What we've learned from working with more than a dozen VC firms in the past year.

We began work with our first investment industry client a few months before the pandemic shut the world down. That was Accel (we like to start big), and through a full brand-to-build project with them, we got to dive straight into the deep end of learning about the venture capital and investment world.?

A handful of significant projects later and almost five years later, we still work with Accel, but we’ve picked up a more than a dozen other VC, PE, and Growth investing clients – and all the insight we need to know just how different all those companies really are.?

I won’t say we have a niche. At EA, we’re pretty diversified and work in a bunch of different industries. But I will say there are benefits to cultivating a focus in one sector, and some excellent realizations have come out of cultivating a focus in this particular one.

There’s a lot of strong personalities out there. Your PM game must be on point.

Making great stuff is a partnership more than an individual activity. We can’t work well without working together with our clients. In VC and other investment branches, the hierarchy of firm structure tends to complicate making sure that everyone who needs to be heard is heard and everyone who needs to approve a decision is informed to the right degree at the right time. If you’ve ever worked on a large corporate team or with an enterprise client, this catch-22 will be familiar.

Fortunately, we consider project management a core service at EA rather than a sidecar hooked up to our project work. And from working with clients like these – with both strong opinions and a strict hierarchy that doesn’t always allow access to the top – our teams have learned the art and science of asking great questions, offering more than detailed recommendations, and, most importantly, knowing when to flex and shift how we engage when the time is right.

Here are five more things we learned from working with 11 VCs in 2023.?

The learning curve in VC is steep, but once you get there, starting up projects gets faster and faster.

West Coast VCs think very differently than East Coast PEs. Growth investors don’t work with founders; they work with business owners. And organic SEO…it’s not much of anything most boutique investment firms care about. All this insight gathered over a dozen projects has allowed us to ramp up at lightning speed and work efficiently from start to finish.?

We recently launched complete brand-to-build projects for both in the first two months of 2024. They’re both growth equity firms – one West Coast, one East – who have a lot in common but couldn’t be more different in many ways.

There are a couple of trends VC firms will want to jump on.

We’ve seen more requests for two things from investment firms in the past few months than anything else:?

1. Podcasts and podcast landing pages. Everyone’s making engaging content a priority.
2. Portals. LPs and current partners are coming into focus as audiences that need some love (and a better experience than an off-the-shelf database).

The pattern recognition of working within a single industry pays off in other ways, too. Here’s our list of 10 Things the Best VC Websites Have in Common, things firms should consider when starting a brand or web design project.?

So, what’s your niche (or a niche in which you do loads of work)? What’s made your work better for narrowing in?