Swiss Army Knives. The Dirt Road. Scaling Without Spinning.
And why 'cupcake tests' can help start-ups get on the right track.
Jo Dutta knows what it takes to build a brand that lasts.
With a dynamic background that spans Bain & Co., John Lewis, PepsiCo and some of the most exciting venture-backed startups in consumer goods, Jo has scaled global brands and helped shape early-stage ones, building high-performing marketing functions that are values-driven and commercially sharp.
Currently the CMO of regenerative fashion brand Katla, Jo does things differently—from rewriting supply chains to rethinking startup culture. In our conversation, she shares how to adapt corporate discipline for startup speed, how founders signal greatness before they scale, and why brands that succeed never outsource their voice—or their community.
On Brand: You’ve worked across global giants like Bain and PepsiCo, as well as early-stage startups. Operating at those extremes requires very different mindsets. What lessons from the corporate world have actually helped you thrive in startup chaos—and what habits did you have to completely unlearn?
Jo: “What’s invaluable from the corporate world is the training, strategic thinking and hands on experience that you gain from running large brands and businesses. The trick is to then take big brand thinking and adapt it to a smaller start up. What you must unlearn is the idea that you need large teams and budgets and high levels of accuracy to run the business. You can take the principles that you use in a larger business but adapt them in a nimbler fast paced environment.
I think one of the most valuable skills from strategy consulting is structured problem solving. Minto’s pyramid (which originated from McKinsey) is the concept that you start with defining the situation you are facing, then you define the ‘complication’ or the problem you have, before identifying the question that you need to ask. It sounds so obvious but very often, particularly in fast paced start-ups, the team isn’t clear on the problem to solve. Taking time upfront to define and align on this can be invaluable. The next step is to define the ‘hypothesis’ answer and how to test it at pace.
I have found the metaphor of baking to be quite helpful in the transition to smaller companies! You would never start off baking a wedding cake as a novice. You would start by baking a cupcake, fine tuning your approach. Then you could try baking a birthday cake and then finally have the confidence to build a three-tier wedding cake. The same is true in start-ups, I would encourage teams to create ‘cupcake tests’, if they are successful then gradually scale up. In a corporate environment you often end up making very large ‘wedding cakes’ first time around but you have the infrastructure and investment and generally very long timelines to do so.”
On Brand: You’ve said that great founders are the key to great startups. What are the early signs that a founder is building something truly meaningful?
Jo: “I’m sure that there are many books written on the subject! I have found in start-ups that very often it’s founded by someone who has created something to solve a very personal need that they had. This need has turned into a personal mission and there is nothing they wouldn’t do to make it successful. Their vision is very clear, as is their conviction.
Beyond that, look at their track record, understand how they lead and the team that they have built around them and make sure that the economics of the business are sound and scalable.”
On Brand: You often talk about building a community—not just a brand. What’s the most overlooked (but critical) part of creating an authentic brand community today?
Jo: “In marketing in larger corporates, you often talk about finding your ‘brand lovers’, the people that love and will advocate for your brand. In a start-up, these are often your early adopters and evangelists. You can often find these people in the infancy of the brand and nurture your relationship with them. These are your brand ambassadors but initially they promote your brand because they love your product/services not because they are paid influencers.
Ultimately people care about people not about brands, so it is important to find your tribe and let them tell the story of your brand. To do this takes a lot of discipline as you need to make sure your brand positioning is clear. To stand out you need to stand for something, and you need discipline to clearly define your brand truth and your visual and verbal identity early on. You need to say ‘no’ to a lot of things that are off brand.”
On Brand: Startups need generalists early on—but eventually, things need to specialize. How do you know when it’s time to bring in the experts?
Jo: “I think the clearest way that this has been described to me is the three tracks of a start-up: the jungle, the dirt road and the highway.
In the early days of a start-up, the ‘jungle phase’, the early team is often composed of people that the founder brought in to get the business off the ground. In this phase there are few defined roles and generalists act almost as ‘Swiss army knives’ constantly adapting do anything to clear the path through the jungle. They live and breathe the culture but quite often the generalist hasn’t worked in professional environments before or had much formal training.
The dirt road phase is where skills specialism starts to come into play. When the business has product market fit and starts to gain momentum. One of the biggest challenges in rapid scale ups is that each team member almost rewrites their own job description every six months. It’s imperative to support the culture of the start-up, the energy and passion of the team and to right size the effort and the skill set of the overall group.
The management team should mentality ‘always be hiring’ to get ahead of building the right specialists who can still navigate the dirt road. They need to know and when to use third parties rather than hiring people better suited to the ‘highway’. At this phase you need to start to celebrate dirt road rather than jungle culture, for example implementing better production forecasting rather than pulling all-nighters at the plant to meet a retail order!”
On Brand: You’ve said startups shouldn’t outsource their storytelling. What’s your best advice for early-stage teams trying to stay scrappy and strategic when it comes to brand voice?
Jo: “By outsourcing, I mean don’t hand everything over to an agency. You will need to work with multiple parties including content creators, agencies, designers, brand partners but make sure that your brand essence is clear and coming directly from the team.
I see a lot of consumer start-ups that don’t really understand the strategic and creative work and discipline that sits behind brand positioning. They tend to focus on packaging and design, experiential tactics and influencers – that will only get you so far before you can start to see copycats in the market.
Once your brand positioning, is clear it defines everything you do. Once you know what you stand for, who your consumer is, what your brand promise and functional and emotional benefits are and your tone of voice. Great brands have what is called ‘freedom in frameworks’, they tightly define their brand pyramid and promise which enables them to be creatively sharp and holistic. An enduring big brand example: Snickers delivers ‘satisfaction’, the brand truth ‘you are not you when you’re hungry’ extends to brilliant TV creative, to delivering a box to Jeremy Clarkson when he gets fired and timing messaging to 3pm when most people start to get ‘hangry’. But you don’t need huge budgets to have great brand work. Start-ups need to punch above their weight on this, great examples that I see are Lucky Saint, and Tails (in the UK), Tony Chocalonely, Local Style Chips (in Chicago) that are all run by great marketers. Once you have a clear brand idea everything works to support it.”
Thank you, Jo!