It’s just over 2 years since we created the Oska Health brand – a then ambitious healthcare startup on a mission to fix kidney care. Since then, Oska has flourished – going from startup to scaleup by raising €2.5m in pre-seed investment, with exciting plans on the horizon for further development and expansion. We recently reflected back on the brand creation project with one of the co-founders of Oska, Niklas Best, to hear what the journey’s been like so far and how the brand’s been put to use to fuel wider business ambitions.
CS: Hey Niklas! Thanks for taking the time to chat. Let’s start by going back to the initial project we tackled together which is when Oska as a brand was created. What’s the biggest lesson you took from it?
NB: Thanks, Cubic, great to catch up! We as a team took plenty of lessons from the project. Probably the biggest was the importance of getting it right. I’m a firm believer that if a brand is created in the right way then it won’t have to change much in the future. We didn’t want to launch with a temporary brand – we wanted to do the job properly. You only get one chance to launch a startup brand so it’s worth doing right. That started with us working together with you to figure out firstly what Oska will be and then developing a clear way of bringing it all to life in a really natural way.
The logo is obviously central to that but we knew it wasn’t the only thing to get right. It still has a real presence for us – it feels iconic and represents us as a business. As soon as you shared it with us it felt like a natural fit. And the rest of the brand fell into place around it perfectly.
You only get one chance to launch a startup brand so it’s worth doing right.
CS: What advice would you give to someone creating a startup brand?
NB: Not to underestimate the importance of brand from day one. It’s so, so valuable and goes beyond just being something visual. It represents your mission, what you want to change and deliver for people. It’s so easy for people to cut corners as it can feel like it’s not the most important thing. There’s thousands of other considerations for businesses that are starting up, and it’s tough to find the time and investment to create a brand, but we were right in understanding how important it would be in taking us where we wanted to go.
Startups need to be careful where they place their chips. But I think we got it just right. There were constraints with regards to the level of investment we could initially put in but I think you, as our partner agency, used them to an advantage by working efficiently and collaboratively with us. It felt like a single team making the most of what we’d allocated to get to quick and direct decisions.
CS: Investors were an audience that we needed to consider when developing Oska – alongside the brand’s core customers of patients and doctors. What role did the brand play in engaging and attracting investors?
NB: Whenever you’re the new kid on the block, people judge you. You might only have a website and an investors deck but they’re still assessing you. And that ‘you’ is your brand. Coming across as professional and communicating your mission is paramount, and that’s what we saw the role of the brand being. It wasn’t just about looking good, it needed to say what we needed it to say and tell a story.
If we hadn’t been able to present ourselves in the way the brand allowed us to then who knows what would have happened? We felt lucky that we secured pre-seed funding at a challenging time. And the brand 100% helped us achieve it.
We still consider ourselves the new kid on the block. We still face the challenge of communicating the business to people that don’t know us or trust us. But we know that the way we present ourselves is such an important part of the overall puzzle in creating the engagement and trust we want for all of our audiences.
Whenever you’re the new kid on the block, people judge you. You might only have a website and an investors deck but they’re still assessing you. And that ‘you’ is your brand.
CS: Part of our job was to think way into the future, and to imagine what Oska could be in 10, 20, 30 years time. That meant being crystal clear on the overall direction you wanted to take as a business and your plans for getting there. It was one of the most exciting parts of the project for us. So how has the Oska brand helped to inform and guide the overall direction of the business so far?
NB: I remember the first conversation we had, when we were talking about maybe working together. We talked about what Oska’s mission was and how we’d achieve it. None of that has changed. We’re still solving the same problems we spoke about – because they’re so big. We’re always learning about how we can break things down into goals so we can achieve our objectives – and that’s what drives us. Oska exists to fix kidney care – that will always be the way.
As a startup you need to face the reality about the problem you’re facing. You need to be able to pivot and adapt as that problem evolves. Having a clear, strong and flexible brand will help us do that.
We’ve made so many positive strides. When people say they’re happier and healthier because of Oska, that’s what continues to drive us.
As soon as we launched I had people say how great Oska looks, but we knew it went beyond that. They liked it because it was clear what we do and the difference we make. It was immediate, as well as visually interesting. And that’s exactly what we wanted to achieve.
Thanks to Niklas for taking the time to chat. Head over to the Oska case study for the full project story, read about our approach to brand creation or drop us a note if you’re looking for a partner that knows what it takes to set businesses up for success from day dot.
