How to join the unicorn club? An investigation of brand building and communication strategies among start-ups

The global start-up sector is growing and investments have reached an all-time high. Especially, the rare-breed of “Unicorn Start-ups” have shaken up the start-up ecosystem and thereby created a lot of buzz. Although there are countless numbers of start-ups that have managed to build strong brand from scratch, it is said that founding a successful start-up is actually truly against the odds and that solely 1 out of 200 newly founded start-ups survives on the market. Several studies point out that one of the reasons for this is that most start-ups fail to build a brand. Because most branding literature focuses on well-established companies that in contrast to start-ups have financial means and human resources, there is a lack of branding guidelines for entrepreneurs. Therefore, in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs were held in order to explore branding strategies among start-ups.