Audience + Assets = Social Capital

At its core, social capital consists of two critical layers → 

Audience: The specific group of people who follow your thinking, engage with your content, and value your perspective.

Assets: The valuable resources you create that directly address the needs and interests of your audience.

Social capital emerges in the overlap between these two layers. The more perfectly your assets align with your audience's interests, the more powerful your position becomes.

For venture firms, this framework creates a clear path forward:

Building an audience

Consistently sharing insights that attract a specific type of founder, LP, or industry player. Deeper than general commentary - develop a recognised perspective on particular sectors, stages, and approaches.

Creating assets

Developing resources that directly serve this audience: investment frameworks, market maps, decision tools, or knowledge repositories that codify your expertise.

The magic happens where these overlap.

The Alignment Strategy

Consider the difference between two approaches:

Firm A produces generic startup content hoping to attract any founder. Their audience is broad but shallow, with minimal overlap between audience interests and the firm's actual investment focus.

Firm B consistently shares detailed insights on infrastructure-as-code, attracting developers building in this space. They then create specific frameworks for evaluating companies in this sector. The overlap is nearly perfect - their audience consists precisely of founders they want to fund, who value exactly the expertise they offer.

When Firm B launches a new fund or announces a thesis shift, their message reaches the ideal audience immediately.

At Refinery, we’ve explored how VCs are increasingly treating content as product—building tools, AI videos, even founder-focused documentaries to codify and broadcast their edge.

→ How Funds Are Using Tools

→ Video as a New Fund Differentiator

→ Experiential Content

Think about your market, and think about content they would want/need that they don’t currently have. This strategy mirrors what we’ve seen from standout firms like -

• Headline, with their detailed Consumer VC Market Map

• Konvoy Ventures, publishing Gaming Industry Report Quarterly 

• Bessemer, whose State of Cloud report has become a category staple

• SuperScout, compiling case studies that help scouts and micro funds

These are assets designed to serve their core audience—whether or not those readers ever become portfolio companies or LPs.

Adjacent to VC, VC talent partner - Nucleus’s Alex Klein (shoutout to Alex), turned a personal frustration—struggling to find clear visibility into which VCs were hiring - into a increasingly-followed asset.

Nucleus Talent’s org charts, compensation benchmarks, and talent maps will become go-to resources for operators and firms alike. By creating the content he wished existed, he is positioning himself as the default expert in VC recruiting. Follow him here.

Practical Implementation

The most effective approach builds both layers simultaneously:

1. Identify your specific focus - What type of founder do you genuinely serve best?

2. Create consistent content in this exact area - Share insights that demonstrate your unique perspective.

3. Measure reception - Which topics generate the most engagement from your target audience?

4. Develop assets around these topics - resources that founders/LPs would value even if they never work with you.

5. Scale through overlap - As your audience grows, your assets become more valuable to more people, creating a compounding effect.

The strategic advantage comes from consistency.

When your content strategy aligns perfectly with your investment thesis, each new follower represents potential deal flow, each new asset strengthens your position in your space.

Measuring Success

The quality of alignment matters more than raw numbers:

• Are the founders you want to fund following your content?

• Do your insights generate conversations with the right LPs?

• Are your frameworks being referenced within your target sector?

• Is your deal flow increasingly aligned with your stated thesis?

When aligned, you've built true social capital -influence that translates directly into opportunity.

Next Steps

Examine the overlap between your current audience and your ideal partners. Where are the gaps? How could you create content that specifically attracts the founders you most want to work with?

Identify one high-value asset you could create that would serve this specific audience perfectly

Toni Morrison said the ‘If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it’...

in the same vein if there is one asset that your market wants to see but it hasn’t been created yet, then you must create it… 

Laurie, Refinery Media