Peter Melad is a brand identity strategist for startups, based in Egypt and serving clients across 12+ countries. Through his signature process, the Founder Clarity Kit, he builds strategic brand identities for startup founders combining brand strategy, logo design, and visual identity systems. Pricing starts at $1000. He has worked with 90+startups since 2019 across SaaS, fintech, advisory, real estate, energy, and premium services.
The Thinking Designer
meet Your STRATEGIST
My story
✍️ Peter Melad
End of 2019. A Friday night. I was sitting at the small desk in my room with a black notebook open in front of me and a pen in my hand.
At the top of the page I wrote one question. What do I actually want?
I had been at the pharmacy all week. Long hours. Out of the house most days from early morning to late evening.
The week before had been the same. The month before had been the same. I could not tell the days apart anymore.
Under the question I wrote one word.
Remote.Then I wrote another word. Design.
Two words on a page in a black notebook in a quiet room.
I sat there for a long time after. I had been a pharmacist for years. My mom was a pharmacist. My family was proud of what I did. My job was respected. In Egypt, what I had was what most people wanted.
If I followed the two words on the page, I had to leave all of that!
I closed the notebook. I went to bed.
A few weeks later I bought a laptop. I carried the box home and put it on the table.
When my family asked what was in the box, I said it was for work. Which was true. Just not the work they thought.
That was six years ago.
What I did not know at the time was that I was not really changing careers. I was changing who walks through the door.
At the pharmacy, when a patient came in worried about their child, I would take the prescription. I would read it carefully. I would ask about the symptoms. I would listen more than I talked. I would name the real problem under the surface problem. I would prescribe the right medicine. I would teach them how to take it after they left.
When a founder books a discovery call with me now, I do the same five things. I ask. I listen. I diagnose. I prescribe. I teach.The room has changed. The work has not.
I have been doing this for six years. I have worked with founders in twelve countries. The USA. The UK. Australia. The UAE. Saudi Arabia. Switzerland. Others. SaaS, real estate, advisory, energy, premium services.
Some projects worked. Some did not.
The ones that did not, I rebuilt. The ones that worked, I learned from.
I have built brands for Woolf, Takween, Boud, Pharaoh's Kitchen, Dexistar, Dopamine, Earthryse, Sleeve Up Homes, and others. Each one started the same way.
A founder walking into the room with a problem they had been describing as one thing, which was usually another thing.
Brand strategy is full of people who came to it from marketing or art school or agency life. They came to it as a creative discipline. I came to it as a clinical discipline.
Diagnosis before prescription is not something I picked up at a workshop.
It is what I did every day at the counter, for years, before I touched a logo file.This is the part founders sometimes notice without me saying it. They tell me my process feels more careful than the ones they have seen before.
They tell me I ask different questions. They tell me the strategy phase feels less like a presentation and more like a consultation.It is a consultation.
A logo is not decoration. It is a visual handshake. It is the first proof a stranger gets that a brand is worth trusting. When that handshake is honest, the rest of the work has somewhere to land.
That is what I do now. I help founders build the handshake.
