The benchmark VC marketing has been missing

For 52 weeks in a row, I have sent out one of these niche niche emails.

But before I get into what I'm launching today, I want to tell you why I care about this stuff.

In 2018, during university, I joined my friend in founding a 3D tech startup. We raised capital, worked on a incredibly specific and hard problem for four years, paid ourselves to live, and employed people across the UK and beyond. With okay traction and some partnerships with global companies, at times it felt like it might really take off…

But, it didn’t. We returned $0.

Weirdly, there was no backlash. No one asked for the money back and our investors were pleased with our efforts.

That experience is why I think VC, done well, is a net good. It gives people the runway to work on things that would otherwise not get funded and employ the people around us.

But for VC to work well, the right capital needs to reach the right founders. Firms need to be able to articulate what they stand for, attract the founders who fit, and build enough trust to make a relationship work when most companies end in failure.

That is a marketing problem.

I have spent the last few years working with VC firms on it directly. But when I looked around for serious writing about it, there was nothing.

So I started writing it myself, and later decide to start this mailing list.

A year later, I am grateful you are here and that you keep opening these. Your time is valuable, and I won’t waste it.

What we’re launching

The VC Marketing Survey 2026

I have now worked directly with close to 30 firms from first-time EMs to some of the more established names in the industry, and had conversations with 100s more.

One thing that comes up constantly is that nobody really knows what other firms are doing. Platform teams are negotiating internally for resource with almost no external benchmarks. GPs and marketing leads are making calls with no real read on how their peers operate.

In partnership with Vessel I am launching the VC Marketing Survey to fix that.

Vessel is the AI platform VC firms use for portfolio monitoring, fundraising, and LP engagement. They see how funds work from the inside and care about the marketing gap for the same reasons I do.

If you want to know what other firms are spending, how teams are structured, what is working, and where people are focusing, this is how we find out, so I encourage you to get involved.

It takes about 8 minutes, and every respondent gets the full findings before we publish.

Please fill it in, and please share it with anyone in your network who works on marketing or platform at a fund. The more firms that participate, the more useful it will be for all!

Your data will be aggregated and anonymised and you can opt out of being credited for participating.

Thank you for 52 weeks. Onwards.

Laurie, Refinery Media… Back to the usual breakdowns next week.

Thanks so much for reading! Several hundred VCs now open this every week. If it's helped you think differently about marketing, Venture, or storytelling, please send it to someone in your orbit.

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