Why brand clarity, repeatability and pricing power quietly lift investor valuations for scaleup growth

What Investors Pay For in Scaleup Growth Valuation

The problem: founders are optimising the engine while investors are underwriting the vehicle.

Founders talk about growth like it’s a treadmill: speed, output, weekly numbers, a constant sense that if you stop moving, you’ll fall off.

But investors view growth as a machine: does it work without heroics, does it scale, and will it continue to work when the market becomes unpredictable?

That mismatch is where a lot of scaleups lose valuation leverage without realising it. Because investors don’t pay the highest multiples for “growth”.

They pay for a specific type of growth:

• Consistent enough to forecast

• Repeatable enough to scale

• Differentiated enough to defend

• Credible enough to survive a downturn, a competitor, or a channel collapse

This is why two companies can show similar topline growth and get very different outcomes in fundraising, secondaries, or exit pricing.

What investors are looking for

Investors rarely say “brand” explicitly in a meeting, they say things like:

• “How sticky is demand?”

• “What’s the moat?”

• “Why you vs them?”

• “How sensitive is growth to paid?”

• “Can you raise the price without the market punishing you?”

They’re looking for signals that growth is not just being bought, but being built, and those signals come down to a few fundamentals.

1 > Repeatability beats spikes

A spike can be a campaign, a partnership, a TikTok moment, or a pricing promo that worked unusually well.

Repeatability is different. It’s when the company can clearly explain how demand is generated and why it persists. Investors value repeatability because it reduces risk, makes forecasting less uncertain, and turns growth from “possible” into “probable”.

You see this in how premium fintechs and platforms are valued when the market believes growth is systemic rather than accidental. For example, Revolut has been publicly associated with a $75bn valuation (via its own announcement and recent reporting), supported by scale, revenue growth and profitability signals that imply repeatability rather than a one-off bump.

Contrast that with businesses where growth appears heavily dependent on a single channel or geography: investors still invest, but the valuation conversation becomes more cautious, more conditional.

2 > Clarity is a valuation lever, not a brand workshop deliverable

Founders often treat clarity as a “nice to have”. Investors treat it as evidence of leadership maturity.

Clarity shows up as:

• A tight category story (what game are you playing?)

• Crisp differentiation (why you win?)

• A consistent narrative across leadership, product, sales and marketing

• A coherent route to scaling (what stays true as you grow?)

When this is missing, investors associate this with friction:

• Longer sales cycles

• Higher CAC

• Slower international expansion

• More wasted spend

• More internal disagreement

• More executive churn

And yes, brand is part of this. Not in the “make it look nice” sense. In the “does the market understand you and choose you when they have options?” sense.

There’s a reason research keeps circling back to long-term brand building as an economic asset, not an aesthetic one. The IPA’s effectiveness work (Binet & Field) is essentially a long, evidence-backed warning that over-optimising for short-term response can undermine long-term growth outcomes.

3 > Brand and narrative are proxies for defensibility and pricing power

This is the bit founders usually miss, and it's something that investors pay attention to, because brand is one of the few things that:

• Reduces price sensitivity

• Lowers acquisition costs over time

• Increases conversion efficiency

• Makes growth less dependent on paid media

Kantar BrandZ has published an analysis showing high-equity brands outperforming major indices over time (using their share-price chart approach).

WARC reports that strong brands can deliver higher shareholder returns, reinforcing the link between brand strength and financial performance.

Investors may not refer to it as “brand” in the partner meeting. But they absolutely price the effects of brand into the model: resilience, margin, pricing, conversion and demand quality.

4 > Growth strategy is now part of due diligence

More investors are carrying out due diligence on the growth engine itself, not just the P&L and product.

They want to know:

• Is growth scalable without CAC exploding?

• What happens when a channel saturates?

• How dependent is revenue on discounting, incentives, or founder-led sales?

• Are there clear category entry points you’re winning (and can own)?

• Does the positioning travel across segments and geographies?

This is why modern value-creation language in private capital is shifting toward repeatable systems and durable differentiation, rather than simply “do more marketing”.

And it’s why research on brand investment is getting sharper. For example, Boston Consulting Group published research (Dec 2025) quantifying the future cost of cutting brand spend and the growing financial penalty of losing attention.

What this looks like in the real world

Let’s ground this without pretending that every valuation is purely “brand-driven” (it isn’t). However, brand clarity and narrative shape how growth is interpreted, and interpretation affects investor valuation for scaleup growth.

Monzo raising at around £4bn valuation (reported) isn’t just about product. It’s about whether the market believes the next chapter is scalable and defensible; profitability, expansion, deeper product adoption, and a coherent story investors can underwrite.

Gymshark becoming a billion-pound brand wasn’t built on a single-channel strategy. Community, identity, and consistency created demand gravity, and that shows up in investor appetite (e.g., General Atlantic taking a stake tied to a £1bn+ valuation).

Stripe is a good example of investor confidence being reinforced by category position, narrative and perceived durability. Its tender offer at a $91.5bn valuation (Feb 2025) is not merely a number; it’s a market signal that the growth engine is still seen as resilient and strategically central.

These examples aren’t “brand = valuation”. They’re “clarity + defensibility + repeatability = confidence”, and confidence is what valuations are made of.

How to implement this thinking

1. Write the growth story like an investor would read it.

   Not “we’re growing fast”. But - what drives demand, why it’s repeatable, and what makes it defensible?

   
   

2. Balance performance with brand on purpose

   You don’t need to become a global TV and billboard brand, but you do need enough brand-building to reduce long-term dependency on paid efficiency.

   
   

3. Build pricing power, not just pipeline

   Pricing power is the quiet multiplier of enterprise value. If you can hold price while others discount, you’ve built a market defensibility that investors can understand.

   
   

4. Make growth a leadership discipline

   When growth is “the marketing team’s job”, investors see fragility. When it’s embedded into leadership decision-making (product, sales, narrative, focus), they sit up and listen.

Where OSER fits

This is exactly where OSER operates: at the intersection of growth strategy, brand clarity and investor reality.

We help founders and leadership teams make growth make sense (internally and externally), and we support investors who want a clearer view of how scalable, differentiated and resilient a company’s growth engine really is - not just what last quarter looked like.

In practice, that means strategy and narrative work that strengthens:

• Investment confidence

• Value creation plans post-deal

• The credibility of the growth story ahead of fundraise or exit

Talk to OSER ->

FAQs:

What do investors really look for in scale-up growth?

Consistency, clarity, and repeatability - not just short-term performance spikes. Investors want to understand how growth is generated and whether it can be sustained.

Why do investors care about brand and narrative?

Because they signal long-term defensibility, pricing power, and leadership maturity. A clear narrative reduces perceived risk and increases confidence in future growth

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How can founders align growth strategy with investor expectations?

By balancing performance marketing with long-term brand building and having a clear, credible growth story that explains how growth works, why it’s repeatable, and what makes it defensible

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Is growth strategy part of due diligence?

Increasingly, yes. Investors are assessing how scalable, differentiated, and resilient a company’s growth engine really is - not just current results.