It’s the little things that make a startup great – Scoutmob and Proving Ground

I’m always looking at startups to see what they’re doing in the “not so obvious” category. Two local startups are doing some things that show me they’re building a brand just as much as they are building a company. And in my experience that can make all the difference.

The first is my old partner’s company, Proving Ground. These guys are doing awesome things in helping startups get off the ground. Check out their website to get more of the scoop.

One of the things they’ve been doing is really giving their company a personality. As an advisory board member, I was fortunate enough to get a gift from them for the holidays and I just love what they did. Check it out, they had caricatures created of each of their team members placed on a nice bottle of wine. As you can see, its placed appropriately in my home office next to my Brand Atlanta Coke bottle and a signed REM sheet music of Everybody Hurts.

The second startup that is just oozing with personality is Scoutmob. These guys have created a brand that people absolutely LOVE. Check out what a fan gave them as a sign of how much they love their brand (I saw this at their office recently and had to take a pic). Insane!

A painting from a Scoutmob fan. A fan!

Additionally I went over there earlier this month and hosted a beer thirty on Friday (the way we do every Friday at Engauge and I figured Dave and Michael would like a joint beer thirty at their place). If you haven’t been to any of the Scoutmob events, you’re definitely missing out, as they do all sorts of cool and wacky things. Included are these awesome mustaches that they put on beer bottles, which you can see here from the beer thirty event.

Scoutmob's classic beer mustaches

It takes so much to get a startup off the ground and make it successful. Sometimes its the little things that can make all the difference. And creating a brand that people love and aspire to engage with is a huge component of success these days. Well done guys.