☖ CEO NEMESIS - Helping brands find clarity.

We’re not your typical branding agency and we never mean to be. We are at the intersection between agency and team members.

We believe in branding done differently. It's about aligning, inspiring, and federating people around a shared vision, not just slapping on a new logo.

We work side-by-side with our clients to unlock the power of their brand. We dig deep to unearth purpose and make it visible.

☗ Hiring strategists, designers, and copywriters, all of whom have one thing in common: designing in a meaningful way. 

✺ Working in radical immersion from our client's habitat

✎ Always eager to connect in a more informal way at sydney@nemesis.studio

Sydney Funck

Seven years ago, we were three people in Brussels with a conviction about what branding could be.

Today, La Libre covered our story. And we’re announcing a new Nemesis hub in Lausanne.

Switzerland wasn’t really a planned expansion. It happened quite naturally.
Over the years, more and more of our work started coming from there. At some point, it simply made sense to be present locally.

That’s how most of our moves have happened so far.
Brussels first. Then Dubai. Now Lausanne.

Not because we had a big international plan.
Simply because the work and the clients kept taking us there.

The ambition remains the same: keep pushing what branding can do for companies.
Not just logos, but work that touches how a company operates, hires, communicates and grows.

We’re still very early in the journey.

And yes… it’s still a bit strange to see your own face in the newspaper.

#branding #lausanne #switzerland

Helping brands find clarity as CEO of Nemesis

Throwback to our case for Student.

Always good to look back at this great collaboration
and especially at Florence Loumaye, CEO & co-founder of Student.

Building Student is already impressive in itself.
Creating a platform that helps students discover the professional world and find their path?
That’s real impact.

This year, she’ll also be part of Entrepreneurs inspirants.

I’m excited for more entrepreneurs to discover Florence
her care, her humility, and above all, her vision.

Some leaders build companies.
Others shape futures.

Florence does both.

All brands have logos.
Not all logos have brands.

A logo is a symbol.
A brand is meaning.

A logo identifies.
A brand differentiates.

A logo can look good.
A brand makes you choose.

If there’s no positioning,
no clarity,
no point of view

It’s just a nice graphic.

Design is visible.
Branding is structural.

And structure always wins.

🚨 Alert. Stop the bullshit.

Building a brand, without buzzwords, is just this:

Closing the gaps between what is
→ written
→ said
→ lived

That’s it.

No frameworks.
No shiny decks.
No empty promises.

If what you write doesn’t match what you say.
If what you say doesn’t match how people actually live the company.

You don’t have a brand.
You have noise.

So let’s repeat it, because it matters:

Building a brand, without any buzzword, is just:

Closing the gaps between what is
→ written
→ said
→ lived

Everything else is decoration.

Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating today. 🌙

In the middle of deadlines, growth plans, and busy schedules, moments like Eid remind us of something simple: success also means family, generosity, and community.

Wishing you a joyful celebration and beautiful moments with the people who matter most.

Eid Mubarak ✨

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward.
You can only connect them looking backward.”
Steve Jobs

Building a vision takes decades.
Not quarters.

In the moment, it feels slow.
Messy.
Uncertain.

But dots connect with time.

Think long term.
Build daily.
Trust the process.

S/O to Entrepreneurs inspirants — Geoffroy Josquin, Malek Farhat and the whole team 🙌

We wanted to build a remote culture.

Because we want you to work from where you feel at home.
Where you belong.

If our vision of the world is to build it in a meaningful way,
then this belief must be lived, not just stated.

Culture can’t be a slide in a deck.
It has to show up in how we work, every single day.

With simple common sense, the conclusion was obvious:
a remote culture wasn’t a perk.

It was a logical choice.

Nemesis in 10 years?

The reference for how brands should be built.

I don’t care about building a company of 1,000+ people.
Size was never the goal.

What I care about is impact.
And meaning.

The bet is simple :
Make Nemesis the reference in our industry over the next 10 years.

And then open our model to everyone who wants to build a more meaningful world.

Because influence matters more than headcount.
And legacy matters more than scale.

“The shorter it was to read, the longer it took to write.”

So I’ll keep this very short.

…

Actually, I won’t.

Because this sentence?
It took drafts.
It took deletions.
It took the painful act of removing clever words, extra lines, “smart” thoughts.

It took time to make it simple.
Time to make it clear.
Time to make it effortless for you.

We often confuse short with easy.
But short is expensive.

Behind every sharp line, there’s a long process.
Behind every clean slide, there are messy versions.
Behind every “obvious” idea, there are hours of doubt.

The paradox?

The better it reads,
the less you see the work.

Anyway.

That’s it.

(See? Not that short after all.)

AI is changing marketing.
But clarity will always win.

Proud to be main partner of AI for Marketers Day 2026.

300 marketing leaders.
32+ speakers.
4 stages & workshop rooms.

A full day dedicated to one question:
How do we turn AI from hype into real strategic leverage?

At Nemesis, we believe technology is powerful
but only when aligned with vision, positioning, and people.

Looking forward to connecting with ambitious marketers ready to build smarter, sharper, more aligned brands.

See you on May 28.

S/O to Yannick Khayati & the amazing team of AI for Marketers day.

CEOs sometimes live in a bubble.

At a certain level, nobody dares to tell you the truth anymore.
You end up surrounded by people-pleasers, not truth-tellers.

And that’s dangerous.

Very often, this is exactly what CEOs love about Nemesis.
Our ability to jump into a company and be brutally honest.

No politics.
No comfort talk.
No ego massaging.

Just clarity, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Because growth doesn’t come from being protected.
It comes from being challenged.

I’m CEO.

Which used to feel like a destination.

But it’s a direction.

Because in a growing company, being CEO isn’t about having arrived.

It’s about constantly becoming.

And that’s the beautiful part.

Every time the company grows,
it stretches me.

Bigger team? I learn to trust more.
Bigger decisions? I learn to think longer term.
More complexity? I learn to simplify.

Yes, sometimes it feels like I’m running after my own company.

But what a privilege.

To be forced to upgrade.
To outgrow old habits.
To become more structured, more patient, more strategic.

The company is scaling.

And I get to scale with it.

Being CEO isn’t a title you reach.

It’s a person you’re continuously becoming.

At Nemesis, we build inspiring ideas
and remarkable brands.

Not for awards.
Not for trends.

But for clarity.
Impact.
Results.

Ideas that move people.
Brands that stand out, and stand strong.

That’s the work.
That’s the standard.

What a brand is and isn’t.

A brand is not a visual identity.
(Not.)

It’s not your logo.
Not your colors.
Not your fancy new website.

That’s the outfit.

A brand is a system of meaning.
(Yes.)

It’s what you stand for.
How you position.
What you make people feel.
What your team aligns around.
What the market remembers.

Visual identity is one square.
Brand is the whole grid.

If it only looks good, it’s design.
If it drives clarity, decisions, and ambition → it’s branding.

The only way to avoid burnout?

Shape your life on purpose.

Burnout isn’t always 80-hour weeks.
Sometimes it’s:

– Too many “yes” you regret
– A calendar you didn’t design
– Goals that aren’t really yours

It’s not about working less.
It’s about working aligned.

If you don’t choose your pace and boundaries,
someone else will.

Ambition is powerful.
But only if it fits your life.

Avoid burnout

Do it every day.

Don’t chase perfection.
Chase speed of execution.

Perfection isn’t the goal.
It’s the by-product of doing the work
again and again.

Motion creates mastery.

If you want to sell your business,
rebrand first.

Not to look prettier.
To look clearer.

At Freedhome, the fundamentals were strong.
But the brand didn’t reflect the level of the company.

We clarified the positioning.
Simplified the story.
Elevated the perception.

Same business.
Different signal.

When a company feels structured and mature,
it feels safer.
And safety creates value.

Sometimes, rebranding isn’t about growth.
It’s about readiness.

Throwback to Anomaly Case.

Anomaly isn’t “just” a video studio.

It’s a content engine.
Built to create at scale.
Built for people and brands with a vision to share.

Entrepreneurs will change this world.

Not in a dramatic movie scene way.
More in a “someone in a hoodie quietly fixing a broken thing at 1:17am” way.

Most big changes don’t start big.
They start with irritation.

“This is inefficient.”
“Why does this suck?”
“There has to be a better way.”

And instead of tweeting about it,
someone opens a laptop.

Fast forward a few years and suddenly:

— An industry looks different.
— A habit has changed.
— A new normal exists.

Not because of a master plan to “change the world”.

But because someone couldn’t tolerate a problem.

That’s usually how it happens.

Small fix.
Then scale.
Then impact.

Entrepreneurs don’t wake up thinking
“I will reshape society today.”

They just start building.

And somehow, that’s enough.

You can’t be
and have been.

What got you here
won’t get you there.

Past wins feel safe.
But they can also slow you down.

Staying relevant
means choosing to evolve
before you’re forced to.

Helping people and organizations find clarity in order to reach their full potential.

I am all about helping people and organisations find clarity in order to reach their full potential.
Currently trying to give this personal narrative shape with Nemesis, which I co-founded in 2020.

We’re not your typical branding agency and we never mean to be. We are at the intersection between agency and team members.

We believe in branding done differently. It's about aligning, inspiring, and federating people around a shared vision, not just slapping on a new logo.

We work side-by-side with our clients to unlock the power of their brand. We dig deep to unearth purpose and make it visible.

Reaching your full potential is scary, but liberating. For yourself and everyone around you.  



Marianne Williamson said it best:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, 
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. 
Your playing small does not serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were all meant to shine as children do. 
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, 
we consciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our fear, 
our presence automatically liberates others.

Johan Wouters

Seven years ago we were three people in Brussels with a conviction about what branding should be.

Today La Libre covered our story. And we are announcing our new hub in Lausanne.

Switzerland was not a calculated expansion. It became obvious. More than 15% of our revenue was already coming from there before we had a formal presence. The market was telling us something. We listened.

That is how we have approached every move. Brussels first, then Dubai, now Lausanne. Not because we had a grand internationalisation plan. Because the work took us there.

The ambition has always been clear. Build something that changes how the industry thinks about branding. Not more logos. Not prettier decks. Real transformation that touches how a company operates, hires, communicates and grows.

We are a long way from done.

But I do look really good in that picture.

#branding #lausanne #switzerland

Helping brands find clarity - Strategy & Growth

Eid Mubarak to every Muslim celebrating today, and to every Muslim who finds it hard to celebrate.

To those gathered around tables full of laughter, family, and food, may your joy be deep and your blessings multiplied.

And to those marking this Eid in the shadow of war, violence, famine, and displacement in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, DRC, Lebanon, Iran and beyond.
Your resilience is witnessed.

May this day carry even the smallest flicker of peace into your hearts.

#peace #hope #love

Every founder I have worked with who was in trouble had the same problem underneath. Not the product issue. Not the team issue. Not the positioning.

Not enough sales.

Sales covers a remarkable number of sins. It buys you time to fix the product. It gives you the cashflow to hire out of a mistake. It creates the breathing room to think clearly. Most of the problems that feel existential at low revenue become manageable problems at real revenue.

This is not a popular thing to say because it sounds reductive. But I have watched founders spend months perfecting something that a paying customer would have fixed in a week.

The market tells you things your team cannot. It tells you what actually matters, what to cut, what to double down on. But only if you are in it. 

Only if you are selling.

The founders who survive the early years are not always the ones with the best product or the clearest strategy. They are the ones who stayed close to revenue. Who treated selling not as a phase before the real work but as the work itself.

When in doubt, go and sell something.

Everything else can wait.

#entrepreneurship #sales #growth

Over a period of 5 months, we worked closely with Composil.

Conversation after conversation, workshop after workshop, we explored their ambitions, their cultural richness, and a very humanistic way of doing business.

Before jumping to solutions, we took the time to look honestly at the status quo. What was working. What was unclear. What was no longer matching where they wanted to go.

From there, we built the new Composil brand to carry their ambition.
We refined the strategic foundations to bring clarity to the core. Then we translated that into a fresh visual identity and a distinct voice, designed to communicate what Composil truly stands for.

Clarity first. Expression second. That is how brands become believable.

#rebranding #vision #strategy

The branding work for Momoamo has been out for a while. But as of now, the doors actually open.

There is something different about a project like this. Momoamo is not selling a product or a service in the traditional sense. They are selling what happens between people when you put them in the right place. Shared experiences that become shared stories. The kind of memories that a team actually talks about two years later.

The brief was clear: build an identity that feels like somewhere, not something. Warm, intentional, specific.

That is the work we love doing.

Congratulations to Olivier Ramel & the team. Go and fill the place.

#branding #unforgettabletogetherness #gooffscript

Nemesis is sponsoring AI for Marketers Day. And I am giving a keynote.

The topic is one I keep coming back to: the dangers of unlimited possibility.

AI gives marketers the ability to produce everything, test everything, be everywhere at once. That sounds like an advantage. I think it is one of the most significant threats to brand clarity we have seen in a long time.

When you can do everything, the pressure to choose what you will not do becomes enormous. Most companies will not choose. They will produce more, faster, and wonder why nothing is landing.

That is what we are going to talk about.

See you there.

#branding #ai #possibility

Most people come to us thinking they need a new logo.
That is rarely the actual problem.

Visual identity is the surface. What sits underneath it is the thing that determines whether a brand actually works. The clarity on what the company is and is not. The decisions that have been made about who it is for and who it is not for. The shared understanding inside the organisation about what it stands for and how that translates into every interaction, every hire, every product decision.

That is a system of meaning. And without it, the logo is just decoration.

The brands that last are not the ones with the best visual identity. They are the ones where everyone, from the founder to the most recent hire, is operating from the same understanding of what the company is trying to become.

That kind of alignment does not come from a moodboard. It comes from doing the harder work first.

The visual follows. It does not lead.

#branding #visualidentity #meaning

Most branding mistakes are not creative failures. They are thinking failures.

Treating brand as static. Assuming it does not matter in B2B. Confusing social followers with actual loyalty. Calling it a cost instead of an asset. Leaving it to marketing instead of owning it at the top.
These are not edge cases. I see them constantly, in companies of every size, at every stage.

The pattern underneath all five is the same. Brand gets treated as something you do once, or something you hand off, or something that sits separate from the real decisions. It is none of those things.
It is a compounding asset or a compounding liability. There is no neutral position.

The five mistakes, and what to do instead, are discoverable below

#branding #mistakes #clarity

5 common mistakes in branding

A brand that depends on the founder is fragile.

Founders carry the vision naturally. They are the pitch, the energy, the conviction. But the real test is whether the brand still holds when they are no longer in every room.

That is where the activation phase in a Nemesis rebranding project matters.
You extract the founder’s vision, distill it, and implement it across the company. Not as a poster, but as a system teams can actually use.

When that happens, people stop executing tasks and start relaying intent.
Employees become ambassadors. The vision lives through them.

That is how a brand gains longevity. Beyond any one person.

#branding #founders #longevity

Most branding work starts in the wrong place.

Everyone wants to talk about what the company is. The values. The vision. The personality. Hours go into finding the right words for things every competitor would also claim.

The more useful question is what you are not.

The brands that are actually clear have made decisions. They have looked at what the market expects and chosen to step away from some of it. Not addition. Subtraction.

I work with founders who can talk for twenty minutes about what their brand stands for and still not have said anything a competitor could not say. But ask them what they refuse to be, what they would rather lose business than become, and suddenly the conversation gets interesting.

That is where the brand actually lives.

Clarity is not about finding better words for the same territory everyone else is occupying. It is about being willing to close doors.

#branding #strategy #clarity

Culture is not what you say you value.
Culture is what people do when it matters.

Culture equals values plus behaviour.

Values are the intent.
Behaviour is the proof.

If the two do not match, culture becomes noise.
If they align, culture becomes a force.

The difference is never in the posters on the wall.
It is in the daily decisions.

#culture #branding #values

Branding is not what you say about yourself.

It is what people experience when they interact with you. The way your team responds to a difficult customer. The decision you made to walk away from a client who was not the right fit. The product you killed because it was not good enough yet.

That is the story. Not the words on the website.

Most companies invest in the narrative and underinvest in the behaviour that makes the narrative true. And people notice. Not always consciously. But the gap between what a brand claims and what it actually does is one of the most felt things in business.

The founders who build brands that last treat every operational decision as a brand decision. Because it is.

Say less. Do more of what the story requires.

#branding #strategy #positioning

Most people learn business from books or business school.

I learn it from founders who are three, thirteen or thirty years into something no one believed in, figuring it out in real time.

That is the privilege of this work. Not the variety. Not the projects. The people.

I sit across from entrepreneurs who have made the hard call. Who have killed the product that wasn't working, let go of the co-founder who wasn't right, walked away from revenue that was pulling them in the wrong direction. They do not talk about strategy in the abstract. They talk about what it cost them.

That sharpens you in a way nothing else does.

The best ones share one quality that took me a while to name. They are not chasing a bigger version of what they have. They are trying to build something specific. The specificity is the point. It drives every hire, every no, every room they choose not to be in.

I leave most of these conversations with more questions than I arrived with.

That is how I know the work is still worth doing.

#entrepreneurship #branding #nemesis

Most founders treat branding as the thing they will get to once the business is working.

It is actually one of the things that makes the business work.
A strong brand is not a logo or a colour palette. It is the reason someone chooses you over a near-identical competitor. It is why the right customers find you, and why the wrong ones disqualify themselves. It is what keeps your team aligned when the company is moving fast.

It protects your margins. It shortens your sales cycle. It makes growth cheaper.

Five ways it does that below.

#branding #reasonstobelieve #founder

5 ways branding protects your business

If you want to join a room full of thinkers, not followers, 
The AI for Marketers Day on the 28th of May is the place to be. 

You’ll spend the day alongside practitioners, strategists, and brand leaders who are actively using AI in their work.

No hype cycles. No surface-level inspiration. Just people building, testing, and refining how AI fits into real marketing strategies.

As well as yours truly to give a keynote on the dangers of unlimited possibility. 

Thank you for your attention to this matter. 

#branding #ai #keynote

Most sales conversations are lost before they even start.

Not because your offer is bad.
Because the buyer has no context.

They do not know who you are.
They do not know what you stand for.
They do not know who trusts you.
They do not know what results you have delivered.

So when your salesperson calls, the real objection is silent.
Why should I take you seriously?

That is why branding matters.
It does the pre work. It creates familiarity, credibility, and clarity before the first conversation happens.

Credit where it is due, inspired by the clever people at McGraw Hill Magazines.

#branding #clarity #copywriting

People do not buy what you do. They buy why you do it.

The product is just the proof.
The service is just the vehicle.

What people actually respond to is belief. The intent behind the work. The point of view that makes your company feel legitimate.

When your why is clear, what you do makes sense instantly.
When it is not, you end up competing on features and price.

Thanks Simon

#branding #clarity #vision

Everyone says branding is more than a logo. Almost no one can tell you why.

It is not a bad instinct. It is just an incomplete thought.

The logo, the visual identity, the way the thing looks and feels, that is not decoration. It is the first interface between your company and someone who does not know you yet. Before the pitch, before the proposal, before the first conversation. The visual is already doing work.

Done well, it makes people lean in. It signals that what is inside is worth their time. It shortens the distance between stranger and client.
Done badly, or just generically, it creates friction. Not the kind people name. The kind they act on without realising it.

So yes, branding is more than a logo. But the logo is not nothing. It is often the first thing that makes someone decide whether the rest is worth their attention.

Full breakdown in the video below.

#branding #logo #strategy

Everyone is optimising for attention right now.

More content, more channels, more hooks, more volume. And it works, in the narrow sense. You can get noticed. The metrics move. The impressions stack up.

But noticed is not the same as trusted. And trusted is not the same as chosen. Again and again, over time, at a margin worth protecting.
That requires something different.

The founders I see confuse the two. They build a content machine and call it a brand. But brand is not the thing that gets people to stop scrolling. It is the thing that makes them come back. That makes them refer without being asked. That makes them pay the price without negotiating it down.

You cannot create that through noise. You create it through consistency. Through doing what you said you would do, across enough touchpoints, for long enough that people stop questioning it.

Noise is a tactic. Brand is what survives when the noise stops.

Most businesses need both. But they are not the same investment and they do not produce the same result.

Know which one you are building.

#branding #trust #clarity

Most founders build the investment deck first. Then try to figure out the strategy behind it.

That is the wrong order.

The founders who raise well usually have something the others do not. Clarity on what they are, who it is for, and why it is going to work. Not as a story they have rehearsed. As a position they have actually made decisions around.

That clarity does the work twice. Before the raise, it helps you identify the right partners and ask for the right amount. After the raise, it makes sure the money goes in the right direction.

Rebranding is often the thing that creates it. Not because the logo needed updating. Because the strategy needed sharpening.

Full breakdown in the video below

#fundraising #growth #branding

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