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Luke Sullivan once wrote that creativity is like washing a pig. Messy. No clear beginning, middle, or end. When you're done, you're not sure the pig is clean, or why you were washing it in the first place.
That last part is the one founders feel and can't name.
The founders I talk to don't get stuck because they lack ideas. They get stuck because they don't know which question comes first. They can feel the brand is off. They can't tell you whether the problem is the name, the audience, the offer, the positioning, or the way the whole thing is being told. So they touch everything a little and nothing moves.
The first question is almost never what should this look like. It's closer to what is this actually for, now.
Once that one's answered, the next ten questions line up behind it.
Audience.
Promise.
Voice.
The visible stuff. In that order.
Skip the first question and you get a redesign that looks sharp for six months and unravels again. Diagnose it first and the design work almost writes itself, because every choice has something to measure against.
One founder I'm working with came in with a rough prototype his CTO had built with AI. They knew it was wrong. That was the point. It let them speak design. Point to the hierarchy, describe the flow, disagree about the right things. With something to point at, the harder questions got easier to ask. The mess never started.
The symptoms aren't the brief. The first question is the brief.
Sullivan was right about the mess. The part he left open is the one worth sitting with.
Why were you washing the pig in the first place?
— Ian Adams, Founder @ sofa.
Twenty years in global advertising. Now I work with founders on the stuff that actually matters.
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