Brand Building Tips From Tilo Bonow 

“If I were down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations.” – That’s what Bill Gates, one of the most successful tech entrepreneurs of all time, said about the value of brand building. Why? Because in the cut-throat world of technology and innovation, your story might be worth more than your code.

“The truth is, it is not enough to be the best if others sell better. And the problem is if you don’t tell your story, someone else will, ” warned communications expert Tilo Bonow, Founder and CEO of PIABO Communications, at the recent How to Web Conference. “Your revolutionary algorithm means nothing if your competitor’s inferior product has a better story.” Welcome to the brutal reality of tech branding in 2025.

Essential Trust-Building Strategies for How to Scale Your Business in Eastern Europe

“Where money is the currency of transaction, trust is the currency of interaction,” Tilo explains at the How to Web Bucharest Conference. “If I never trust you, I will not work for you. If I don’t trust you, I will not invest in your company. If I never trust you, I will not buy your product. It’s as simple as that.”  This reality hits tech startups particularly hard. When established competitors already have consumer confidence, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

“Let’s say you want to launch a tech startup like a neo-bank,” Tilo illustrates. “There are tons of banks that people trust. You come along and say, <<I bring a bank on your mobile phone, you should give me all your money>>. But there are a lot of questions: Will the startup still be there in six months? Will they get venture capital? Maybe they have security issues.” Your job is to combat these uncertainties through storytelling and brand-building that establishes trust rapidly—a critical factor when looking at what investors look for in a pitch deck.

Tech Communication Best Practices: Creating a Trusted Brand

What builds trust in the digital age? At How to Web Conference 2024, Tilo identified several critical elements: – “Consistency is the important part,” or “You should be consistent but at the same time not predictable. And the way to build more trust is to be more transparent.”

What makes a brand versus what builds a brand?

However, many founders looking to start a startup in Eastern Europe misunderstand what constitutes their brand: “Often there is a misconception that the brand is like the design, how it looks, how it feels. But a logo is not a brand. It’s how you make people feel. A brand is an emotional connection. It’s the experience that you create. The brand is a memorable experience, in the best possible way.”

Tilo quotes Ben Horowitz: “A company without a story is a company without a strategy.” Your brand goes far beyond visuals—“It is everything you do, say, and how you make others feel. And, of course, the culture you’re creating with your firm. It is your reputation in the market. It is about what others say about you. It is the unwritten pact that you must uphold. And, of course, it’s your narrative. That is your own unique story.   It’s about your values, basic principles, guiding activities, and, of course, communication style. And it includes everything you do, say, and how you make others feel. Last but not least, consider your vision, mission, and values that you express and intend to output. So you can see there are two parts: the actual approach and the identity. And so you can see brand building is composed of 2 parts –  the actual strategy and the identity.”

It goes without saying, though, that your consumers and customers may not always share the identity and what you believe your brand stands for or does.

Because of their upbringing, culture, experiences, competition, social environment, and background, they may view your brand very differently than you do, even if that is how you truly want them to see it.

The Premium Brand Advantage

Strong tech brands command premium pricing that far exceeds the actual cost of their products, a crucial insight for anyone attending startup events in Europe..

“You want to be a premium brand,” Tilo states. “You don’t want to be the cheap water that you can get everywhere. You want to make people pay a premium price and be a brand that people are willing to pay more for than they actually would pay for the actual product.”

He illustrates this with everyday examples: “We see it every day. There are many, many differences about packaging, being part of a community, about the look and feel. Don’t be coffee, be Starbucks”.

But positioning matters just as much as the product itself: “The same product in a different environment can be very, very different in their appearance, but also what you can charge for—sticking back to the bottle of water—in the gym, in the cinema, in the airport. It’s very, very different.”

What is the harsh truth for founders aiming to scale their business? “It is not enough to be the best if others sell better,” Tilo warns. “If your competitor is more expensive or not so fast, they’re cooler or more cyber secure than you, but if they’re better at selling, then they will win. And it doesn’t matter how cheap you make your product. It doesn’t matter.”

How to Build a Winning Tech Brand That Attracts

Tilo delivers a reality check about what constitutes a newsworthy story—essential knowledge for those looking to get angel investment in Europe: “What you may think is a good story is very, very different from what journalists think is a good story. Because just having a startup alone is simply not good enough. It happens every day, every week.”

He continues: “And also if you get it, maybe a good budget proposition. You think, ‘Yeah, I want to change the world, I want to make the world a better place.’ That’s not really something that is newsworthy because it’s very repetitive.”

Even funding announcements aren’t automatically interesting: “If you go out there and maybe have raised some money from your friends, family, 100, 500 thousand, it happens every day.”

For those seeking startup pitch examples that got funded, Tilo provides key elements that effective tech stories must include: “Be engaging emotionally,” Tilo advises. “Consider that the attention span from all people is roughly around 8 seconds, so very, very short. And you should be very clear about who is the hero in your story.”

He explains that stories need structure: “In the most simple form, the story has a beginning which addresses clearly the problem that you’re solving as a company. It has a middle part where you talk about the solution that you’re providing. And at the end, the success story—people save money, people save time, whatever it is.”

The power comes from emotional connection: “Stories are meaningful because they are memorable. They get through, but also they’re personal. So, we have to create great characters. Be clear about who’s actually the hero of your story. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the founder. It can be, like in Stripe’s case, the engineers, and the programmers who should fall in love with the brand. But it can be, in the case of Lyft, which is a competitor to Uber, focusing on the drivers as the heroes of their story. Also, Airbnb is clear about their story—it’s the hosts that they’re providing the platform for, making them the hero of their story.”

Great stories show transformation: “Think about the shift from taxi to Uber. Everyone had problems with taxis in their mind—they couldn’t pay with credit cards, couldn’t give any reviews, you didn’t know who was actually driving, or were going on the wrong road, etc. Uber solved all these problems that we all had and became successful, and everyone was talking about it.”

In short, effective tech stories must:

• Engage emotionally within seconds (attention spans average just 8 seconds)
• Clearly identify the hero (often your customer, not you)
• Follow a simple structure: problem → solution → success.
• Create memorable and personal connections.
• Focus on transformation (how you’re shifting paradigms).

Finding Your Unique Communication Point

“What founders most struggle with is finding their unique communication points,” Tilo observes at How to Web for founders. “What is the one thing that you want people to remember about your product, your service, your startup?”

He points out the common pitfall: “They can talk for hours about what they do, but bringing it down to one clear and simple message is the important part.”

This matters in everyday networking situations like tech conferences in Europe: “When you come here to the conference and you meet a lot of people, what’s one of the first questions you get? Usually it is, <<Who are you?>> & << What are you doing?>>. If you’re not able to tell in 1-2 clear sentences and get this reaction— <<Oh, interesting. Tell me more.>>— from a journalist or an investor, you failed.”

His advice is straightforward: “Remember, simplicity wins and complexity kills.”

Tilo illustrates this with a tech industry example: “When Steve Jobs introduced the iPod, he didn’t focus on how many GB it has, what the fabric is, or where it comes from. He had a very simple, unique communication point: ‘What if you could play 1,000 songs in your pocket?’ Very simple.”

The alternative approach fails, because when you walk out of the door, you forget—what does it mean 6 gigabytes or 4 gigabytes. “What does it mean to you? Nothing. You have to really touch them emotionally because only 5% of the people remember the stats that are shared.” By comparison, “it’s 22 times more likely that people will remember you, when you have a good story.”

This approach is particularly valuable for those seeking to understand brand building  and what it takes to create a strong foundation in storytelling.

Leveraging Personal Branding for Company Success

Tilo emphasizes that founders need to recognize that their personal brand impacts their company’s success, a concept gaining increasing traction at events: “You are also the CEO of your own brand,” he says, quoting Jeff Bezos:  “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

For skeptics, he offers concrete data: “When you don’t think it’s important, then look at the pure numbers. Tim Cook was not as famous as Steve Jobs but has many more followers than the brand Apple. Bill Gates has many more followers than the brand Microsoft.”

The lesson is simple: “People are generally interested in people.” He advises founders to “follow the three Rs of personal branding: “It’s about reputation, it’s about recognition, and it’s about relevance.”

This isn’t superficial work: “A strong personal brand really adds value to the corporate brand that you are building. It’s really a leadership requirement and not just self-promotion or a personal branding campaign.”

Tilo clarifies a common misconception: “It’s not about the world having to know you, like everyone on the planet. No, it’s your target group and the people you want to reach.”

Practical Communication Strategies for Tech Companies

Tilo offers several concrete tactics for effective brand communication that can help founders build their brand and trust:

1. Be the media: “Instead of pitching the media, find shared interests with your target audiences and become a trusted source of expertise.”
2. Target the right channels: “You have to find the right target media, both in personal branding and in your corporate communications. You have to reach the hearts and minds of your audience.”
3. Focus on solving pain points: “When you develop a story, really ask yourself: is my story a vitamin or a painkiller? And you want your story to be a strong painkiller. That’s what your focus should be.”
4. Embrace visual storytelling: “I think one big missed opportunity is the visual storytelling part. Think about how you can visualize your story. There are great examples from B2C dating sites, but also when you’re a B2B company. Maybe, for example, in cybersecurity or mobile cybersecurity, I think there are ways to visualize and make it more emotional, more effective.”
5. Maintain human touch in AI-assisted communications: “Everyone wants to use AI, but at the end of the day, it’s also important where the promotions or pitches come from and whether they still have a human touch— if we’re speaking of building trust. Also, professional journalists can tell if you don’t really do it by yourself.”
6. Optimize for mobile consumption: “We have situations where content is mobile. Journalists are reading their messages on their phones. The videos or infographics look very smart and charming on your phone or in your boardroom, but they may look very different on a small device. It’s important to understand how your stories are perceived depending on the device.”
7. Address the talent market: “We are in a war for the best talent. We all want the best talent. And that’s why addressing your messages also to the talent market is super, super important and mission-critical. Your employees, internally, but also externally, and the next generation of employees, will also see these kinds of messages.”

The Future of Trust in Tech Companies

Tilo emphasizes the importance of integration across all communication channels, a concept increasingly relevant at events like the How to Web startup pitch event:

“Break up the silence,” he urges. “It doesn’t make any sense when you have separate agencies for everything—someone for LinkedIn, someone for PR, someone for advertising, etc.—people who can’t speak to each other. You have to have everything connected.”

His closing advice speaks to the long-term nature of brand building in the era of new technology in 2024: “Your goals should be really to stand out. Find your brand, and be different. Stand out, be the purple cow, and it will create results for the big, big business.”

He emphasizes relationship building over quick wins: “No matter if you decide to work more with influencers or more with journalists, whatever your strategy is, always think about forming long-term relationships, not one-night stands—at least in business.”

Final Thoughts

Building trust through storytelling isn’t just marketing—it’s mission-critical for tech startup success. As Tilo reminds us of Bill Gates’ perspective: “If I were down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations.”

The return on this investment is clear: “The more expensive your product is, the harder people may be willing to find information about it. Reputation matters, and only a fraction of people actually believe in advertising—32%. This is nothing. But what you want is trust.”

In the trust economy, your story might be your most valuable product. “Trust is the currency of interaction,” and in a world where attention spans average just 8 seconds, your ability to communicate your unique value proposition quickly and emotionally may determine whether you’re the next industry disruptor or just another startup that couldn’t translate innovation into trust.

As Tilo concludes at How to Web Conference, “The problem is if you don’t tell your story, someone else will.” Make sure you’re in control of your narrative.

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What’s your story, and how are you building trust with your audience? Come to How to Web Conference 2025 and let’s exchange stories, together – https://www.howtoweb.co/tickets/