CWC: Comms in VC

Looking back, what three moments in your career mattered the most???

I'm the rare person who knew they wanted to do communications even in college. At first, I thought I wanted to be a journalist because I'm a decent writer. ]I looked at the salary tables and thought to myself, hmm, I'm not so sure. I'm also a persuasive communicator. A counselor said to me you could look at communications, and the more I learned about the industry, the more interested I became and felt that I would be a good fit for this career. So, I majored, ultimately in communications with a minor in English, and set out into the world wanting to do this work, not even necessarily really knowing what it was about beyond what they teach you in school which is purely theoretical.?

Another big turning point for me in my career was I was working on Colgate and beauty products for Johnson & Johnson. While I was enjoying that, on some level, there's always been a part of me that wants to be at the cutting edge and explore. And I'm not someone who necessarily always enjoys doing the same thing over and over again. I like starting at the beginning of things. An old boss reached out to me when he found out that I was getting out of beauty PR, and suggested I come join him at an agency where I ended up working on Amazon's books, music and DVD store, Fresh Direct, 1-800-Flowers, which doesn't sound innovative now and technical, but back then that was cutting-edge tech. I really felt like I was home when I was working on technology companies, because there was always something new to learn. I was surrounded by these inspiring people, whether they were founders or business unit owners within larger companies, and I felt like I had really found something that made me happy.?

A third big turning point for me, in my career, is that I now get to work in venture which, I feel like I've seen the world from a bunch of different angles. I've worked on the media side, I've worked on the startup side, I've worked on the agency side, and now getting to work in venture, for me, really feels like I've completed this cycle of understanding this industry from a bunch of different vantage points.??

What's unique in doing comms and marketing in venture???

There are a few different types of marketing roles within venture firms. There's the role of representing the firm and therefore its partners, and getting them out there in the world, to drive deal flow and drive greater brand perception of the firm.??

Then there's the side of the business that's helping the portfolio companies tell their stories and succeed. In practice this means helping? companies inside your firm’s portfolio grow in their respective industries. One thing that's been fun about my last couple of roles has been that I get to do both, and I draw a lot of energy from each of those, though they all they both also obviously have their challenges. So, the portfolio side is sort of like running a mini agency within the firm. Our “clients” so to speak are both the firm and its partners and our portfolio of hundreds of companies.?

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And working with that many portfolio companies, how do you dig in on all those different verticals???

We're fortunate in that we work with the partners to triage and understand where different companies need super hands-on help versus advice every quarter, and we reset those priorities. One of the things that's most fun about my job is the constant learning. It’s a huge benefit to have the partners and the associates and the principals on the investing side that we do at BCV, because they do an incredibly deep dive into these companies before we write a check, and I get to look at all of their research and their thoughts before going into these conversations.??

The other big thing that I do is I'll read through recent press coverage on the topic area that's adjacent to that business so that I understand this macro trend environment that we're operating in. Connecting the startup founders to the world at large is often one of the best jobs we can do as communicators because founders are often very understandably focused on, here's what I'm building, here's what I'm doing that they can forget to look at how their solution connects to the trends going on around them.?

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What’s your view on the current media relations situation at this moment in time???

There are a couple trends I'm noticing, and one I think is very visible on social media but is this idea that we are filtering your information through the media isn't going to lead to a good result, and you should just constantly be putting yourself out there on your own channels.??

Within that, there is a kernel of truth, which is that content marketing and social media marketing should be a healthy part of your diet, and if you're just doing things the old-fashioned way, where you're reaching out to people through traditional PR channels, you're only doing part of the job. But I'm also not a “go direct” zealot, like those who are saying you should only do content. It’s a flywheel and content and speaking and podcasts and social feed traditional media, and around and around we go. The workload for comms has increased because we simply have more channels that we need to do well in order to succeed.??

More people are coming to us now and saying, why even why pitch the press at all? Let's just do a blog post. That works really well if you have a built-in audience already, and have already been incredibly successful in your career. That’s a much more difficult strategy and longer road for most people, and you need to supplement that with other ways to get attention in the interim. At its core, this trend is driven by a lot of mistrust in media, and having worked on the media side, I think certainly mistakes are made, but nobody I had encountered has ill intentions that that sometimes folks ascribe to journalists, where they're deliberately getting things wrong, or they have some agenda. That's never been my experience.?

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What about trends around comms/PR for startups in particular???

I'm getting more companies coming to me saying, I want to wait to announce our round, and I want to remain stealth longer, because there's this advice around that they’re hearing they should wait until they have big customers to announce. VCs and other folks are telling founders to wait until you have all these wins in order to put yourself out there to create this stronger opening in the war of perception. People are also unreasonably worried about competition.? That’s often overblown. In my opinion, your competitors already know you exist in all likelihood, if they're competing with you head-to-head in the marketplace. I don't know that you're buying yourself a bunch more time by staying quiet, and in fact, you may be slowing your growth trajectory because people aren't hearing about you, and they don't know that you exist in order to purchase your product. You don't look trustworthy. Talent, customers and future investors are harder to acquire in that situation. The momentum reason is more interesting to me. We do a lot of debating around that with startup founders to time that announcement correctly, since we work with companies at the absolute earliest stages, in many cases,?

I have read some interviews that you've done and other coverage around you, and I loved in one, I think it was Axios that you said that you think comms professionals are allowed to be filled with real opinions and have more personality these days. I'd love to kind of double click on that and what you meant by that, and where you're seeing that come up??

There’s been a rise of comms influencers and more people putting out their own content and their own take on the comms industry. I'm so happy to see it, because at least early in my career, comms people were to be seen and not heard, at least publicly. Internally, you're welcome and encouraged to have an opinion, but you're not really going to be the voice of the company, so to speak, externally.? You're more of a handler for the executives who speak on behalf of the company.??

And it's been interesting to see people like Lulu Cheng Meservey , for example, who puts herself out there quite a bit more as the voice of the companies that she represents. And does so, I think very effectively, as a fierce advocate for them. There are a lot more people who may not advocate on behalf of the company but are advocating on behalf of the work that they do. I tend to put myself in that bucket a little bit.??

But it's been nice to see this proliferation of comms people talking about the work that we do and building audiences. So often, I think founders are looking at us going you're telling me how to build an audience and tell a story, but you haven't done it for yourself. You don't have a public facing presence or thought leadership or opinions that are out there.

And I've learned a lot from putting myself out there in that context. I've learned a lot about what works what doesn't. I feel like some of my stuff that I thought would do really well has flopped, and some of the stuff that I thought was a throwaway has done really well. And so, it's? trial and error. You learn things differently when you learn them hands on versus advising, and I think it's made me a better professional.?

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What would you say are some leadership tenets, or maybe just kind of comms principles that you carry with you in your role???

I consider myself as much a brand person now as a comms person. In fact, I probably spend more of my time on brand work than comms in my current role, and those two things are destined to be together.

I've worked for companies where comms is ts own silo, separate from brand and then you're speaking out two different sides of your mouth, in many cases, because comms has to operate at a faster pace than brand can change and pivot. The more you can align those within organizations, the more you can have a unified message and not split the messages across different channels.??

Those disciplines really belong together, and are incredibly strategic, not reactive. I work a lot with founders who are very linear thinkers and product oriented people. We like to spend a lot of time helping them with messaging and positioning to take it above and beyond product marketing. Don’t get me wrong, product marketing is a worthwhile effort, but I think without a broader, more inspiring message layered across the top of that, it's difficult to get people to really care, and it's difficult to tell a story that ultimately becomes sticks with people.??

Amazon could have been a bookstore, but it became something much bigger. It became The Everything Store. It became the most convenient way to get anything. And that's a much more exciting vision to believe in. Another example is Airbnb being about belonging, not about renting a room in somebody's house. I think finding those bigger ideas to believe in and inspire both your team and your customers to be a part of your movement is increasingly our jobs, and a really fun part of our jobs.?

If you were looking back when you started out, what would you suggest to folks starting out right now, would you suggest they get an agency or in house role??

I wish there was a really formulaic path. When I was starting out, working for an agency was a great fit for me, because it gave me exposure to a bunch of different industries, until I found things that I liked and a bunch of different characteristics of different companies that I still draw on. Sometimes when I think back, oh, you know, remember this client who did things this way, maybe that's a good fit for this company. That's one great thing about agency life, you just get a lot of exposure to a lot of different strategies and types of people and types of industries while you're finding your footing and figuring out where you want to specialize. You know, that door swings both ways. I've seen senior comms folks who maybe hadn't done an agency in 15 years going back to agency life now, because it is appealing that you get a lot of variety, and your expertise is highly valued. I also think we’re seeing comms people come from other disciplines as well. I've seen a few marketers kind of pivot to comms, and comms pivot to marketing. We live in a world now that's less prescriptive.?

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??QUICKFIRE???

Coffee, mocktail, or cocktail???

Chai latte. I like a spicy beverage!??

?What gets you out of bed every day??

Learning something new and interacting with people who are excited about what they're building.?

Your favorite publication to read these days??

Well, I always am a ‘ride or die’ for The Information having worked there. But I also I love to read cooking magazines and travel magazines.?

How would friends and family describe you???

Energetic, zany, driven.???

Favorite season??

Summer.??

Someone you look up to???

I really looked up to my dad. He's gone now, but he was an incredible communicator. He worked solving hunger issues for his whole career. So, he really found purpose and was ultimately a lobbyist for the food banks in our country. I really looked up to him. He was purposeful and very effective.??

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