Neufund is a blockchain-based equity fundraising platform which is operating on the Ethereum blockchain. At its core, Neufund is a regulatory and legal framework, connecting investors and inventors and allowing them to conduct fundraising rounds in an easy and legally-compliant manner. Using the Neufund platform, companies can conduct primary offerings of securities as legally-binding smart contracts (i.e., Equity Tokens) on the Ethereum blockchain.

Neufund’s Equity Token Offering (ETO) is a novel way of fundraising, which allows any kind of company, Blockchain-based or not, to issue equity tokens on the Blockchain, in a public or private placement.

The challenge for us is to seamlessly integrate regulatory and legal frameworks into our product. Thereby we have to act professionally and ensure full compliance with regulations. During our ICBM which ended in December we gained a lot of trust from investors, the crypto community and companies. We wanted this sense to be reflected in Neufund’s branding, vision and eventually our new website.

That’s why we got together at the beginning of the year for a team workshop on brand communication and values. The key tasks which we identified over the course of that day are the following:

Revise Neufund’s mission and goal Define target groups Define our core values Describe the personality of our company Create the brand guidelines to establish Neufund’s identity, communication and marketing solutions

Mission

It is Neufund’s mission to bring Blockchain fundraising out of the regulatory grey zone by enabling a fully compliant Blockchain-based investment process. This area is so novel both for developers and lawyers, but also lawmakers and regulators, that it is a complex task for anyone involved. With so many out-of-the-box solutions, Neufund has become at its core a legal-tech and reg-tech platform.

Goal

Our goal is to make fundraising on the Blockchain as easy as possible, whilst being secure and compliant with regulations. We take regulatory and compliance requirements serious, and we believe their coherence benefits us. We aim to protect the investors and the community — in this we are aligned both with the lawmakers, and with the Blockchain community’s democratic and inclusive spirit of transparency. The goal is to build the Platform for ICOs 2.0 — but scam free.

Target groups

We know the direction in which we are moving. However, once we took a closer look at our audience, it became clear to us that we have four very distinct target groups. We decided to communicate with each one differently, using different channels, tonality, and explanations. The four target groups which we defined for Neufund are:

Tech companies who are looking for new ways of fundraising. Investors who believe in Neufund’s vision to create a novel way of fundraising based on Blockchain. Bankers and regulators who participate in shaping the cryptocurrency space from a legal perspective. The community of Neufund Token Holders who took part in the ICBM and will be the first investors on our Platform.

We realized our customers do not only look for innovation, but also for a company that ensures a legal and professional approach for a crypto project. There are two steps by which we are able to warrant that. First of all, we have to ensure that our investors’ funds are safe on our Platform. That’s why we are working now on the Neufund Platform and the KYC processes. The second step is to change our branding, so it reflects our mission and speaks to the Neufund community.

Core Values

Two crucial elements of our communication strategy are our core values and our tonality. They should be coherent across all our products, marketing, and customers communication, but also be reflected in investors communications and PR.

Inclusiveness: we make the crypto space and investment ecosystem accessible for everyone.

Transparency and accountability: we make the fundraising process through an ICO trustworthy and safe.

Legal compliance: we bridge the off-chain world with the Blockchain space by making on-chain equity management legal and secure.

Leading edge: we are expanding and reinforcing the Blockchain revolution by creating the very first legally compliant solutions in the world.

Tone of voice

On the one hand financial products and transactions systems have to be communicated very precisely, at the same time we want to make a positive and open minded impression. When talking about Neufund, we want to encourage confidence and use jargon-free language for people who are not yet familiar to the Blockchain world. Therefore when we create content, the writing style may vary depending on our target audience. On the one hand financial products and transactions systems have to be communicated very precisely, at the same time we want to make a positive and open minded impression. When talking about Neufund, we want to encourage confidence and use jargon-free language for people who are not yet familiar to the Blockchain world. Therefore when we create content, the writing style may vary depending on our target audience. Our language aims to be:

Precise | Verifiable | Clear | Trustworthy | Legitimate | Supportive | Charismatic | Approachable | Established | Straightforward

Results

Through the workshop, we were able to see the bigger picture and clearly identify our audience. With the new input in mind, we moved on to rebrand Neufund. For the last two months, we’ve been working on implementing our vision. Now, we are thrilled to announce our completely new website!

We concluded from the workshop that Neufund’s image and branding should rather represent a B2B fintech company than a startup.

Logo

We decided to simplify the logo, using only one weight, to improve the readability in smaller sizes. We also reduced Neufund’s symbol by removing the round background.

Old logo

New logo presented on a grid

We have extended the logo’s use cases to a vertical version, various color versions as well as use cases with simply the symbol alone.