Six Micro-Brands for One Startup Community

Startup Stories, Brew Crew, Deep Dive, ELSS, Pause and Raise Pitch Night: why a small accelerator needed a family of small brands.

Published on December 01, 2022

One accelerator, six things to turn up to. Over the past year I’ve designed a family of six micro-brands for Raise Ventures: Startup Stories, Brew Crew, Deep Dive, ELSS, Pause and Raise Pitch Night. Last week’s Pitch Night at Café Parisien was Raise’s first in-person pitch night in almost three years, and it sold out. That felt like a good moment to write down the thinking behind them.

The problem: “an event at Raise”

Raise does a lot for a small team. An accelerator, investor showcases, a coffee morning, founder talks, workshops, a summer school, a newsletter. From the inside those are obviously different things. From the outside, anything a busy organisation does under one logo blurs into “an event at Raise”. A founder shouldn’t have to read three paragraphs to tell a relaxed coffee from a workshop on share options. Nobody reads three paragraphs.

The answer: a family, not a rebrand

A micro-brand is a name, a mark and a tone of voice for one recurring thing. It sits under the parent brand, shares its DNA, and does one job: tell you in a second what you’re being invited to and whether it’s for you.

Startup Stories. Founders who’ve been there and done it. Running since January 2020, now in person at the Raise Space and online via Zoom. This year: Broker IQ, Kinva, Informed Minds, Moody Activewear, TalentSensus.
Brew Crew. “An hour of caffeine fuelled startup conversation”. The open coffee morning for Belfast’s entrepreneurs, going since last autumn.
Deep Dive. One hard topic, one hour, people who know it. AI and machine learning, EMI share options, diversity in startups, and MVP prototyping, which I ended up on the panel for.
ELSS. The Emerging Leaders Summer School. Eight Fridays this summer of leadership workshops mixed with sea swims, hikes and yoga.
Pause. “A brand new mindfulness toolkit for founders”, in your inbox monthly since October. Calm in the chaos.
Raise Pitch Night. The investor showcase. Six investment-ready startups, a room of angels and funds, and a stream for those who can’t travel.

Three rules for a family of small brands

One system, several voices. Enough shared DNA that everything is recognisably the parent; enough difference that each series is recognisably itself. And templates, so that next week’s graphic doesn’t need a designer.

Name the habit. “Come to our coffee morning” is an invitation. “Brew Crew, Wednesday, 8.30” is a standing appointment. A recurring thing with a name gets a slot in someone’s week.

Design for the feed, not the poster. These brands live as a square on LinkedIn, a thumbnail on YouTube and a header on Eventbrite. If the name isn’t legible at the size of a thumbnail, the design hasn’t done its job.

What it’s for

None of this is decoration. A startup community runs on people coming back. The micro-brands exist so that a founder who enjoyed one Brew Crew knows exactly what they’re getting at the next, and can work out in a glance that Deep Dive is the one to bring a notebook to.

From the archive: written up in 2026 from our notes and records of the time, and dated to when it happened.