Why Most VC Blogs Are Dead

Most VC blogs feel like they're on life support.

The posts go up, nobody reads them, and six months later someone asks "wait, should we post a blog?"

This is ironic because the modern VC industry was largely built on the back of blogging. Ben Horowitz, Fred Wilson, Naval, Paul Graham - they all used long-form writing to establish authority, attract founders, and build their firms.

The landscape has changed, but long-form content hasn't disappeared (despite often declared dead). Substack offers built-in distribution. Newsletters connect directly with audiences. AI search is creating new discovery paths.

So what should VCs actually be publishing when it comes to long-form content?

The Three-Circle Test

Before you publish anything long form, check these three tests:

1. Does your audience want this?

2. Is this how they want it distributed?

3. Do you have unique access or expertise to say this?

Some firms are doing a great job of this. Long-form is where you own ideas, so it is important.

Let's break down each…

Does Your Audience Actually Want This?

After ~30 years of blogs, almost everything has been said. Everyone has access to some of the best startup lessons for free.

To stand out, you must either solve problems no one talks about or come at old problems from genuinely new angles.

If the audience already has fifty good articles on a topic, they don't want a fifty-first generic one from you.

This question filters out three failure modes:

1. The "check-the-box" —you're publishing just to publish something this month

2. The "me-too" —you saw another VC write about X, so you write about X too

3. The "we've always done this" —you write an investment announcement because that's what VCs do

For a VC firm, your audience (founders and LPs) wants content that serves a high-stakes function. It must help them make a critical decision (how to structure a cap table, when to expand to Europe) or evaluate your firm's thesis.

If it doesn't serve that function, the audience doesn't want it.

How do you figure out what they actually want?

Search data (digital and conversational):

Are people actively looking for this topic? High volume, high intent keywords matter. But also - what are founders asking you in meetings? What questions do LPs keep asking? What comes up in every board meeting?

Portfolio feedback:

What operational problems are your founders currently struggling with? Not theoretically - right now, what's blocking them, or their success stories.

Community and social:

What are people debating or asking questions about in the zeitgeist? Where's the confusion? Where's the disagreement? - can you add unique point/data?

Competitor gaps:

Is there a known, important problem that nobody has provided a definitive, proprietary answer for yet?

Is This How They Want It Distributed?

Different audiences, different preferences.

Generally -

For LPs: Long form makes more sense. It's research, due diligence material, proof of expertise. Easy to reference when evaluating a fund. LPs want to see: What does this fund think? What have they learned? What data are they seeing?

For founders: X/ LinkedIn (where they already are), Substack (built-in distribution).

Both: Newsletters (here’s why).

So, perhaps blogs matter MORE for emerging managers than mega-funds.

Emerging managers need to prove their expertise to LPs. Their thinking is less well-known. The footprint of their firm is unclear. The blog IS the proof - pattern recognition, domain depth, ability to support founders beyond capital.

But even mega-funds should be recapping their thinking around case studies and exits. Not for discovery, but for documentation. "Here's what we saw in this company, here's what worked, here's what didn't." It's the same logic as the emerging manager blog, just moved up the capital stack to DPI requirements and exit narratives.

There are ways to be unique with your distribution too:

Sam Lessin writes his essays as one long image - a screenshot of text. He posts it directly to Twitter with a sensationalist headline.

Why does this work?

• Superior consumption experience: People don't want to click off to a website and you never know the commitment size before you dive in. With screenshots, people know exactly what they're getting.

• Superior sharing: X is optimised for sharing images. When the sensationalism gets quote-tweeted, the screenshot essay HAS to go with it. The content can't be separated from the provocation.

• Easy to write and save: Sam's writing for himself first. The screenshot format is his personal workflow for clarifying thinking. Sharing it is secondary.

This is the opposite of the "publish on blog, hope for distribution" model. It's built for the platform from the start.

So… Blog on Substack, LinkedIn or somewhere else?

The choice depends on your goal.

Company Blog: Use this for building evergreen firm IP and SEO. This is your due diligence destination. LPs, journalists, candidates - they're coming here to understand who you are. It needs to be comprehensive, credible, on your domain.

Substack: Use this to own the audience and deliver a consistent personal thesis. If you're a GP building individual brand, Substack gives you built-in distribution. Every post goes to email. People can recommend your Substack to others. You're not dependent on your firm's SEO or domain authority.

X/LinkedIn: This is your rented megaphone. Use it to drive traffic and discussion for both blog and Substack. It's also where you test ideas before going deeper.

But sometimes it's about branding too. Terrain have one of my favourite VC blogs.

It would feel off-brand for them to use Substack because of the experience and vibe they're deliberately curating on via their site. The design, the aesthetic, the curation - it all builds their position as unique. Substack's standardised format would undercut that.

Do You Have Unique Access to Expertise?

This is the unlock.

Generic content is commoditised. AI can write "how to do equity compensation" in seconds. What AI can't do - access your portfolio's specific challenges, your sector expertise, network of operators, your takes backed by actual experience.

So what do you have?

• Portfolio/Personal learnings from companies solving specific problems

• Sector expertise from analysing hundreds of deals

• Network access to operators who've done the thing

• Contrarian patterns emerging from your dealflow

If you don't have unique expertise to share, why are you publishing?

Firms must become primary sources of information, either by leveraging the in-house knowledge of their partners or by acting as a "journalist" to package the unique expertise of their external ecosystem, including portfolio founders, consultants, and customers, ensuring the content solves problems no one else is talking about.

Non-commoditised content that can't be replicated by AI, thereby establishing unique authority and trust with their audience.

Own The Name

If you're launching something new, own the name. This is about ownership of a theme, which we touched on last week.

A distinctive name helps the blog stand out, makes it memorable, easier to brand independently. You can leverage it for SEO, social media presence, direct audience engagement. It increases chances of virality and recognition beyond the main firm's site.

Owning a unique name also helps you "own" a phrase or concept in the market - much like George Mack's "High Agency" or the specific niche terminology that becomes synonymous with your firm + makes it easier for people to reference and share.

In early 2026 - a client of ours will be launching a new asset on its own domain specifically to own a phrase. We’ve been using this phrase in their PR and content throughout the year. Now we're building a full resource hub around it. Separate domain, cohesive brand, long-term play to own the concept.

The Index Ventures Playbook

So what does it look like when you actually nail all three circles?

Index Ventures generated over 100,000 visits to their site in October alone. For a VC firm's content operation, that's extraordinary.

They're not a mega-fund coasting on brand recognition. They're a top-tier European VC (backed Figma, Revolut, Notion, Discord) that invested heavily in content as infrastructure - and it paid off.

They built a publishing system, not a blog.

Most VCs have a blog. Index has "Index Press" - explicitly positioned as "a collection of guides and resources for ambitious entrepreneurs... signal in the noise for founders seeking data-driven thinking and actionable insight."

It's organised around three major franchises:

1. Scaling Through Chaos

• The book: "The founder's guide to building and leading teams from 0 to 1000"

• The data: 200,000 career profiles from 200 startups, interviews with 60+ founders/operators

• The tool: TeamPlan, an org design benchmarking tool that tells you who to hire when, based on that dataset

• The content ecosystem: Supplementary articles like "Scaling Through Chaos in the Age of AI," deep dives on TeamPlan methodology.

2. Winning in the US

• The book: "The Founder's Guide to Building a Global Company from Europe"

• The research: Analysis of 500+ VC-backed companies, 40+ founder/operator interviews

• The tool: Expansion Plan, a tactical planner for US market entry

• The content ecosystem: US-expansion themed content under the same brand inc. podcast

3. Rewarding Talent

This is where they went deepest:

• The book: Comprehensive ESOP handbook

• The research methodology (published):

  • Cap table analysis of 73 portfolio companies

  • 4,000+ individual option grants from 200+ startups

  • Survey of 53 European startups (11,000 employees)

  • Policy/tax review across key markets

• The tool: OptionPlan to model equity allocation

• The content ecosystem: "Not Optional" campaign - policy advocacy for better stock-option regimes in Europe.

Notice the pattern: Research → Content → Tool → Ecosystem.

Each franchise becomes an ownable theme they can compound on for years, rather than a random grab bag of one-off blog posts.

The playbook-plus-tool model is the key:

Rewarding Talent + OptionPlan.
Winning in the US + ExpansionPlan.
Scaling Through Chaos + TeamPlan.

These are products that encode their view of the world. The methodology pages go out of their way to show sample sizes, data sources, research approach. We have talked about The Future of VC Marketing is Interactive here:

Could this work for smaller funds?

Not at this scale. Index can invest in research teams, book production, tool development. Most funds can't.

But… the principle works at any scale: pick 1-2 ownable themes, go deep rather than broad, create tools or frameworks that encode your expertise, make it genuinely useful.

The aforementioned Terrain (~$30M) are a stellar example of this… with their naming tool and guide.

The Bottom Line

The VC blog isn't dead. It's just that most are.

If you're going to have one, make it like Index: proprietary, useful, impossible to replicate.

If you can't do that, consider whether a blog is the right format at all. Maybe it's a Substack. Maybe it's just LinkedIn. Maybe it's screenshot essays.

But if you're going to do it, know why you're doing it. And make sure it passes the test: audience wants it, right distribution, unique expertise.

Otherwise, you're just adding to the feed.

And we have enough feeds.

Laurie, Refinery Media

If you made it all the way through, 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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