In the spring of 2024, ValidMind, a mid-size startup, wanted to break into the banking industry. But its brand wasn’t carrying enough weight.
Kevin Allen, their newly minted Head of Marketing, joined as employee No.16 and undertook the mission to modernize the brand. He wanted to make it enterprise-ready so they could bring AI governance and model risk management to the global banking sector and beyond.
Despite its advanced and radically innovative product, ValidMind lacked a cohesive brand language or a website that prospective clients could get excited about.
The company’s board made it clear that if top-tier clients were going to take ValidMind seriously, they needed to look enterprise-ready—especially with an impending round of fundraising.
Working solo, Kevin Allen began looking for an agency partner with branding expertise to establish both the abstract and practical aspects of a modern enterprise brand. However, ValidMind’s timeline was tight, and Kevin struggled to find agencies that could understand the industry niche and deliver eye-catching work.
The core challenge was to create a brand that matched the technical sophistication of ValidMind’s product and clearly articulate its unique value proposition in the rapidly developing AI governance market.
Even though Kevin interviewed nearly a dozen agencies, it was clear from his first conversation that CSTMR was the frontrunner, thanks to our industry expertise and professionalism.
We started the engagement in May 2024, with the goal of launching the new brand identity by September. Kevin was impressed by the level of thoughtfulness and curiosity throughout CSTMR’s onboarding process, which helped to establish an explicit understanding of ValidMind, its products, and internal values. Kevin also served as the primary liaison, with other ValidMind team members jumping in as needed.
CSTMR focused on developing a bolder, cohesive brand language, refining messaging to connect with enterprise banking customers, and rebuilding the website to tell a compelling story and promote the formidable thought leadership of executives.
A key aspect of the work was leveraging the existing logo, which ValidMind liked, and wanted to emphasize rather than replace.
Since the launch of its new brand and website in September 2024, ValidMind has seen unmistakable growth in its online presence. By September 2025, ValidMind had already surpassed all its web traffic metrics from the entire year of 2024, with at least a 100% increase in inbound leads.
Although Kevin was determined to present a more polished and sophisticated brand at industry events, the real surprise benefit was the level of excitement and ownership that employees felt when they saw the new branding on collateral and swag. The team finally had an outward expression of the competence, pride, and energy that had always lived at the core of ValidMind.
"There were two big areas that really impressed me about CSTMR’s experience. Number one, they had worked with startups of our size. They also worked with smaller startups. They've worked with larger startups. They had worked with brands like ours that were looking to take that next step in our journey. They had also had deep financial services experience. That was really important to us. Financial services was the first market we were going to really try to crack."
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