Six years in, CUCollaborate is rebranding

D.C.’s CUCollaborate is kicking off the new year with a company rebrand that includes a new logo, pricing model and focus.

Founded in 2014, CUCollaborate is a consulting, software development and digital marketing company with a mission to help credit unions grow via tech products and strategies. The company, based in WeWork’s M Street SE location near the Navy Yard, currently has around 30 employees, more than half of which were hired in 2019 alone (including a new COO, Chris Tissue, in November).

“While credit unions exist in other countries, they are most predominant in the U.S. and have always been known as a more local and personal banking experience,” said Lucas McCanna, who joined the company as director of marketing in September. “Now they are starting to compete with banks on a larger scale and could become the U.S.’s predominant financial institution and we want to provide them the tools to do that.”

McCanna told Technical.ly that since CUCollaborate’s inception, the company hasn’t taken any outside investments and continues to grow based on profit. (For more on how the bootstrapped fintech company got started, check out this guest post from CUCollaborate founder and CEO Sam Brownell.)

“We currently work with over 40 credit unions that range in size and charter type. As we work with these credit unions, there are common pain points they experience. Those are the problems that we aim to solve,” Brownell said in a statement about the rebrand. “What differentiates us is how our proprietary software allows us to interpret data in order to provide the best possible results.”

CUCollaborate shared the rebrand news in a blog post on Jan. 2. Though it’s official now, the company first teased the rebrand last October in a tweet:

New branding concept pic.twitter.com/pA4qZto0B6

— CUCollaborate (@cucollaborate) October 12, 2019

CUCollaborate said in a press release that this new branding represents its “evolution into a full-service growth company for credit unions.” This decision came after CUCollaborate added new products and services like branch strategy and ad targeting to its offerings last year.

With the rebrand, McCanna said the company has also changed its focus and pricing model in 2020.

“We are putting more of an emphasis on our software products that complement the consulting side of our business,” he said. “As we look to become more full service, we expect to roll out two [to] three new software products this year.”

Here’s the new logo:

CoCollaborate’s rebranded logo as of 2020. (Photo via CuCollaborate’s website)

“The new logo represents the relationship between software, consulting and marketing as the three pillars underpinning our client’s growth,” McCanna said. “We chose the colors to represent a strong American brand.”

The company also has plans to expand its offerings further this year to better align with the rebrand.

“As we add more products we have added more staff as well,” McCanna said. “We have two new consultants that have joined us in the new year and we will be looking to expand our sales team.