Branding Emerging Bioscience Companies to Attract Investors

Sasha Strauss, Managing Director at Innovation Protocol, gave a very interesting presentation at the SoCalBio Investor Conference in Santa Monica. He argues that even start-ups need to consider a branding strategy right from the start. Given the limited capital, does it make sense for a start-up to spend money on branding? Would VCs interested in investing even care about a company's brand?

To be honest, branding usually does not come to mind when evaluating an investment opportunity. Management, business model, technology, etc. are probably more important. While I don't argue that branding is important, especially as a technology gets closer to market, if there are issues with any of the other criteria, branding becomes irrelevant.