New Denver Agency Seeks to Relieve Startups of Marketing Mistakes

Herosmyth offers useful services within its entrepreneurial hub

Ali Longwell //June 21, 2019//

New Denver Agency Seeks to Relieve Startups of Marketing Mistakes

Herosmyth offers useful services within its entrepreneurial hub

Ali Longwell //June 21, 2019//

herosmyth

Earlier this month, Chad Coleman and Steven Monetti launched Herosmyth, a marketing and design company that also serves as an entrepreneurial growth hub in Denver.

Coleman and Monetti previously founded Ascend, another Denver-based design, marketing and branding agency,. But they realized that their services were either too expensive or didn’t suit the smaller brands that would contact them.

“There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing a great idea die because of bad branding and marketing,” Herosmyth CEO Coleman says.

So, the duo closed Ascend and rebranded it as Herosmyth, seting out to rethink the way these agencies could help Denver small businesses, which Coleman says are thriving in the city and state.

FitSmallBusiness recently released its report of the best cities for entrepreneurs, and Denver ranked third. According to the report, the city has a 8.7% rate of entrepreneurship.

“One of the things that inspired us to do this was meeting all these entrepreneurs and seeing how thriving and growing they were,” Coleman says. “But if you don’t figure out a way to attract people to your business, you’re never going to survive in this crazy competitive world.”

Ultimately, inspired by the way the Genius Bar or Geek Squad operate, they settled on a one-on-one collaborative, consultative model that would allow startup founders and small business owners to work directly with marketing, design and branding professionals.

The Herosmyth agency and its building, which the company calls an "entrepreneurial growth hub," offer a number of amenities for these businesses, including a podcast studio, photo and video studio and a training studio with classes on soft skills such as sales, social media and SEO. All of these are offered on a monthly membership, similar to how a gym membership might work.

Eventually, Herosmyth hopes to roll this concept to other entrepreneurial cities.

In terms of services offered, Herosmyth’s flagship offering is a custom website builder developed by Herosmyth CTO Monetti. The software is named Alfred after Batman’s advisor/butler. Websites are often something that small businesses and startups struggle to deliver well, Coleman says.

“Website templates are a trap, they’re tempting because they’re cheap and easy,” he says. “But cookie cutter is not good, especially for a small business. You have to stand out or you get lost in the clutter of this world.”

The company also offers services for logo design, email newsletter build-out and social media ad creation.

Herosmyth already has a number of clients from across Colorado industries. This includes Hoods Denver, a real estate statrup that has used its brand stategy, logo design and website design services; Oh-zhoo, a restaurant consulting startup using its website builder; and Colorado Lending Source, a nonprofit using its video studio to produce Facebook Live videos and other marketing tasks.