What a VC Firm's Communications Function Is Actually For

When a venture firm hires for marketing and communications, the justification I hear most often is deal flow. Better brand, better founders, better companies.

I think that's the weakest of the available arguments. Venture capital marketing is the work a firm does to shape how founders, investors and the press see it, and I'd argue it earns its budget through founder fit, portfolio support and a public record that holds up, not through deal flow. For a firm that already sees enough suitable opportunities, I think the constraint is selection rather than volume, and communications should put founder fit ahead of inbound volume. In a survey of 885 VCs at 681 firms, conducted between November 2015 and March 2016, the median firm in the sample considered 200 companies a year and closed four deals. Only 10% of the deals respondents closed in the previous year came inbound from company management; most came through networks and referrals, which the authors read as a case for active deal generation. Asked to rank deal flow, deal selection and post-investment help by how much each creates value, 49% put selection first and 23% put deal flow first.

For a firm in that position, a communications function that measures itself on inbound deals is measuring something the firm isn't short of.

Key takeaways

• In a survey of 885 venture capitalists run in 2015 and 2016, the median firm considered 200 companies a year and closed four deals, and 49% ranked deal selection first for creating value against 23% for deal flow (Gompers, Gornall, Kaplan and Strebulaev, NBER).
• Fund closes are getting scarcer for newer firms: established firms, on their fourth fund or later, took 88.2% of U.S. venture capital raised through September 2026, and emerging firms closing a fund fell from 927 in 2022 to 440 in 2025 (Q3 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor).
• The SEC's marketing rule covers registered advisers' communications that offer their services to prospective clients or private fund investors, but the SEC says it doesn't apply to exempt reporting advisers, which include advisers relying on the venture capital fund exemption.

The function does three other things that matter considerably more, and in my experience they're rarely the stated objective.

1. Founder self-selection

The first job of a VC firm's communications is founder self-selection. Not more founders. The right ones.

A firm known for a specific kind of company attracts founders building that kind of company and, importantly, repels ones who aren't a fit. That saves partner time, which is the firm's actual scarce resource.

It depends on a thesis that has been stated publicly, consistently, over years. A firm whose public presence is a series of announcements about whatever it invested in most recently gives a founder nothing to self-select against. The payoff shows up as a founder who already understands what you look for when the first meeting starts.

This requires being specific enough to exclude people, which in my experience most firms resist. Positioning broad enough to be safe is positioning too broad to select.

2. Portfolio support as a real service

Portfolio support gives founders a way to test a VC firm's promises: they can ask portfolio companies what help they actually received. What that support needs to look like by stage, and where platform programs usually fall short, is a subject for its own post.

One piece is easy to see on announcement day. Before a client's big funding announcement, we studied how the best-performing funding announcements played out on social. The pattern was consistent. The company posts first, the moment the release goes out, ideally with video. Then the CEO quote-posts it in his own words, and within the first hour the investors pile onto the company's post, each in their own words.

3. A public record that holds up

A VC firm's public record is read by more than founders. Investors, prospective investors and regulators read the same coverage, and a fund adviser can face communications rules on top of the fundraising rules that also apply to startups. Part of the function's job is making sure nothing the firm publishes creates a problem the partners then have to explain.

For SEC-registered investment advisers, that means the marketing rule, Rule 206(4)-1, which advisers have had to comply with since November 2022. It covers communications that offer an adviser's services to prospective clients or private fund investors. Gross performance in an advertisement generally has to be accompanied by net performance, presented so the two can be compared. A staff FAQ updated on March 19, 2025 says the staff would not recommend enforcement action over gross-only results for individual investments if certain conditions are met, including showing the total portfolio's gross and net results with at least equal prominence; whether those conditions are met is a question for counsel. An advertisement that shows performance results for a subset of a portfolio's investments must provide, or offer to provide promptly, the total portfolio's results. Testimonials and endorsements carry disclosure, oversight and promoter-eligibility requirements, and some paid promoters need a written agreement.

The SEC's adopting release draws some lines that matter for press work. General market commentary, including in press interviews, is unlikely to count as an advertisement, and extemporaneous, live, oral communications, such as press interviews not based on prepared remarks, fall outside the first part of the advertisement definition, though compensated testimonials and endorsements are covered separately. An article that closes by describing how the adviser's services can help investors is a different matter. And depending on the facts, an adviser that endorses or approves third-party content after publication, or involves itself in preparing it, can be held responsible for it as if it had produced it. The release also says the rule doesn't apply to exempt reporting advisers, which is how the SEC classifies advisers relying on its venture capital fund exemption.

Fundraising adds Regulation D. The SEC's guidance says a fund raising under Rule 506(b) can't use general solicitation to market its securities, including through advertisements in newspapers and magazines, public websites and broadcast, and that communications that condition the market for an offering may be treated as offers. Rule 506(c) permits general solicitation if every purchaser is an accredited investor, the issuer takes reasonable steps to verify that, and the other Regulation D conditions are met. The exemption a fund relies on, along with what is said and when, shapes how publicity during a raise is judged. That's why I treat the timing of any fund story as a question for fund counsel before it's a question for a publicist.

What does good venture capital marketing look like?

Good venture capital marketing is narrow in subject, saves its effort for real news, and stays quiet the rest of the time.

Writing on the specific area you claim. Contributed pieces on the companies and markets you actually invest in, not a newsletter about everything.

Fund closes covered properly. A close is one of very few genuine news events a firm has, and for emerging managers it's getting harder to come by. Through September, established firms, those on their fourth fund or later, took 88.2% of U.S. venture capital raised this year, the highest share in PitchBook and NVCA's data. The number of emerging firms closing at least one fund fell from 927 in 2022 to 440 in 2025, with 211 through September of this year. My rule of thumb is to plan an announcement around one main news cycle; bringing it back later usually takes a fresh angle, such as results. Wasting a close on a wire release is a missed opportunity, particularly for emerging managers, where the close itself is the story.

Restraint about everything else. Firms that comment on every market movement dilute whatever position they had.

What should a VC firm stop doing?

In my view, four habits work against a VC firm's communications.

Announcing every investment. In my experience few people read routine investment announcements, and a stream of them makes the firm's public record a list rather than an argument.

Publishing predictions. Most are too vague for anyone to check, and forgettable.

Competing for attention with your portfolio companies. The company's launch should be the company's launch. The firm's role is a quote at most.

Measuring on deal flow. The metric is available and it's the wrong one, and optimizing for it produces a broad, unmemorable brand. In my view, client reporting should show whether coverage carries the intended narrative, not just how many articles ran. For a venture firm, the narrative worth tracking is its thesis.

Common questions

What is venture capital marketing? Venture capital marketing is the work a venture firm does to shape how founders, investors and the press see it, from its public thesis and partner writing to fund announcements and portfolio support. In my view it earns its budget through founder fit, portfolio support and a public record that holds up, not through deal flow.

Do venture firms need marketing? For founder self-selection, portfolio support and a public record that holds up, yes. For deal flow it depends on the firm, and for a firm with a track record I'd say mostly not. In a 2015-2016 survey of 885 venture capitalists, the median firm in the sample considered 200 companies a year and closed four deals, and only 10% of the deals respondents closed came inbound from company management.

What should a VC firm's communications actually achieve? That the right founders recognize the firm's focus before a first meeting while poor fits screen themselves out, that portfolio companies genuinely benefit from the firm's support, and that nothing the firm publishes creates a problem it has to explain later.

Should VCs announce every investment? Not as a matter of routine. A stream of announcements turns the firm's public record into a list, and in my experience few people read them. In my view a fund close, a clear thesis and portfolio outcomes say more about the firm.

Does the SEC marketing rule apply to a VC firm's press coverage? It can. The rule covers SEC-registered advisers' communications that offer their services to prospective clients or private fund investors, with conditions on performance figures and testimonials. The SEC says general market commentary, including in press interviews, is unlikely to count, and the rule doesn't apply to exempt reporting advisers. Fund counsel makes the call on any specific piece.

How should VC communications be measured? By the fit of the founders who come in, portfolio companies' satisfaction with the support they get, and whether coverage describes the firm's thesis accurately. Not by inbound deal volume.

Sources

• Paul Gompers, Will Gornall, Steven N. Kaplan and Ilya A. Strebulaev, How Do Venture Capitalists Make Decisions?, NBER Working Paper 22587, September 2016; published in the Journal of Financial Economics, January 2020
• PitchBook and NVCA, Q3 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor, data as of September 30, 2026, October 2026
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Investment Adviser Marketing, Release No. IA-5653, December 22, 2020
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Investment Adviser Marketing: Small Entity Compliance Guide
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Division of Investment Management, Marketing Compliance Frequently Asked Questions, extracted performance answer updated March 19, 2025
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Amendments to Investment Advisers Act Rules to Reflect Changes Made by the FAST Act: Small Entity Compliance Guide, updated January 30, 2026
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Eliminating the Prohibition Against General Solicitation and General Advertising in Rule 506 and Rule 144A Offerings: A Compliance Guide for Small Entities
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, General Solicitation: Rule 506(c), updated March 17, 2026

Salient PR works with venture funds and studios on fund announcements, thesis positioning and portfolio company programs. This post describes SEC rules for context and isn't legal advice.