ENTREPRENEURIAL CAPITAL
Grant had built businesses before, but this time he was building a fund with a bold mission.
Founder Grant Hensel
(87)BrandLaunch • Identity, voice, launch essentials
Grant Hensel is a founder, investor, and serial entrepreneur. His next idea was a fund that backs people buying small businesses and gives investors a steadier way to own a piece of Main Street.
Investment brands tend to feel cold and slick, and Grant wanted the opposite.
We built the brand around his operator experience. Calm, candid, and collaborative. Then we got him launch-ready with the essentials: identity, voice, website look and feel, and pitch deck templates.
“One of the best experiences I've ever had with an agency of any kind.”
Grant Hensel, Founder
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Founder, Investor, and serial entrepreneur, Grant Hensel needed help branding his latest venture, an investment fund that everyone could benefit from. Entrepreneurial Capital not only gives aspiring business owners a real shot at success, it gives investors a smarter, more meaningful way to diversify their portfolios by investing in small businesses with incredible potential via a process called Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA).
We partnered with Grant to bring his big vision and investment story to life. The result? A brand that feels equally grounded and ambitious, just like the operators it serves.
(01) Brand Focus
Investing without selling your soul.
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At the heart of Entrepreneurial Capital is a simple idea: build a nation of owners, not just employees.
During our (87)BrandFocus workshop, we worked to clarify the fund’s dual focus, empowering searchers with mentorship and capital, and offering investors a high-integrity, high-upside path to support real businesses.
We anchored the strategy around Grant’s own experience as a business owner and entrepreneur, leveraging his strong operator-first credibility and the fund’s unique positioning in the ETA (Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition) space. The brand needed to be less cutthroat, and more collaborative. Less transactional, and more transformational. One that was built to power the American Dream at a time when America needed it more than ever.
(87)BrandFocus Includes
Focus Workshop
Brand Core & Audit
Vision, Mission, & Values
Audience & Personality
Brand Story
Brand Spark
(02) Brand Design → Visuals
A calming brand that builds capital.
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Entrepreneurial Capital isn’t just another fund. It’s a hands-on, mentorship-first community with real skin in the game. We wanted the updated visual identity to reflect this, and we leaned into the concept of essential pieces coming together with a feeling of growth and upward mobility.
Designed to resemble bricks in a wall, cells in a spreadsheet, and Main Street windows, the shapes are angled to give an “onward and upward” spirit. We also leaned into a monochrome green-on-green color palette that inspired trust and spoke to the idea of building a lasting legacy. Inspired more by matcha tea than by money, the colors provide a sense of calm amid a market of high investment intensity.
When it came to photography, we curated a library of genuine interactions and entrepreneurs that felt real and collaborative.
Includes:Brand Storyboards
Visual Identity
Art Direction
Typography
Photography Style
Brand Guidelines
“EightySeven not only does fantastic design and brand work, but they also understand what moves the needle for entrepreneurial organizations.
Working with the EightySeven team was one of the best experiences I've ever had with an agency of any kind. Multiple friends who also own businesses have worked with them and had the same great experience. Highly recommended!”
Grant Hensel, Founder, Entrepreneurial Capital
(02) Brand Design → Voice
Warren Buffett meets blue-collar Chicago.
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We wanted to create a voice that stood out from other investment sites, one that came across as calm, candid, and wise, but never slick or self-important, just the friendly expert who’s been there before.
We worked with Grant to bring the brand’s story to life in a way that’s smart but approachable, optimistic yet grounded for our business-owner audience. But we also made an effort not to oversimplify for our investor audience, the ones who wanted the answer to the age-old question, “What’s in it for me?”
With straightforward, yet compelling lines like “Profitable? Stable? Boring? Beautiful.” and “We turn small businesses into big opportunities”, we gave the brand a strategic messaging toolkit that cut through financial jargon and spoke to a deeper purpose.
Brand Voice Includes:
Brand Voice Guidelines
Strategic Storytelling Framework
Brand Language Toolkit
Returns and details shown in the mockups are for illustration purposes only, not guaranteed.
(03) Brand Activation
An investment in the essentials.
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Being a BrandLaunch project, we wanted to give Grant and his team the essentials to get their new brand up and running as quickly as possible. We focused on helping them simplify their story while providing prioritized creative assets they could deploy quickly and easily.
Activation includes:
Brand Logo Suite
Business Cards
Email Signatures
Social Profile Assets
Website Look & Feel
Presentation Deck Templates
Brand Guide One-Sheeter
