Partnership · Brand core · Audience · Go-to-market
Velby: the quiet room,not the crowded one.
Velby is an Israeli business club that brings entrepreneurs, investors and experts together – a curated business ecosystem rather than broad networking. It is also Eightception's close partner: the two work together across several projects and directions, and Igor Levi advises the club on its own brand and go-to-market strategy.
- Igor's role
- Strategy partner – brand, audience, go-to-market
- The partnership
- Several projects and directions, joint events
- Today
- Ongoing advice on the club's own go-to-market
IThe club
A bridge between ideas and capital.
Velby brings together entrepreneurs, investors and experts from the Russian-speaking business community in Israel, and helps them find partners, investment and opportunities to grow their projects in Israel and beyond.
Its people are experienced business owners, private investors and senior professionals. Most of them have seen enough of the large mixer where everyone roams the room looking for someone worth meeting. Velby is building the opposite: small, curated meetings of three to eight people, introductions made for a reason, and a full infrastructure around them – expert consulting, financial and legal support, an investment platform and events.
IIThe partnership
Partners across several projects.
Velby and Eightception work together closely, across several projects and directions. Igor speaks at the club's events, and the two have held joint events for business owners – among them an evening at a winery, where Igor took the room through his method on a live company case.
Inside that partnership, Igor advises the club on its own brand and go-to-market strategy. That work is the case on this page.
IIIIgor's role
Strategy for the club's own growth.
Igor led the strategy: who the club is for, what it promises them, how a member's path runs from first hearing of Velby to recommending it, and which channels carry each step. The Eightception team did the groundwork – the audience research, the strategy documents and their Russian versions.
The work started from what the founders already knew. They had built six personas from their own experience with members, and those personas were the starting point for everything that followed.
IVHow Igor worked
Beneath the personas, to the reasons people join.
Go beneath the personas
The founders' six personas proved accurate in the main. The research went underneath them, to the motives, fears and moments that decide whether a busy principal gives a club their time – and turned six descriptions into seventeen audience portraits.
Find who was missing
Two audiences came out of the research that the club had not been aiming at: senior professionals who return to Israel after careers abroad and find their standing reset to zero, and seasoned founders who want a clean exit rather than more growth. Both look for exactly what a curated club can give.
Let the club prove itself
This audience has been promised exclusivity before. So the strategy makes the club show its working: how the selection is done, what happens after joining, what the first month looks like. The first serious conversation becomes a check of fit, not a sales pitch.
VWhat was delivered
From brand core to a playbook for every channel.
- A brand core – positioning, values and boundaries built around one line: the architect of your professional circle, not a venue for it. It says what Velby is not as clearly as what it is, so the right people recognize themselves.
- Seventeen audience portraits beneath the founders' six personas – so every message is written to a reader the club can name.
- Eight strategic narratives, each with its own enemy and promise, from the anti-networking club to a strategic bridge between founders and capital – so the club can speak to an investor and to a newcomer in different words, with one brand behind both.
- A member journey in five stages, from first notice to recommending the club – the goals, doubts and feelings at each step, and what the club does about them.
- A go-to-market playbook across fourteen channels – Telegram as the backbone, LinkedIn in Russian, Facebook where the community already talks, events as the club in miniature – written so each person on the team can read their own channel end to end.
- Russian versions of the core documents, ready for the club's team to work from.
VIThe partnership today
A partner, not a project.
The strategy work gave the club a clear language for what it is and a route from that promise into channels and events. It was also the start of a wider partnership.
Today Velby and Eightception work together across several projects and directions, and Igor continues to advise the club on its own go-to-market as it grows.
How to start
Say who your business is forbefore you say what it sells.
Answer a few short questions about where things stand. The conversation ends with the smallest useful next step – or a plain reason it is not Igor.