“But I had never worked on a single brief before …”
A native of France, Moulédous began her professional journey in a world far removed from the creative intensity of branding. She trained in finance, worked as an electricity broker, and cut her teeth navigating the deregulated energy markets of Europe.
“I wanted to become a trader. That was the goal for as long as I can remember,” she said. But what was once ambition quickly turned into dissonance. “I realised I was struggling. It wasn’t natural to me. I wasn’t sure I could do the work—but more than that, I didn’t like who I had to become to stay in that world.”
So, she stepped away from the path she had worked so hard to build. It was not a detour—it was a decision. One that would slowly, purposefully, lead her to branding. Her first exposure came through volunteer work with alumni associations, hosting events in Paris. That path eventually landed her at a top-tier branding agency, where she was thrown into a high-stakes role.
“As a Corporate Branding Consultant, I was the central contact point on Air France’s branding strategy for my agency. But I had never worked on a single brief before.”
“I found something—even if I didn’t have a name for it yet.”
“Four days after I joined, I was leading full-day meetings with the Air France team,” Moulédous recalled. “The team trained me overnight, every day, until I sounded like I had always been in this ecosystem. That’s when I knew I had found something I was good at—even if I didn’t have a name for it yet.”
That something turned out to be brand strategy—not surface-level design, but the strategic foundation of how a business is perceived, understood, and operated. “That experience sharpened my thinking in business strategy—and that naturally led to brand, because branding, when done right, is just good business sense.”
< From discovering brand strategy in the boardrooms of Air France to nurturing founders in today’s startup trenches, Vanessa Moulédous brings the same sharp thinking and deep care—helping early-stage teams align who they are with how they grow.
“Branding, when done right, is just good business sense.”
After Paris, a short-term move to Sydney—following her husband’s career—sparked what would become a global immersion in entrepreneurship and brand-building.
“In Sydney, I launched my first entrepreneurial venture—a community and job marketplace for multicultural creatives. Then I went back to Paris for three months and expanded the venture there, followed by a year in Denmark where I continued growing it. I returned to Paris for three more years to deepen the work and also launched a second venture—an e-commerce platform for boys’ fashion,” she shared.
Eventually, she returned to Sydney and moved client-side, becoming Head of Brand at an Australian local government, where she led the creation of a city brand. With every relocation, Moulédous embraced the change. “I’ve always been comfortable following my husband’s moves for work—as long as I could find something meaningful and unique to build at each port.”
“In Malaysia, I want to work with startup founders—my true energy.”
After Sydney, she moved to Malaysia, where she expanded into mentoring and facilitating entrepreneurship programmes—not just in branding, but in business-building itself, particularly with early-stage startups.
“In Malaysia, I want to work with startup founding members—my true energy. But they weren’t mature enough to do branding the way I used to with MNCs. That’s when I decided to live among them and become one of them,” said Moulédous.
“I started North one year after my first facilitation role in Nexea’s Entrepreneur Programme,” she shared. Nexea is a venture capital firm, angel investor network, and startup accelerator.
“Startups don’t have legacy systems or history to fall back on…”
Through her consultancy, North, Moulédous helps founders define their internal compass and build businesses that consistently move in that direction. She doesn’t apply brand theory from afar. Instead, she embeds herself in the trenches—co-living founders’ challenges, speaking their operational language, and building systems that work in high-friction environments.
“Startups don’t have legacy systems or history to fall back on. They have a person, a vision, and a small team betting on both. That’s why the founder’s brand and the company’s brand are one and the same in the early stages.” This clarity is what she codifies through her Minimum Viable Brand (MVB), a concept she’s now formalising into a complete system at North Lab, her upcoming research unit.
The MVB is about operationalising vision—giving startups the structure to stay aligned and make confident decisions, always keeping the founder’s vision as the true north during the early-stage to test the vision market fit. “If the founder’s vision for the business isn’t tangible,” she cautioned, “the business risks losing its direction—and its soul—with every new hire.
And so she insists, write to document. From how founders (and founding teams) make decisions, to how they respond to customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction, to what happens when a product fails—these moments matter.
“They’re not just about communication,” she explained. “Your reactions give rise to your operational frameworks. They give you clarity about who you are. They differentiate you. They protect alignment—enabling scale and growth, helping you build a venture that endures.”
“… people want to be seen not just for what they do, but for who they are.”
True to her belief in brand clarity through self-knowledge, Moulédous launched a podcast Proust My Startup. Adapted from questions used in a century-old parlour game in France, the show invites founders to explore deeply personal questions.
“The questions are confronting,” she admitted. “So far everyone has answered because people want to be seen not just for what they do, but for who they are. That’s how businesses stay anchored in the long run.”
For Moulédous, this is what branding is truly about, to reveal what’s already true and structuring it so others can follow.
“I want to be with the people who are building something from nothing…”
Over the next year, Moulédous has a clear roadmap in motion. She plans to open North Lab, the research unit of North, where she will modelise her Minimum Viable Brand framework tailored specifically for startups. Alongside this, she is launching collective branding workshops designed to equip startup founders with practical tools to embed brand thinking into their early-stage operations.
She wants her podcast to grow into what she envisions as an iconic platform for reflection and connection within the Malaysian startup ecosystem. And she is scaling North from a solopreneur venture into a boutique consulting firm—built to serve founders and early-stage teams with depth and precision.
“I want to be with the people who are building something from nothing. I want to help them discover who they are, where they want to go, and the people they want to bring along—so they can build an enterprise with a foundation that lasts through generations.”
More on North at norththisway.com
