In this interview, serial entrepreneur and brand strategist Maja Novak reflects on the lessons learned from building and scaling ventures across coffee, marketing, and consulting. From launching Space Cup, the award-winning Dubai-based coffee brand that redefined design and sustainability in the specialty coffee industry, to founding Seven Solutions Media and her current global consultancy, Vista, Novak has consistently combined creativity with disciplined strategy.
Novak speaks candidly about the pressures founders face to adjust their brand voice, the importance of storytelling in scaling without compromise, and how cultural context shapes expansion. With her cross-border perspective and specialty coffee expertise, she offers a rare blend of practical advice and hard-won insights for women entrepreneurs determined to grow globally without losing what makes their brand unique.
You’ve built and scaled multiple ventures across coffee, marketing, and consulting. When did you first recognize the importance of staying true to your brand identity while pursuing growth?
When I was building Space Cup, I received advice from every corner of the industry about adding new offerings or changing aspects of the business. While well-intentioned, I quickly realized that sustainable growth depended on staying true to our brand identity. From the beginning, we focused on delivering a high-quality, thoughtfully designed experience centered on coffee that was simple, refined, and slightly unconventional.
We elevated industry standards by forming careful partnerships with world-class culinary institutes and paying close attention to quality, design, and service. Tempting as it was to pursue additional revenue streams or diversify beyond our focus, doing so would have diluted the core of what made Space Cup special.
Over time, it became clear that maintaining this discipline and staying authentic to our mission and values was our competitive advantage. It built customer trust, allowed for consistent and sustainable growth, and ultimately positioned Space Cup for a successful acquisition. Recognizing the importance of staying true to our brand while pursuing growth was one of the most valuable lessons I learned as an entrepreneur.
What are some of the most common pressures women founders face to dilute or adjust their brand voice as they scale, and how have you personally navigated those moments?
Over time, I got used to people sending invitations addressed to ‘Mister Novak’ instead of ‘Miss Novak’ for industry meetings, and I loved watching their faces when a woman walked in. It was a subtle reminder that the landscape was still male-dominated, but I took it as an opportunity to show that leadership and expertise aren’t defined by gender. Today, thankfully, we see more women winning national championships, opening roasteries, and starting their own brands, which is incredibly encouraging for the next generation.
In specialty coffee, women are still rare at the top, but the pressures I faced weren’t unique to gender. They were the same challenges any founder encounters. Every decision affects the brand, the product, and the people relying on you. The temptation to chase trends or shortcuts is constant, but I’ve learned that real growth comes from patience, focus, and making rational, compounding decisions. The key is letting results, not perceptions or opinions, speak for themselves. Execution outweighs judgment, always. Over time, those consistent choices build a company and a brand that endure and earn lasting respect in the industry.
With Space Cup, you created a brand that achieved global acclaim while staying rooted in design and sustainability. What specific decisions did you make to ensure growth didn’t compromise authenticity?
With Space Cup, growth never forced us to compromise authenticity because the brand resonated uniquely with customers from day one. From the very beginning, the experience felt different, fresh, and simple in a way that immediately connected with people. We didn’t need to change the core identity; what made the brand distinct was always intact. Adjustments were minor and guided by customer feedback: small observations or suggestions that helped us refine the experience without altering what made it special.
Our minimalist approach and disciplined clarity helped keep the brand recognizable and the experience consistent. We focused on what worked, avoided unnecessary complexity, and evolved incrementally rather than chasing shortcuts or trends. Authenticity wasn’t at risk because we understood the principles defining Space Cup and applied them rigorously. Ultimately, success stemmed from disciplined execution, attentive listening, and thoughtful responses to feedback, enabling the brand to grow organically while remaining true to its core essence.
As a brand strategist, how do you advise founders to differentiate between adapting to market realities and compromising their core values?
The first step is always understanding what’s non-negotiable versus what’s flexible. Your core principles, including your brand identity, values, and vision, define why people choose you; these must remain intact. Everything else can be tested, measured, and adjusted based on real-world evidence. Adaptation involves responding to reality, including customer behavior, feedback, and market signals. Compromise, by contrast, is giving up the elements that make your brand distinctive.
The key is to identify what drives long-term value, then iterate only where changes improve results without touching the brand’s DNA. Keep things simple, rely on measurable outcomes, and observe cause and effect. Small, rational, disciplined decisions compound over time. By protecting your fundamentals while iterating at the edges, you can grow strategically without ever losing authenticity or diluting what makes your brand truly remarkable.
What role does storytelling play in helping a brand scale without losing its original essence?
Storytelling is the operational framework of a brand. It explains why the brand exists and guides every decision the brand makes. It provides a clear lens for teams, shaping product design, service delivery, and customer interactions so actions are aligned and deliberate. Without a story, small choices drift, and scaling becomes a reactive rather than an intentional process.
A narrative also structures how a brand communicates externally. Customers understand patterns, principles, and purpose far more than features or promotions. Storytelling turns complexity into clarity: it defines boundaries for adaptation and signals where changes make sense without undermining what sets the brand apart.
When used effectively, a brand story becomes a multiplier. It ensures consistency at scale, speeds up decision-making, and provides a repeatable framework for growth. Every initiative, partnership, or innovation is filtered through the story, so scaling compounds value instead of creating drift or friction. In short, storytelling is a strategy in motion.
You’ve worked across different markets. How does cultural context influence the balance between authenticity and expansion?
Cultural context is a decisive factor when scaling into new markets. What resonates with one audience may fall flat with another, so expansion requires observation, testing, and adjustment. Authenticity is about preserving the brand’s defining principles while presenting them in ways that fit the local environment.
In practice, this means adapting how the story is told, how experiences are delivered, and which offerings are emphasized, without compromising what makes the brand distinct. Growth in new markets demands both discipline and curiosity: discipline to maintain the core framework, curiosity to understand how it translates across different behaviors and expectations.
Scaling without context leads to drift or wasted effort. Done correctly, it allows the brand to connect meaningfully with diverse audiences, ensuring that growth compounds value rather than diluting it. Cultural awareness transforms expansion into a precise and repeatable process, where every adjustment serves the brand’s strategy rather than undermining it.
For women entrepreneurs in particular, do you think the perception of ambition is judged differently, and how can founders push for growth without being unfairly labeled or pressured?
As a founder, I’ve always focused on what I can influence: the team, the customers, and the decisions that drive growth. I never spent energy worrying about opinions or external commentary. People form views along the way, of course, but those perceptions have never shaped how I run the business. My attention is entirely on execution and building the right team, refining operations, and delivering consistent results.
For women entrepreneurs, I have not personally experienced being judged for my ambition, but I recognize that perceptions can differ across contexts. What matters is centering attention on what we can control, including purposeful choices, consistent action, and measurable outcomes. Ambition shows itself through results, not perception. By staying disciplined, deliberate, and attentive to what truly matters, a company and its brand can grow steadily, sustainably, and authentically. Execution outweighs commentary, and results become the natural measure of success. Ambition is quiet, enduring, and real; it is the framework that transforms intention into meaningful outcomes and shapes work that lasts.
Looking ahead, what is one piece of advice you would give to women founders who want to scale globally but fear losing the identity that made their brand special in the first place?
Looking ahead, my advice for women founders aiming to scale globally is to safeguard the essence that makes their brand unique. Growth can be tempting to chase through trends, partnerships, or shortcuts, but the core values, quality, and relationships that define your brand must remain steadfast.
Successful expansion relies on disciplined systems, transparent processes, and consistent execution. These are the levers that allow you to replicate what works across markets without compromising identity. Focus on decisions within your control: building the right team, refining operations, and delivering meaningful value to your customers. External pressures or assumptions should never dictate strategy.
The most enduring brands expand not by following the crowd, but by staying anchored to their principles. By pairing discipline with clarity of purpose, founders can grow globally while preserving the qualities that made their brand exceptional from the outset, leaving a legacy that resonates long after the next market.
As Novak makes clear, the path to global growth is not about chasing shortcuts or bending to external pressures, but about protecting the values and vision that make a brand special. Her journey from concept to acquisition with Space Cup and beyond underscores that authenticity and discipline are not obstacles to scale, but the very foundation of it. For founders, especially women navigating competitive, male-dominated industries, her story is a reminder that ambition speaks loudest through execution and results. In a world of constant noise and fleeting trends, Novak’s approach highlights the enduring power of clarity, patience, and staying true to a brand’s essence.
