Launching an Innovative Startup with Integrated Strategies
For all the positive opportunities that GenAI presents, it has also ushered in a new era of malicious threats including deepfakes and impersonation attacks. Individuals, businesses, governments, and media alike now face a reality where we can no longer trust everything we read, hear, or see online.
In response, Dr. Hany Farid, U.C. Berkeley professor and leading expert on digital forensics, and Ted Schlein, co-founder and general partner of Ballistic Ventures, co-founded an innovative tech startup called GetReal with veteran cyber executive Matthew Moynahan at the helm as CEO.
The company blends top-tier digital forensics and cyber expertise to address the rising threats of GenAI and malicious digital media. Inkhouse and GetReal saw a clear opportunity to launch the brand with authority, positioning it as a leader in the emerging market for cybersecurity to mitigate AI-driven deception, deepfake fraud, and identity manipulation.
At Inkhouse, we gravitate toward working with changemakers who are making positive waves within their industries and the world. For our early-stage startup clients—those in the seed and Series A phase—we move at their speed, matching their scrappy, disruptive energy to hone their narrative, set the vision, kickstart their content engine, and launch.
We have guided the public debut and awareness-building efforts for countless emerging innovators for nearly two decades, from Inrupt, the start-up co-founded by Sir Tim Berners Lee to re-invision the future of the web as a data platform for everyone; to cloud security player Wiz that recently sold to Google for $32 billion; and the multi-stage venture capital firm Spark Capital, as Inkhouse has deep roots in the VC and professional services world.
To maximize impact for GetReal, we engineered a lightning-strike launch—combining funding, new board members, a new product suite, a new website, and a name change from GetReal Labs to GetReal Security into one powerful debut.
It all starts with the story. In fact, we believe your story is your strategy. We work with our clients’ leadership to articulate the most clear, comprehensive and compelling articulation of why the company matters. We call it the “revelation statement,” which for GetReal can be summed up as follows:
In a GenAI world, humans are highly vulnerable to manipulation of the digital content that represents them, causing real reputational and financial harm. When integrity is the backbone of business, digital identity needs to be just as strong.
Though the cybersecurity industry tends to lead with FUD-filled marketing messages, GetReal is different. The company is leading a fast emerging market and strikes an important balance between framing the problem to help with market education while also imparting a message of empowerment. The visual brand reflects this optimism with vibrant colors, which is a departure from the typical cyber look and feel. As Matt Moyhahan said in his launch day blog post:
“Our belief is that we can and must reestablish trust in the connections we have in this digital-first world we live in today. We want to provide a service to enterprises, government and media, that unlocks the positive and potentially transformative benefits of AI without worrying about whether what we are hearing or seeing is real or not.”
He added, “Our mission is to protect organizations from the harm caused by manipulated and malicious digital media. Our vision is a world of digital integrity.”
Alongside Moynahan’s cornerstone blog post sharing GetReal’s CEO-level vision, the brand story came to life across channels, blending PR and digital strategies to reach C-suite decision-makers.
At Inkhouse, we’re true partners—trusted enough that many clients return when launching their next venture, like our GetReal team. That trust fuels candid conversations, smart risks, and steady navigation through the unpredictable twists of startup launches.
Our clients know we provide the highest level of service and best recommendations to achieve agreed-upon goals, which in this case were to launch GetReal with authority, deepen thought leadership, and build brand awareness through demand generation with full-funnel support.
We took advantage of multiple content avenues to generate maximum launch buzz around an important funding milestone – a $17.5 million Series A round led by Forgepoint Capital to support product innovation for the authentication and verification of digital content, using it to tell the big picture story about who GetReal is, why what they’re doing is so important, and how they differentiate from anything else on the market.
A company’s website and blog are an incredibly important communication hub and setter of first impressions. Inkhouse led the copywriting for GetReal’s beautiful new website and the blog strategy to showcase executive thought leadership. GetReal’s leadership team prioritizes the most important tenant of an executive visibility program: authenticity. They share perspectives they’re uniquely qualified to offer—insightful, empathetic, and educational. When the message resonates, it strengthens brand authority through executive voices.
To lend credibility to GetReal’s story, Inkhouse coordinated a TechCrunch exclusive with veteran journalist Ingrid Lunden, who captured the significance of the launch moment with her feature piece titled, “Has GetReal cracked the code on AI deepfakes? $18M and an impressive client list say yes.”
Launch day kicked off with a coordinated wave of activity: the TechCrunch story dropped alongside the press release, new GetReal website, partner blog posts, and a flurry of social media engagement that continued well beyond the day.
Social media extended the reach of the launch news, with a strategy to leverage all the influential voices in GetReal’s orbit to further amplify it. This LinkedIn post from lead investor Forgepoint Capital creatively showcased how easily realistic deepfakes can be made—underscoring the urgent need for GetReal’s technology. GetReal’s LinkedIn post outperformed the tech industry average by 16%, drew significantly more engagement than competitors, and reached the right people—nearly two-thirds of viewers held CXO, VP, or senior titles.
To continue the rally, the Inkhouse team hit the ground running with widespread media outreach and landed 45 additional pieces of coverage, with notable mentions in Wall Street Journal VC Pro, Fortune Term Sheet, and The Information.
Telling a cohesive story, through multiple channels, voices and vantage points, has put a stake in the ground that GetReal is on the scene and commands respect. The successful launch acts as a springboard from which to continue to build brand awareness, authority and demand for GetReal using integrated strategies.
