Rebranding Prodct: Doing Big Things Requires Doing Human Things.
Startup life is hard - especially if you’ve never done it before. No matter how resilient, strong, and confident you may appear on the outside - it’s still internally a humbling and vulnerable experience. We get it. At times the journey can be scary or lonely, other times exhilarating and joy-filled.
It’s easy to forget that we’re a startup ourselves.
When Prodct was founded in 2018, our intention was to “do the most good for the most people.” After seeing many products through to commercial success, it was time to help other earlier stage companies bring their life-changing technologies to market. We rolled up our sleeves and skewed our attention to resource-stretched startups with big visions.
When asked, we’d casually say something like, "We help medtech startups carefully build just enough infrastructure now to successfully commercialize their products later." We were strategy-forward and process-centric because we’re good at both.
Somewhere along the way, we started to appreciate the true value of our mission-driven work was in how we do our work. At times, we found ourselves investing more time in compassionately coaching, mentoring, and training teams about why the strategies and infrastructure we’re building is important. Not because regulators tell you to do something, but because it’s the right thing to do. We don’t want to simply build processes and procedures - we care about the individuals and want them to deeply understand processes so they can own and grow the space -and the next time, they can do it on their own.
Still, we saw ourselves as infrastructure builders first and trainers, coaches, mentors second.
Four amazing years flew by and our business grew rapidly only through word-of-mouth referrals who would consistently speak highly of our hands-on and heart-forward approach.
By 2022, our team has grown many times over and we still worked only through referrals. Our branding was ad hoc and disjointed. Our website was only a simple “contact me” page. Frankly, organic word-of-mouth referrals were more than enough. However, as the team grew, we decided it was time to get serious about branding to better articulate our mission and identity. Not only might it help us potentially find more amazing teams and products to help but we also wanted something our internal resources could proudly share with their friends and loved ones to say, “I’m a part of this.” We wanted something the teams we support could proudly share our with collaborators, investors, and new hires.
We are engineers and scientists, not branding experts. Knowing we needed experienced help to do it right, we invited longtime friend, Brian Babineau, to talk us through branding.
Brian - loves people, purpose, bad jokes and brands
"Who are you?" Brian asked us. "What makes Prodct… Prodct?" It's sometimes easy for others to see into your heart, even when it's hard to see yourself. After several conversations (and trips to the brewery), Brian eventually pointed out, "You're not infrastructure builders, you're people builders." We sat quietly for a while, knowing immediately he was right. It's always been about the people.
Brian helped us develop a new mantra which we used to guide our work:
We believe doing big things requires doing human things
That’s when everything clicked for us. Devon wrote it on his dry erase board in the office, Christie wrote it on a sticky note prominently affixed near her monitor. Even today, this phrase is still written in both places and you can see it if you look closely when on calls with us. It became our daily touchstone.
2022 has been a year of growth and self discovery for us. Brian started us on the journey but Tino Chow and the wonderful team at Giant Shoulders guided us through the enormity of the rest of the process. Giant Shoulders got intimate with the Prodct team, they interviewed our clients and friends, and they worked diligently to understand our core, our mission. They walked us through all the fascinating and painstaking details of logo updates, color selection, font selection, and wording choices… all carefully crafted to communicate an authentic and honest brand identity through design. "Be clear," they told us, "because being clear is kind."
Prodct visiting Giant Shoulders in Providence, RI. (Summer 2022)
As we look forward to 2023, we're seeing clearly now. We know we're a people-building company. We know we're still helping good people do amazing work, and feel it deeply when our clients end calls with "love you guys." We love them back, and we love our growing team - from our new Operations expert to our part time Regulatory support to all our new partner organizations. 2023 is starting off with a challenging financial climate for younger companies. We are here for the long haul and will continue to see our teams through. All of it… the mundane daily grunt work… difficult executive strategy discussions… laughing so hard we cry… growing, learning, and celebrating successes together on your medical device journey.
