A NEW MODEL FOR A NEW NORMAL
By Rachel Roberts Mattox, Brand Developer and Go-To-Market Strategist & Advisor.
Every Thursday, THE BOARD BRIEFING brings you curated industry insights directly from our Members to your inbox
A NEW NORMAL
There’s a spirit of disruption driving Go-To-Market strategies today. From startups to scale-ups, from first reveal through brand revitalization, old playbooks simply aren’t cutting it.
AI is accelerating timelines, optimizing workstreams, and commoditizing creativity.
Traditional leadership hierarchies and bloated org charts are being replaced by a mix of fractional talent and automation.
Channel strategies are being rewritten in real time to keep pace with algorithm shifts and fast-changing consumer behavior.
This disruption carries the spark of evolution. We can all feel it. Things are changing rapidly, and there’s no going back.
But this energy, if unchecked, also carries a warning. We’ve moved past the “move fast, break things” bravado of the early 2000s. Today, disruption without direction risks destruction.
Every founder and leader I speak to is asking the same thing: How do we navigate this velocity of change while building something that actually lasts?
It’s not enough to launch.
Success is about building a capital efficient, culturally relevant brand that’s designed to endure.
What’s clear is that the old Go-to-Market model is dead.
What’s needed is a new model for the new normal we’re living in.
A TALE OF TWO MODELS
Most pre-market and early-stage founders today are left to choose between two imperfect paths:
The Patchwork Approach – Founders play CEO, COO and CFO, while stitching together a mosaic of freelancers, consultants, and agencies to build the brand, each working in isolation. This often results in disconnected strategies, inflated costs, conflicting timelines, and diluted brand equity.
The Traditional Incubator Model – Founders partner with incubators that promise end-to-end capabilities, but most are structured around celebrity-driven, mass-market brands. They often require equity, rely on dated playbooks, and are optimized for quick exits, not long-term brand health.
The first model often fails to launch.
The second often launches something forgettable.
But between these two models lies white space.
Not a random mashup of talent, but not a fixed, one-size-fits-all framework, either.
Not chaotic, but also not formulaic.
Not shoot-from-the-hip, but not churn-and-burn.
Something fluid, yet focused. Collaborative and curated.
Something built for what brand building actually demands today.
INTRODUCING THE LAUNCH STUDIO
A new kind of incubator for a new kind of world.
Built by THE BOARD — a collective of operator-founders, award-winning creatives, and C-suite leaders — we’ve helped build and scale some of the most iconic beauty brands on the planet.
Our model centers on Curated Dream Teams: senior industry experts who plug in early and deeply, filling critical talent gaps, working as a synchronized extension of the client’s team, and adapting in real-time as needs evolve.
Each Dream Team is a bespoke mix of strategists and operators whose skill sets, experience, and working chemistry align with the client’s unique ambition.
Forget end-to-end. This is edge-to-edge, designed to meet the complexity of today’s climate with clarity, cohesion, and cultural attunement.
EDGE-TO-EDGE
Today, competitive advantage is no longer about access to information, but the capacity to synthesize intelligence.
It’s not just know-how, but who you know.
Not just credentials, but cultural fluency.
Not just a portfolio, a resume, or even a list of awards. These are the new vanity metrics.
Competitive advantage comes down to signal spotting, pattern recognition, operational agility, financial and technological acuity, and a deep global network.
This is the competitive edge offered by THE LAUNCH STUDIO.
A NEW MODEL, IN MOTION
Curated Dream Teams - Instead of siloed agencies or bloated internal teams, we hand-select a small team of C-suite leaders who partner as a tightly synchronized extension of the team from day one.
Full-Stack, Single P&L - Strategy, product, brand, ops, and growth sit at one table for greater alignment, agility, and cost-efficiency.
Scenario-Tested GTM Playbooks - Every strategy is pressure-tested against macro forces, from inflation to regulation, to ensure readiness, not reactivity.
Built-In Succession to Scale - Long-term operators are embedded from the start, ensuring a seamless handoff from launch to hypergrowth.
Speed and Savings - By eliminating rework, misalignment, and agency bloat, we move faster and smarter, trimming both time and cost to launch.
The Network Effect - We’ve done this before. Hundreds of times. We can open doors to vetted labs, target retailers, influencers, vendors, and investors through our deep rooted industry relationships - with access and authenticity that no single agency or consultant can match.
FROM DISRUPTION TO EVOLUTION
What’s needed now isn’t just the energy of disruption.
What’s needed is the intelligence and intention that brings forth evolution.
It’s less “move fast, break things”, and more “move together, build things.”
The next generation of iconic brands won’t be generated by prompts or predicted by data alone.
It will be shaped by the sharpest minds - human or otherwise - working in creative collaboration.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rachel Roberts Mattox is a Beauty Brand Developer and Go To Market Strategist. She is a founding member of THE BOARD and a co-creator of THE LAUNCH STUDIO.
THE BOARD is a vetted community of C-Suite talent from worlds of Fashion, Beauty, Tech and more. Whether your brand needs a 'Dream Team' to create a data-driven roadmap for what's next or an on-call advisor to provide objective feedback on your strategy, THE BOARD has you covered.
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