Data-driven VC #12: Personal branding 101 (+LinkedIn & Twitter hacks)
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The future of VC is augmented. It needs data-driven approaches as much as it needs human components. While the majority of this newsletter has been focused on the data-centered world, the last episode was centered around the human aspects of VC. More specifically, the need for great social skills, people judgment and a superior firm as well as a personal brand for modern investors. As more than 80 readers asked for a deep-dive piece on how to approach the topic āpersonal and firm brandingā, I summarize my most important learnings, frameworks and social media hacks below. And yes, they apply for non-VCs too ;)
āA VC fund needs a strong inbound strategy and this explains the rise of bat signals from venture funds ā blogs, podcasts, newsletters by funds and VC investorsā by Sajith Pai in his āNarrative Capitalā post here
Interrelation between firm brand and personal brand
A VC/firm brand and the personal brands of the investors/employees within a VC/firm are interrelated. Brand evolvement follows a cycle where initially the firm brand becomes the sum of the individual personal brands of the founders and early employees. Hereof, it oftentimes grows in parallel and on the back of the achievements of the individuals within a firm. Firm brands initially evolve and benefit from personal brands and achievements.
At some point, new members will join the team. For senior members, it follows the same logic as above. Their existing personal brand will add to the big picture of the firm brand. More junior/mid-level joiners, however, benefit from the existing firm brand and can leverage it to jump-start the buildup of their own personal brands. New personal brands evolve and benefit from existing firm brands.
Once their personal brands grow out of the shadow of the firm brand, the flow turns around again and the firm brand suddenly starts benefiting from the personal brands. The direction of flow/impact is oftentimes difficult to access and regularly changes, emphasizing the complexity and deeply interwoven relationships between the firm and personal brands.
Kyle Harrison of Contrary Capital summarized this dynamic nicely in an interview āHow do VCs differentiate themselvesā published recently by my friend CJ Gustafson:
Investment firms used to be monolithic brands. Ten years ago, as a founder you might not have really heard of the person, only the brand. And now weāre seeing both firms and people specialize in certain areas. (..) And so post 2020, I now think that being a renegade in venture is becoming more and more about the individual investorās brand vs the mothershipās brand.
Firm brand is still powerful. But the partner brand is perhaps becoming more powerful. If a particular partner is really good, they could very well compete with another firm when it comes to getting into a deal. You might see the perfect person at a lesser known firm successfully competing with an unknown person at Sequoia and win the deal. Thatās new.
Zooming out, I feel that this trend is actually true across many industries already. Firm brands still matter but relatively lose importance compared to individual personal brands. In line with this overarching trend, I will focus the remainder of this episode on proactive personal brand development. Why proactive? Well, a personal brand also passively evolves. Everyone has a personal brand but this article is really about the active build-up.
How to define your personal brand
First off, you need to get a better understanding of your professional ambitions and what your future brand could look like. In general, I prefer to start very broad, collect inspiration and explore potential avenues before then narrowing it down and making well-balanced decisions. I use a two-fold exploration framework to answer some basic questions (inside-out and outside-in) and get a well-rounded overview of where I am, where I want to go and what the road might look like. You can find the framework below with the most important questions and my personal answers to make it more tangible.
1) Inside-out:
Whatās your ultimate goal? It needs to be more than just āestablishing a great personal brandā. More leads? Recruiting? A specific public perception? Relationships to better understand your customers?
My answer: 1) Be perceived as a strong partner to founders and an expert in enterprise software (specifically AI, dev and data) to improve inbound deal flow and win competitive deals, 2) establish relationships to fellow data-driven VCs to learn from and potentially collaborate with each other to eventually make VC as an industry more efficient, effective and inclusive
Who is your target audience? Peers? Customers? Researchers? Students? Founders? Domain experts? Journalists?
My answer: For 1) above itās clearly founders and upstream investors and for 2) itās fellow investors (independent of their stage) and researchers
How can you get in front of your audience? Traditional media? Books? Conferences? Podcasts? Social media?
My answer: Overall a great mix of channels but more specifically for 1) mostly conferences, podcasts and social media (LinkedIn and Twitter) and for 2) content generation either via academic publications (SSRN), Medium, Substack or podcasts and for distribution again social media
Which type of content helps you achieve your goal and works well for the selected channels? Educational? Informational? Entertaining?
My answer: I want to actively contribute to the progress and thought leadership in my areas of interest (AI, dev, data + data-driven VC), so educational (creating my own content) and partially informational (sharing news and content of other people) content seems like a good fit. I think an entertaining style with memes etc. is less suitable for me.
How does your current position and/or previous experience help you to achieve your goal? Are you an expert? Do you know experts? Are your learnings relevant to others? Can you connect people? Do you have access to proprietary information?
My answer: For 1) Iāve worked, researched and invested in enterprise software (specifically a lot in AI, dev and data) and for 2) Iāve done my PhD on ML in VC and built up a dedicated Engineering team within Earlybird which makes me one of the few people in the intersection between Eng/Data and Investment worlds.
2) Outside-in:
Which role models do you admire/are in the position (or related) you want to be in? What do they stand for in your eyes?
My answer: Andrew Chen (@a16z), Bill Gurley (@Benchmark), Christoph Janz (@Point9), Ed Sim (@Boldstart), Fred Wilson (@USV), Jamin Ball (@Altimeter), Tomasz Tunguz (previously @Redpoint), just to name a few VCs that stand for thought leadership in their respective areas
How do they get in front of their audience?
My answer: For all of the above itās at least one content generation platform (such as Medium, Substack and/or their own website) and at least one strong distribution channel (such as Twitter, LinkedIn and/or email lists). Additionally, they are oftentimes active across traditional media, podcasts, Tiktok, Youtube, Instagram etc.
Which type of content do they produce across their different channels? Analyze the content itself (how narrow or broad), the content type, the use of different media types and the publishing cadence.
My answer: Breadth of content seems to be correlated with credibility. The more senior and renowned they are, the broader their content (like Fred Wilson or Bill Gurley speaking about everything distantly related to VC, startups, tech trends and the economy) and in turn the more junior they are, the more narrow their content should be. Although there are exceptions, my conclusion is to start more narrow and then potentially expand with more credibility. On content type, my ārole modelsā above create mostly educational and informational content; little to no entertainment/memes etc. All of them share a high level of activity and regular publishing cadence on their preferred distribution platforms, i.e., 1-5 tweets per day and/or 1-3 LinkedIn posts per week.