- Former Apple advertising guru James Vincent built consulting firm Fndr over three years using his connections in venture capital and tech.
- He and his three partners have since worked with Snapchat, Farfetch, Glossier, Vice Media, and Polaroid, among others.
- The firm's internal pitch deck outlines how it uses intense coaching sessions to help founders define their companies.
- Fndr has clients spend hours in its "radical safe house" environments — a 1929 Craftsman-style bungalow in Venice Beach, California, and a loft in Dumbo, Brooklyn — where they're probed on the ideas behind their business.
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Over the past three years, Fndr claims to have built an impressive client portfolio that includes Snapchat, Glossier, Vice Media, and the 83-year-old Polaroid without ever directly pitching itself.
"It's a relationship business," chief operating officer Rebekah Jefferis said.
Instead, the clients came primarily on the strength of referrals from venture capital firms including Y Combinator, Attention Capital, and LocalGlobe.
CEO James Vincent said the firm takes an unusual approach that convinced tech founders like Snapchat's Evan Spiegel, a longtime client, to spend hours in Fndr's "radical safe house" environments — a 1929 Craftsman-style bungalow in Venice Beach, California, and a loft in Dumbo, Brooklyn — to discuss the ideas at the core of their businesses in an intimate environment with no smartphones in sight.
The company shared a deck, included below, that describes this approach, which Vincent calls "a highly orchestrated series of intense meetings to pull the genius out of a founder."
The firm uses therapy-like sessions to get founders to be brutally honest
Chief strategy officer Nick Barham said the firm usually works with businesses early in their lifespan, when the founders are the only ones thinking about their brand.
As the deck shows, each client participates in three daylong sessions at the firm's safe houses over four to six weeks with each group consisting of the company's founder and no more than four more people. The idea is to provide a safe environment where the client can be asked probing questions that will help them define the company and ultimately stand out in a crowded field.
"We're very honest to the point of being brutal," chief creative officer Stephen Butler said.
This approach, which grew out of the partners' experience at ad agencies working with famously unforgiving founders like Apple's Steve Jobs and Airbnb's Brian Chesky, may resemble therapy. But Jefferis said it's closer to coaching — people aren't asking the firm to solve their problems but to help shape how they talk about their companies.
Fndr's approach has led to longstanding relationships with companies like Snapchat
Barham said Fndr lies firmly on the creative side of the consulting spectrum; unlike McKinsey or Deloitte, it doesn't get into supply chains or efficiencies issues.
Although the founders worked at major ad agencies, the firm doesn't produce any marketing materials, either.
Instead, the company's core product is a playbook summarizing each client's narrative that can help shape everything from internal documents like hiring guides and product road maps to communications briefs or investor decks.
Fndr has helped clients choose ad agencies or PR firms to implement the ideas from those strategy sessions. Vincent said they helped Snapchat move from thinking of itself as a social network where you can connect with anyone to a platform for sharing with real friends.
"Real friends" was the title of the company's first global ad campaign, which ran in 2019.
The partners want to apply their creative skills to a market where brands mean more than ads
Unlike most consulting firms, Fndr doesn't release case studies or any real evidence of their work. Barham said that's because part of their agreement with clients involves not revealing what they do. Fndr sells high-touch services rather than concrete deliverables like ads or apps, and bills clients for each block of sessions instead of using the industry's standard hourly model.
In this way, the partners hope to avoid the commoditization that has hurt ad agencies as clients increasingly demand cheaper, faster work.
Vincent also thinks consumers no longer place the same value on the sorts of classic campaigns he oversaw during nearly 17 years leading the Apple account at TBWA\Chiat\Day and Media Arts Lab, including "Mac vs. PC" and the iPod "Silhouette" ads.
So far, Fndr has had some success with its approach. But the consulting field is intensely competitive, especially for a company that relies so heavily on relationships to drive new business. And one reason Vincent is talking about his company now is to better define the Fndr brand, because there is no shortage of consultants eager to sell young founders on their own supposedly unique way of doing things.
Fndr cites its partners' experience working with some of the biggest names in tech such as Apple, Airbnb, and Snap as well as newer companies like Glossier, Airtable, and Farfetch.
Fndr says it isn't interested in established companies' old ways of thinking and tries to help established companies refresh their brands.
Newer Fndr's clients include stem cell-based leather maker VitroLabs Inc, fine art ecommerce company Avant Arte, digital health insurance platform Alan, and Brex, a corporate credit card for startup companies.
Before joining Fndr, the firm's partners worked at top ad agencies including TBWA\Chiat\Day, Media Arts Lab, and 72andSunny.
Fndr focuses on the idea of "intentional narrative," or a brand story that can shape products, communications, and structural decisions in the short and long term.
Fndr requires clients to visit one of its two spaces for their consulting sessions: a 1929 Craftsman-style bungalow in Venice Beach, California, and a loft in Dumbo, Brooklyn.
"They're not rolling brainstorms," Vincent says of the meetings. "They're pointed, topic-driven provocations."
The deck says Fndr prefers clients to have no more than 5 participants from each clients at each session to maintain an intimate environment that focuses on the founder and his or her closest partners.
It also states, aspirationally, that the sessions can be part of a longer relationship with clients.
Fndr will provide each client with a "playbook" consisting of the "language architecture" behind their brand's story. It is the closest thing the firm has to a demonstrable product.