anxiety that we would be beaten to market by some other men’s grooming brand. It got so bad that I had to run to be able to sleep sometimes. As it turned out, another brand would beat us to the men’s makeup market, but I had no way of knowing that. I was fixated on this stress because I didn’t know this: a startup is, at its inception, merely the founders’ dream. It’s a projection, a mirage, of your vision, which lives and dies on your efforts. I didn’t know then that inherent to the vision are all the minute decisions and opinions that you bring to the table; it’s entirely impossible for someone to create your vision because they’re not you. Conversely, you are also not them. You will make different decisions than they will, and that will determine everything.
These are a few quick thoughts. And I'll continue to add to this list as I think of more.
Sending you luck,
Annelise
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