Content Marketing is becoming in a great tool to spread the word, and some Venture Capital firms are doing an amazing job, using some Content Marketing techniques like blogging, make a clinical use of Social platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, video series related to Entrepreneurship and many more things. Do you want to know the list of my favorite VC firms which are doing a great job with Content Marketing? Keep reading.
Sequoia Capital
I will begin with Sequoia. First, they redesigned the main site using big images and a well done slider talking about the completed story of the firm and its successful investments since its creation. Simply brilliant !!!
But recently, they launched Grove with a simple statement in mind: “Founders helping Founders”. For me, this is an obligated site to know about Product Management, Business creation, Fundraising, etc; every piece written here is simple awesome. One my favorite articles is “Pricing Your Product” by Phil Libin, Evernote CEO.
But Sequoia have other channels for Marketing. One of my favorite is Slideshare, where they have some great presentations about Investment, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship and more.
But the most famous piece is one presentation done by Eric Upin called “RIP Good Times” in 2008, which initiated a revolution in Silicon Valley.
Another great resource for Sequoia is Twitter. With 108,324 followers is a powerful tool for Content Marketing, focused on great videos and pictures. You can see remarkable examples here:
Video: Michael Moritz on the term "investor", "pivot" and doing what excites you http://t.co/TlaMMRhZBx
— Sequoia (@sequoia) July 23, 2013
Another great channel is Google +, where they share posts, images, videos with its community. See an example here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+sequoiacapital/posts/bYopTVVkk8H
Like you can see, Sequoia has a lot to give yet in this field, but they are doing a great job.
Benchmark Capital
Marketing for Benchmark Capital has just one name: Bill Gurley and his amazing blog called Above the Crowd. Every Analyst, every person interested in Venture Capital have read at least one of the amazing posts written by Bill. I will let you some of my favorite posts:
- Conversion: The Most Important Internet Metric of All (Revisited)
- Transitioning To a Mobile Centric World
- A Rake Too Far: Optimal Platform Pricing Strategy
- All Markets Are Not Created Equal: 10 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces
Bill is an avid Twitter user(@bgurley), which convert him in one of the most followed persons in Venture Capital. One of his last tweets, made me very curious about the last Benchmark’s investment in StichFix:
Super excited to announce @benchmark investment in @stitchfix http://t.co/tJIhOgwU2F and equally excited to be working with @kmlake
— Bill Gurley (@bgurley) October 17, 2013
Other investments by Bill and his team are: Uber, Zillow, Snapchat, Sailthru, etc. If you want to know more about Bill, just see his fireside Chat with Sarah Lacy, Editor-in-Chief, CEO and founder of PandoDaily (another of my daily Morning reading) here:
Greylock Partners
Greylock Partners is another firm which is doing an amazing work in this field, using a lot of resources to spread the word. One of the most powerful channels for Marketing used by Greylock’s partners is LinkedIn, where Reid Hoffman and Dan Portillo are inside LinkedIn’s Influencers program, one of the most compelling things that I’ve seen in Marketing strategy in these days. Two of the most popular posts by Reid and Dan are:
Another great channel is their Tumblr-based blog, where they syndicate every post written by partners in one place. Recently, they launched a series of posts called Behind the Investment, where they talk about the recent investmens of the firm. The last one was about Lookout’s invesment (I love what they doing in the post-PC era for Mobile Security), where John Hering, co-founder & CEO of Lookout and Joseph Ansanelli, Greylock Partner discussed why they invested in this company.
And another great Marketing channel for Greylock is of course Slideshare, where (again) Reid, Dan and Josh Elman are very active and share their slides with the world.
Open View Ventures
And I think that I let the best example for the final. This Boston-based VC firm have embraced to every member of the team to create engaging content thorught blogs, e-books, slides, great emails, tweets, videos, etc; and their work in every channel is remarkable. See one of my last tweets where I mentioned them:
Should the VC-Entrepreneur Relationship Be Buddy-Buddy by @NCPetri from @OpenViewVenture http://t.co/ZWhGfbRRqF #VentureCapital— Marcos Ortiz (@marcosluis2186) October 26, 2013
or if you prefer, you can see this video from Devon McDonalds, their Director of Sales and Marketing Support, and of the awesome bloggers of the firm:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBLiUgWFvjU]
But if you actually want to see how they changed their content strategy, these slides are the right ones to see, done by Kevin Cain, (Director of Content Strategy/Content Marketing at OpenView Venture Partners) and Amanda Maksymiw, (now working like Content Marketing Manager at Lattice Engines):
[slideshare id=14203288&doc=0to60final-openviewpptforcmw2012–120907082030-phpapp01]
I think that all advices which are here, could be useful for every organization, company, startup, and VC firms about Content Strategy. This presentation is the reason why they are my favorite in this list about Content Marketing. So, what are you waiting for to change your Content today? Best wishes and thanks a lot for reading.
