Let's Clarify Your Positioning and Build a Communications Strategy to Match.
Your messaging is the first thing every customer, investor, and journalist judges you on. Let’s nail yours—on the web, on socials, and for the media—in two weeks, and give you the resources to build attention indefinitely.
Trusted by Enterprise, Mittelstand, and Startups
The Throughline Sprint
5 deliverables. 2 weeks. One clear direction.
In two weeks, we define your positioning, build an internal playbook your whole team can use, and hand you the assets to communicate with confidence.
01
3 positioning strategies ranked by fit
We analyze your market, competitors, and strengths to surface distinct strategic angles.
02
Headline & tagline
A slogan and subheadline that anchor your homepage, pitch deck, and every first impression.
03
Internal positioning playbook
Customer profiles, pain-point mapping, and pitch scripts so your whole team tells the same story.
04
Founder-led social strategy
Content pillars and repeatable frameworks for LinkedIn/X and short-form video.
05
1-page press kit
Built by former journalists to make your story easy for the media to cover.
Early Stage
Under €1M ARR or under €3M total raised
Growth Stage
€1M+ ARR or €3M+ total raised
The symptoms of a positioning problem
- Someone asks what you do and you ramble. Too long, too vague, and you know it the second you stop talking.
- You and your co-founders each explain the business differently—and none of you are wrong, which makes it worse.
- Your website looks great, but visitors don't get what you actually do. You've rewritten the homepage three times this year.
- You offer multiple things and can't figure out how to prioritize them into one story that holds together.
All comms are downstream of positioning.Nail your positioning, and your comms will fall in line.
How it works
Here's what happens in your 2-week sprint.
Step 1 · Days 1–5
Positioning Strategy
We analyze your market, your competitors' positioning, and your unique strengths. You receive three distinct positioning strategies—not one generic recommendation, but three viable angles based on real gaps in your competitive landscape. You choose the direction. We refine it.
Deliverable: 3 positioning strategies with competitive analysisTalk to Brian about your positioning →
Step 2 · Days 5–7
Headline & Tagline
We write a market-facing slogan and supporting headlines that clarify what you do, whom it’s for, and why it matters. Built to anchor your homepage hero section, your pitch deck, and every first impression your brand makes. You get copy that communicates your positioning instantly.
Deliverable: Hero slogan and subheadline reflecting your unique positioningTalk to Brian about your messaging →
Agentic360 connects workflows, integrations and documented evidence in one system. For teams that need to scale reliably.
6w → 4d
Typical audit-prep time
0
Outputs without a source citation
An AI enabled compliance solution that cites sources line-by-line and runs natively.
Built inside the EU regulatory framework.
Not AI-assisted guesswork — AI-verified answers.
Regulatory shifts that reach you, not the other way around.
6w → 4d
Typical audit-prep time
0
Outputs without a source citation
Step 3 · Days 7–10
Internal Positioning Playbook
We build a deck your entire company can work from. Part one defines your customer and their pain points, both in practical and emotional terms. Part two maps how your product addresses each of those pain points, anchored by your new slogan. Part three gives your team messaging frameworks and elevator pitch scripts so everyone—founders, sales, engineers—tells the same story when someone asks “what do you do?”
Deliverable: Internal positioning playbook with customer profiles, messaging map, and pitch scriptsSee a sample playbook →
Step 4 · Days 10–12
Social Media Strategy
We build a founder-led social media strategy with clear positioning, content pillars, and repeatable frameworks for short-form video and/or written posts on LinkedIn. You get a system for generating ideas consistently, not a list of 30 post ideas that run dry in a month.
Deliverable: Founder-led social media strategic plan with content frameworksLearn about our social approach →
Step 5 · Days 12–14
Press Kit
Most press releases don't get written about. We know. Brian and Tommy are both former journalists. So we designed our press kit to not just inform journalists and content creators but to solve their problems. In doing so, your PR goes from a contested 3-pointer into an easy layup.
You'll work directly with Brian, who spent years as a journalist at VICE and knows exactly what makes an editor open an email.
Deliverable: 1-page press kit optimized for media outreachBook your 2-week sprint →
Agentic360
AI-Powered Multi-Agent Platform
An AI enabled compliance solution that cites sources line-by-line and runs natively.
Story Angles
Can AI solve Europe’s regulatory red tape?
NIS2 enforcement hit 160,000 European companies in 2026 with penalties up to €10 million. Most are still preparing compliance documentation by hand, a time-consuming nightmare fraught with the prospect of costly error. Can AI save Europe from itself?
EU tools for EU problems.
Agentic 360 is one of a growing number of European tech startups that are building the next generation of AI tools without the use of American frontier AI.
The six-week audit that nobody has time for
Most mid-market companies don’t have a compliance department. They have one person, a spreadsheet, and a deadline. What happens when regulation scales faster than headcount?
Context
Results
Here’s how customers react to The Throughline.
Agentic 360
agentic360.de →Agentic 360 helps companies understand and meet their regulatory obligations with an agentic system that ensures privacy and cites sources.
Challenge
Articulate value clearly and concisely, and create a communications strategy that is time-efficient to execute.
Brian and Tommy helped us understand our positioning opportunities and how best to speak to our customers in a way that articulated our value simply, and on their terms. Organic search traffic rose 5.7% in the first week, before any SEO work began.
Andreas Friedrich, CEO
Agentic 360
Words from people who have worked with WestWord.
“In my experiences working with WestWord, I have found Brian and Tom eager to learn about not only the STRAUSS business but, more importantly, the family behind the business. As a family-owned company, this is important to me, and we have found a way to translate this DNA and the home-grown stories we’ve crafted in Germany to a global audience.”
“I appreciate Brian’s attention to detail. WestWord set us up for success. We have a good understanding now of what we need to work on and how to arrive at our communications goals.”
FAQs
Questions founders ask before booking.
How much does The Throughline cost?+
The Throughline is a fixed-price engagement—€7,500 for smaller teams and €15,000 for established companies, both excluding VAT. No hourly billing, no scope creep. You know the cost before we start.
What’s the difference between the two tiers?+
The deliverables are the same. The difference is complexity. Larger companies typically have more products, more customer segments, and more stakeholders who need to align on the messaging. That means more discovery, more iteration, and more care getting everyone on the same page. If you’re not sure which tier fits, book a call and we’ll figure it out together.
What's the time commitment on our side?+
We need approximately 3-4 hours of your time across the two weeks. There’s an intake questionnaire and a quick call to walk you through everything, make sure we have all the info we need, and resolve any questions before we get started. Then there are 2-3 deliveries as we move forward, depending on availability. We strive to be flexible and sensitive to your time.
Who actually does the work?+
WestWord’s founders, Brian Blickenstaff and Tommy Burson, work directly on every Throughline engagement. Between them they have 20+ years in journalism and brand strategy, with bylines in ESPN, VICE, and National Geographic, and corporate communications work for brands including Trivago, Engelbert Strauss, and SAP.
We already have a website. Do we need the headline and tagline?+
If visitors land on your site and don't immediately understand what you do and why it matters, yes. Your hero section is the first thing people read—it needs to communicate your positioning instantly. You can drop the new headline and tagline directly into your existing site or use them to anchor a redesign.
Is this only for European startups?+
The Throughline was built for European startups under €1M ARR, but the framework works for any early-stage company with a positioning problem. If you're unsure whether it's a fit, book a 15-minute call.
What if our positioning needs to change later?+
Positioning evolves as you grow, but the strategic foundation should hold. The Throughline gives you a framework designed to scale from pre-seed through Series A and beyond. If you need to revisit positioning after a major pivot or funding round, WestWord offers follow-up engagements.
What happens after the sprint ends?+
You walk away with 5 finished deliverables you can implement immediately—no further engagement required. If you want ongoing support with content execution, PR outreach, or social media, WestWord offers retainer engagements. But The Throughline is designed to stand alone.
What if we don’t need the full package?+
Just let us know what sections don’t meet your needs right now and we can work something out.
How flexible are you on price? Could we pay with equity?+
We’re open to these arrangements. Shoot us an email and let’s talk.
Can I work with you if we’re not based in Europe?+
Absolutely.
What if we don’t like what you deliver?+
Easy: we’ll work with you til you love it.
What if we need more help after the sprint is over?+
We offer support in the form of one-time agreements or monthly retainers so that we can help you with content, socials, and PR. Or a mix of all three.
Other ways we can help you reach your customers
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Positioning and communications insights for European founders, written by a former journalist.
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