From Magazines to Pitch Decks: Building a VC Brand with Lessons from Legacy Media

Welcome to the eighth edition of Overlap’s newsletter!

It’s been another productive month of meetings and forward momentum. We had a great time reconnecting in person with our friends in the Bay Area (special thanks to Root Ventures for hosting us for a fun dinner!). We also debuted our new website and logo—a collaboration with the Madrid- and Mexico City–based creative agency BAMF—and have our first podcast interview ready to share in a few weeks.

As mentioned last month, and given that our network has been invaluable to the growth of our business, we’re adding a call to action in each edition of this newsletter. This one is about building out a key aspect of Overlap’s diligence process: our bench of best-in-class technical advisors. If you are, or know any, well-established executives with deep technical expertise who are open to consulting in the frontier tech industries Overlap is focused on—Climate, Energy, Life Sciences, Materials Science, Robotics, and/or Space—we’d love to connect. Please reach out to myself or Gauri.

Now I’ll turn it over to the author of this month’s blog post: Overlap’s Director of Content + Communications, Irene Edwards.

Hi, I’m Irene, and I lead content and comms at Overlap. True story: My path to this job began when someone sent me this newsletter ???Even though I had never worked in Venture or frontier tech, I was immediately drawn to this brand-new firm and its mission—articulated in a way that felt both ambitious and approachable. That same day, I wrote to a mutual contact and asked for an introduction to Justin. Consider this my testimonial to the power of content in recruiting talent to your organization.

Once upon a time, I was a magazine editor during the waning heyday of glossy print publications. Fresh out of Northwestern’s journalism school, I became an editorial assistant at Condé Nast: answering phones, fetching my boss’s dry cleaning, and tallying up those massive expense accounts (The Devil Wears Prada come to life!). Throughout my career I bounced between New York and San Francisco, working at corporate publishing titans and scrappy digital startups, until eventually I became an editor-in-chief. When the magazine industry fell off a cliff, I moved to Europe to reinvent myself—and decided to use the skills I’d learned from 20 years in media to create value for mission-oriented organizations.

But what kind of value do those “soft skills” add to a world of funding rounds and financial returns? Put simply, does content really matter all that much in Venture Capital?

The truth is that even the most clear-eyed investment decisions are influenced by emotion. And when it comes to Venture, network and reputation are inextricably linked to market differentiation and deal flow. What separates a so-called “Tier 1” firm from a Tier 2 is not just returns, but also public perception—and content is vital to building this brand value.

“For VCs, having a clear message about what you will and will not do, how you provide real venture assistance, and how you approach bold visions is key to winning these types of opportunities. And they matter tremendously for fund returns.”

—Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures (“How Venture Capitalists Make Decisions,” **Harvard Business Review)

Good content amplifies your investment thesis and captures your approach to working with founders. The best of the Venture ecosystem have long been executing on this strategy—see First Round Review’s content hub, Ideas from Obvious Ventures, and Founders Fund’s Anatomy of Next.

In fact, one of the challenges of VC content is that it’s already quite crowded at this party. There are podcasts aplenty and more Substacks than you can shake a stick at. Yet the same pitfalls keep surfacing: a failure to communicate complex concepts with clarity; a reliance on buzzwords and jargon; an appetite for self-promotion.

So why does magazine journalism—a craft whose golden age came and went in the 20th century—have any relevance to the innovation economy today? In an era of generative AI, why should we care about an industry with such antiquated frameworks? (Literally, we used to make major decisions by picking 10 random people off a list and paying them $100 each to answer questions in front of a one-way mirror.)

The answer lies precisely in this emphasis on humanity. Great editors built their careers on the age-old art of story and the ability to distill, shape, and interpret the culture around us. It’s content curation as intimate conversation: a package of images, words, and ideas put together by real people and served up with creativity and joy.

In its most basic and authentic form, a magazine is about humans talking to other humans and establishing a reciprocal trust that machine learning hasn’t yet managed to simulate. (At press time, at least; staying tuned for further developments from Sam Altman, et al.)

All of which is to say that my former career in media has given me a wealth of material for building Overlap’s brand. Here are 5 things I’ve learned from editing magazines that make content truly count in Venture Capital.

1. Start from an authentic place of Audience First.

“People have things that they either care about or don’t—and you’re not going to change that.” —Lulu Cheng Meservey, communications executive and author of the newsletter Flack

Back in the pre-algorithm era, a magazine’s success depended on its editors’ ability to intuit how its readers would want to experience the zeitgeist—months before it actually happened. They did it by being authentically Audience First. And although it sounds obvious, creating content from this mindset is much rarer than you think.

Operating from a place of Audience First begins with cultivating a genuine enjoyment of the people you're trying to reach, and not being merely extractive or transactional about your goals. It means respecting their worldview even as you strategize about how to influence it. As Lulu Cheng Meservey, Substack’s former head of comms, says in this podcast interview with Lenny Rachitsky: “There [are] people who are just not your natural audience, and you should know that and not waste your time. But if your natural audience cares about X and you're offering Y, then it's your job… to create the bridge from X to Y.”

One particular magazine can teach a masterclass in being Audience First: the surprisingly excellent Teen Vogue.

That’s right, I said Teen Vogue. Not a typo.

The brand has evolved with its readers over the years, producing content that runs the gamut from playful and breezy to serious and informative. Bite-size snippets on K-pop beauty finds are juxtaposed with well-reported features on politics, identity, and social justice. The magazine connects directly to its core demographic while also providing a window into its worldview—nailing the “concentric circles framework of audiences” that Cheng Meservey refers to in the podcast episode.

In Venture Capital, being Audience First stems from this same desire to interact with your community and provide them with something of value. Making money may be the ultimate goal, but your motive for creating content has to start from something purer. Voyager VC’s Letter (”The Decade of 1,000-Year Floods”) is a perfect example; the essay is a slow-burn, compelling read, building a palpable sense of climate urgency in a tone of elegant restraint.

On a wholly different yet equally Audience-First side of the spectrum lies the Twitter account @machinepix from Kane Hsieh at Root Ventures. Scroll through the short video clips of machines and everyday engineering marvels—rebar benders and bagel conveyors, pile drivers and bulk pencil sharpeners—and you’ll find yourself fascinated and soothed. The feed is a direct expression of Root’s DNA. Only a deeply technical firm “built by engineers, for engineers, from the ground up” would do something like this for the sheer delight of geeking out with their hardware-loving followers.

2. Embrace the storytelling archetype.

“All the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes.” —Carl Jung, “The Structure of the Psyche”

Memorable stories tap into the emotions in our collective subconscious. We’re hardwired to identify with these narratives—they speak to the patterns that make up a human life. These same storytelling archetypes can serve as an effective way to structure your content in Venture Capital.

Let’s take The Quest, one of the classic narrative arcs. A protagonist sets out on a journey, navigates a series of challenges, and ultimately emerges transformed. One recent magazine feature with a Quest at its heart is this article about CEO and activist Martine Rothblatt: “The Entrepreneur Dreaming of a Factory of Unlimited Organs,” MIT Technology Review.

The Quest is a natural fit for a pitch deck. Think of your team as Heroes with a unique set of skills, embarking on an epic journey to achieve a goal. Frame your company thesis as a Call to Adventure and your investment strategy as the Key that unlocks success in the saga ahead.

Then there’s The Mystery: a complex narrative or intricate puzzle that a protagonist—or even the audience!—must solve. Sui generis among magazine articles is this real-time interactive adventure from Wired: “Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened.”

The Mystery is all about creating intrigue and suspense. It involves piecing together clues and connecting multiple sources of information to reveal a hidden truth. In Venture, this principle can be applied to infographics and data analysis—spreadsheets can tell a riveting story! By leading the audience along as you look for patterns and surface trends, a firm can build a sense of excitement around investment opportunities.

The next time you’re creating a piece of stakeholder-facing material, choose a storytelling archetype and structure the content flow accordingly. Use section headers and slide titles to let the narrative arc unfold. For an overview of the most popular themes, plus specific prompts to get started, check out the digital version of Storyteller Tactics from Pip Decks here.

3. Find smart ways to package and share information.

*"I was the girl next door, the woman down the street, a teacher. I was somebody who was inspired and inspiring."?—Martha Stewart on her namesake publication,* Martha Stewart Living

Service journalism has been a staple of periodicals for more than a century. Titles like Consumer Reports, Cook’s Illustrated, and Martha Stewart Living became household names for the clear, actionable advice that generations of subscribers came to depend on—delivered in language that felt inclusive, not intimidating.

Media legend Adam Moss took a different approach. As Editor-in-Chief of New York magazine, Moss made the transmission of useful information seem cool. He revolutionized service journalism with sections like The Strategist, a clever content mashup—street maps, shopping roundups, people profiles, trivia—packaged to feel personal and digestible.

(Illustrations for The Strategist by Luis Mazón)

There’s a similar grab-bag sensibility to some of the Notion wikis popping up as homegrown resource material in the startup / VC landscape. It’s an effective, stripped-down way to organize and share information with a point of view. (At Overlap, we’re pretty big fans of Notion ourselves: our Chief of Staff, Gauri Jaswal, designed and built our Relationship Management Database on it, and I can honestly say it’s one of the most enviable tools I’ve seen.)

Notion resources I’ve enjoyed referencing include The VC Recruiting Guide by Justine Moore (a16z Investment Partner and co-author of the Accelerated newsletter), which shepherds those new to Venture through the basics of getting started in the industry.

And this Notion table by Morgan Mahlock and James Le—a primer on all things data—is simply awesome to behold.

Anyone else trying a new way to package and share service information for external audiences? We’d love to see what you’re using—drop us a link in the comments.

4. Balance predictability and risk.

“It would be a huge mistake for Vogue to always be completely tasteful. I think it’s very important for us to rock the boat.” —Anna Wintour

As Editor-in-Chief of Vogue for more than three decades, and now the Global Editorial Director of Condé Nast, Anna Wintour has steered the company through major cultural shifts—at times more seamlessly than others. In magazines, there’s no better authority to weigh in on balancing predictability and risk as part of your creative strategy.

Famously forward-looking and not prone to nostalgia, Wintour loves to play with the conventions of good taste. (Cue the December 2020 cover of Vogue featuring pop star Harry Styles in a floor-length Gucci ballgown, which had conservative pundits up in arms.) As she can attest, it’s about delivering what your audience depends on, while constantly experimenting at the edges to remain relevant and fresh.

The same concept applies to content in Venture Capital. There’s a certain amount of structure and predictability inherent to the work, particularly where legal disclaimers are involved—no one wants to inject too much razzle-dazzle in a Private Placement Memorandum. But where can you bring out your brand persona along the standard touchpoints of the communications cycle? What creative risk can you take within the expected parameters? Witness Lux Capital co-founder Josh Wolfe, who turns an LP update into an extended meditation on geopolitics and emerging technologies, and it’s no wonder that Lux’s investor relations approach has become the envy of most of the ecosystem:

Here at Overlap, we’re thinking about ways to reinvent the webinar experience—capitalizing on Justin’s gift for explaining complex financial structures. How might we make information about frontier tech financing more accessible to founders and potential investors? Reach out if you’d like to collaborate on creative platform or distribution concepts ??

5. Build the right storytelling ecosystem.

“How do you change the story? You change the storyteller.” —Noel Kok, National Geographic Explorer and filmmaker

The decline of print media came with a silver lining: the rise of rich new ways to tell a story across platforms. The absolute master at this? National Geographic. Now majority-owned by Disney, the 135-year-old brand has built a powerful storytelling ecosystem around its mission to explore the world and its wonders. A September 2022 report by Axios found that National Geographic had the largest social following among media publishers, with more than 340 million followers across six platforms.

What does a storytelling ecosystem look like in Venture? It means creating a cohesive narrative across multiple channels. Think about the mediums your audiences are already on, and how the content you’re putting out on these mediums builds the case for your thesis. Then optimize your message for the strengths of each channel and supercharge your DIY distribution engine. Maybe you’re publishing on Substack and LinkedIn—are you promoting on Substack Notes or experimenting with LinkedIn Creator Tools?

Be focused, not diffuse; concentrate on a few key platforms that will have the most impact on your business goals. Look for the power users on those platforms and reach out, comment, and exchange ideas. Use your storytelling efforts to enable and empower your own corner of the Venture ecosystem.

While print may no longer be a power industry, the factors that made it so culturally dominant have ongoing benefits today. Whether you're making a magazine, podcast, or pitch deck, the crux of good content remains the same: Know your audience and care deeply about making their lives better. See your stakeholders as human beings, not just a means to a business end. Make decisions guided by instinct and empathy as well as data. Do it for the passion, not the KPIs.

Here’s the biggest link between magazines and Venture: at the end of the day, both are in the business of earning trust and building connections. And there’s still nothing more powerful than human-generated content to connect you with the people who matter most.