Breaking through the noise: The new rules of startup brand building

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Mercury hosted a series of Expert Sessions on topics from building a successful podcast to instilling trust in your startup. Here’s a recap of insights from our session with Helen Min (founder and general partner at Articulate, and former marketing leader at Facebook, Dropbox, and Plaid) and Ashley Mayer (co-founder and general partner at Coalition, and former comms leader at Glossier and Box). Together, they host the tech podcast Great Chat. In this session, they explored how today’s founders can craft stories that cut through the noise and build enduring brands.

If you’re a startup founder or operator, you’re probably well aware of how challenging it can be to cut through the noise and connect with your intended audience. There’s more competition for brand attention than ever, which Helen Min and Ashley Mayer — two investors and long-time executives in marketing and communications — say makes it a perfect moment for founders to rethink how they share their stories.

In the 2010s, for instance, as senior director of communications at Box, Mayer relied heavily on earned media to tell the cloud platform’s story. This meant relying on publications (like TechCrunch) and conferences (like Disrupt), as well as pre-briefing reporters on upcoming product launches. But those days are practically ancient history. “You can no longer outsource your story to the press,” Mayer says. “You simply cannot run that playbook any longer.” Today, you need to own and deliver your story yourself.

But that can feel intimidating. Min and Mayer discussed the state of saturation and competition for brand voice online, and whether those noise levels will continue to rise or subside. Will the trend of startups “building in public” — being openly iterative with their product based on user feedback — shift back to more measured and quiet launch strategies and communications? Will people start to reject the cacophony of relentless content? “Our brains really just can’t handle any more launch videos,” Min says. “And at some point we’re going to say, ‘this is too much.’”

Drawing on their past learnings and perspectives on the future, Mayer and Min shared their tips for how to build a brand that stands out in today’s environment.

Whether you’re aiming to catch the eye of your potential audience or communicate your brand narrative to investors, it’s critical to articulate why your startup exists, how it relates to the broader context of your industry, and what value it brings for customers. These are essential ingredients for crafting a brand story that resonates with customers and investors. “You have to tell a 30,000-foot-view story and find common ground with your audience on things they're already thinking about,” Mayer says.

While Mayer and Min have extensive operating experience to draw upon, they’re both currently full-time investors in early-stage companies, which gives them a multi-faceted perspective on brand storytelling. “At Coalition, we’re looking for a founder who has a deep ‘why’ for the thing that they're building,” says Mayer. 

As an investor, she wants to understand “the reason for doing this truly crazy thing of building a startup.” When pitching investors, detail your long-term vision and convey how your startup is poised to still be going strong many years from now, as well as how it interacts with broader market dynamics.  For instance, Mayer adds, “Do you have some unfair edge or expertise that means you’re going to be faster out of the gate?”

When it comes to sharing that vision, the medium can be as important as the message. But there isn’t one prescribed way to get that message out.

“If you’re a founder and the idea of being a thought leader on LinkedIn feels like the worst thing, that probably isn't going to be the best channel for you,” Min says. “But I promise you there is one — [you] just have to find it.” Instead of feeling like you have to chime in on every platform, she recommends finding the ones that feel authentic to you.

By way of example, Mayer and Min reflected on their past experiences. While Mayer was running comms at Box, Min was leading enterprise marketing at cloud rival Dropbox. The CEOs of each company took divergent approaches. Box CEO Aaron Levie was active and enthusiastic on social media, telling their story out in the open — a style that fit both his personality and efforts with the press that Mayer was driving.

In contrast, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston was less outspoken on social media about the company’s plans or pursuit of new markets. “Drew found his own channels and audience, and what made him feel comfortable,” says Min. “Dropbox is also a very successful company, so there are many ways to do this.” These contrasting methods prove the sage founder axiom — that authenticity matters above all else.

For founders who want to build their company or personal brand and don’t know where to start, Min recommends thinking beyond just touting your product, and instead offering interesting, relevant data or insights that your audience finds valuable. This could mean teaching people something new that helps them be better at their jobs. During her time leading marketing at AngelList, Min’s team created an educational hub that repackaged years of fragmented blog posts and product explainers into a single learning center.

This strategy not only gives your audience an additional reason to visit your channels, it also fosters goodwill and a positive brand association. As Min says, “When somebody teaches you something, you actually have a positive affinity towards that person.” And this idea can also extend to startup brands. By building trust via information that your audience values — say, the truly compelling results of your industry-specific survey — you have the chance to also help them see the value in your product.

Mayer believes that there’s so much competition for brand attention in large part because the total addressable audience for new workplace technologies has grown dramatically. During her time at Box, enterprise software companies could rely on traditional channels for awareness building, with the goal of influencing a narrow set of stakeholders and a more methodical IT buying process.

But the game has changed. “Individuals are the ones buying technology in the workplace,” she says. “Individuals having AI tools feels existential, and for businesses it feels existential, too. We’re seeing this once in a lifetime shift, not just in technology, but a transformation in the speed and the urgency of some of these decisions.” Mayer adds that B2B companies like Box are starting to behave more like B2C companies like Glossier (where she also led comms). Individuals are driving decisions, which means you have to meet them where they are —again and again.

In a crowded space that’s reverberating with sameness and mimicry, originality shines. “People are doing the same things, and very few are breaking through with a truly resonant story,” Mayer says. “There’s a lot of room for creativity and sharper storytelling.”

Embrace and showcase what sets your startup apart with fresh, authentic, and well-considered messaging and storytelling. Get creative — and also get concrete — in your strategies to present a vision that speaks to your audience, while remaining authentic to your brand as a founder.