Stakeholders Are Part of the Process

Whether you call them co-founders, investors, or advisors, whoever is shaping the trajectory and value proposition of your startup should also contribute to the messaging process itself. It's just as crucial as filling out the brief.

This doesn't mean every person who wanders by with an opinion. It means the true, relevant stakeholders whose success or failure is directly tied to your startup.

These individuals may not be within your specific market, or they may actually be your ideal target user. Either way, they have knowledge, experience, and a perspective that can significantly contribute to figuring out the types of messages you're trying to pinpoint.

You may have deep knowledge of the market, the investor pool, the industry, all the players in the ecosystem, the buyers, and the influencers. But your technical co-founder may be the only one who truly understands your ideal end-user.

That is priceless.

Having these conversations with relevant stakeholders during the process helps you understand the day in the life of your prospect or user. It helps you figure out their specific motivations and how you should be talking to them.

These sessions aren't always fun. They're mostly difficult and sometimes painful. But they are incredibly useful for finding common denominators, triggering new ideas and directions, and fine-tuning your message to be focused and appropriate across the board.

One more thing: there can be too many stakeholders in the room, and you may need to keep the core process down to co-founders only. In that case, bring in your wider circle as sounding boards. They may not set direction, but their perspective still matters.