Staying true to your roots can help your brand stand out – but is that always a good thing?
Minority founders often face a paradox: the very authenticity that could differentiate their brand in a crowded marketplace might also limit its appeal. Although 86 percent of consumers say that authenticity influences their purchasing decisions, what happens when “being authentic” means being seen as too out-of-the-box to achieve mainstream success?
Authenticity is typically understood as acting in ways that align with one’s personal values. For founders from underrepresented groups, however, enacting authenticity can be double-edged: it may differentiate their brand and help them connect with niche audiences, but it can also trigger “othering” (being perceived as too foreign or different) and create distance from mainstream markets.
To explore this tension, we (Thom Eng and Angela Zhou) spoke with 10 Asian American and Canadian entrepreneurs and investors during the 2025 INSEAD Summer Start-Up Tour. The founders said that staying true to their cultural heritage and lived experience could be a source of differentiation, but that authenticity often had to be adapted to market realities to ensure growth and success.
Three recurring challenges – and learning opportunities – emerged from these dialogues.
- Authenticity has market limits
Blindly pursuing authenticity is a risky strategy because it can collide with consumer preferences and market economics. As Ian Weng (MBA’21J), co-founder of Spatula Foods, reflected: “The further you get from your core customer base, the less they care about authenticity.”
Launched during the Covid-19 pandemic, Spatula Foods delivers gourmet, flash-frozen meals crafted by award-winning local chefs. The company initially focused on providing culturally authentic, high-quality dishes. But as it scaled, responding to consumer preferences for convenience and familiarity often outweighed the aim for perfect cultural reproduction.
The key insight? Authenticity only scales in mature product categories that consumers are familiar with. For well-established product categories, such as chilli crisp, authenticity can deepen differentiation; for new categories, familiarity is often a prerequisite for growing the business. - Authenticity is personal, not traditional
Many founders conflate authenticity with fidelity to cultural tradition. But our interviews revealed another perspective: authenticity can mean being grounded in founders’ unique lived experience.
Take Wild Mannered, a ready-to-drink soju cocktail brand founded by childhood best friends Michael Gu and Perry Ya. When launching the business, they deliberately avoided leading with traditional Asian flavours, such as lychee or yuzu. “We needed to sell soju as a concept first,” Gu explained. “Asian flavours create an amazing sense of nostalgia for a customer demographic that grew up with them, but would be another novel taste that you’d have to sell to a consumer who’s unfamiliar.”
Gu and Ya positioned the product around communal experiences – think karaoke sessions and late-night meals with friends – that felt authentic to their lives as third-culture kids. This helped them appeal not just to Asian Americans, but to other consumers as well.
The most resonant identity-led brands don’t define authenticity based on cultural stereotypes. Instead, they draw on their founders’ lived experience to create a relatable yet differentiated offering that connects with consumers regardless of their background. - Authenticity is important, but so is framing
Even if cultural authenticity is an important facet of your brand, it doesn’t necessarily have to be foregrounded in your market positioning or messaging. Gamsa Foods, inspired by the Korean comfort dishes that founder Sarah Hwang grew up eating, faced this dilemma with its Korean-influenced breakfast product.
Consumer testing revealed that labelling the product as congee or juk (porridge in Korean) created hesitation, while calling it “savoury oatmeal” unlocked instant familiarity with American consumers. The formulation didn’t change, but the framing did. This helped Gamsa Foods remove the potential language barrier or unfamiliarity associated with its branding, while keeping its cultural intent intact.
As Hwang put it: “This is not an authentic Korean product – it is a uniquely Korean American product that represents the immigrant experience. You’re constantly experimenting with ingredients you have access to.”
Indeed, cultural heritage can remain central to your product without being your primary market message. Sometimes, broader impact means letting your heritage inform the product while leading with universal accessibility.
The authenticity advantage
Authenticity is a strategic tool that, when used thoughtfully, can build cultural resonance in tandem with scaling commercially. The most successful founders resisted the false binary of “authentic vs. diluted” and instead embraced authenticity as adaptive.
Rather than choosing between staying true to their cultural heritage and scaling their business, these founders reframed identity as an evolving advantage. By anchoring their brands in familiarity, leveraging their lived experience and adjusting their messaging over time in response to consumer behaviour and market conditions, minority founders can turn the complexity of their backgrounds into something that brands with less personal appeal cannot easily replicate.
