vc has become a prestigious job, but would it surprise you to know that many vcs' primary skillset is content marketing?

here's my top 3 list of the best vc content marketers of all time 🚀 #3: peter thiel

zero to one was probably the single most successful piece of vc thought leadership of all time. it sold 2.5M+ copies worldwide.

even its ghostwriter is now up for u.s. senate.

4 of 7 execs & vps at @dbt_labs worked together before at analytics pioneer rjmetrics

@jthandy ceo
@connormcarthur cto
@janessalantz marketing vp
erin vaughan cust success vp

a powerful advantage and rare in the increasingly professionalized & mercenary world of tech leadership rjmetrics launched in 2008 and became one of the leaders in bi for ecomm

unlike looker and other competitors, their approach was full-stack.

that's probably what 'killed' the company, but it's also what birthed dbt.

crossbeam.com/blog/software-… @robertjmoore

during covid, video became critical infrastructure for all social interactions

one company that's indexed on its rise is video api @MuxHQ which is positioning itself to become an 'aws for video'

sacra.com/research/adam-… social's been on a trajectory towards live video and synchronicity with increased bandwidth and frequency of communication per @arjunsethi & @artzandy

covid accelerated and mainstreamed that transformation of the web

tribecap.co/the-hive-is-th…

most equity crowdfunding campaigns happen after the company does a round with tech insiders. retail pays a markup.

@beaconsai flipped the script and did their @joinrepublic round first, giving their community better terms than @a16z and @TheChainsmokers got. @nealjean1, @jessemzhang and team actually took on meaningful risk doing it this way, because if the crowdfunding campaign hadn't been fully subscribed, investors could've taken it as a negative signal.

republic.co/beacons-ai

the thiel fellowship has an insane track record

$ETH $420B
@oyorooms $8B
@scale_AI $7B
@upstart $7B
@luminartech $7B
@figmadesign $2B

what started in 2011 to pay talented kids $100k to drop out of college now counts billionaire startup founders among its alums 👇 @VitalikButerin got into crypto in high school. he co-founded @BitcoinMagazine, tried to get an internship @Ripple (but couldn't get a visa), then published a white paper proposing @ethereum in 2013

he dropped out of @UWaterloo after getting a thiel fellowship in 2014.

duke's not known as a startup factory like stanford.

but duke '08-'12 has produced 4 unicorns—coinbase, airtable, cameo and plaid—along with a bunch of up and comers.

here's the path their founders took from duke to $1b 👇 in 2005 @howietl joined @DukeU's class of '09 to study mechanical engineering. he was only 16.

yc's first ever batch, summer '05

where are they now? 👇 the batch had 8 companies:

reddit: frontpage of the internet
memamp: better desktop search
kiko: ajax-based calendar
clickfacts: click fraud detector
textpayme: pay via sms
loopt: share your location with friends
infogami: cms written in python
simmery axe: social websites

just finished raising a pre-seed for me and @janerikasplund's new venture.

the last time i raised money was 2011-2013. a few things have changed that surprised me 👇 1/ no one uses @AngelList any more to raise. in 2011, you created a profile on angellist when you started to raise.

you could filter and sort investors to create a list of prospects. then you could find intros, reach out and set up meetings all through the platform.

the financial stack of a multimillion dollar services business 👇 @chargebee abstracts away payment method (credit card, direct debit, invoicing) and payment terms into subscriptions.

it does revenue recognition for accrual accounting so no more insane spreadsheets from your accounting team that are impossible to understand.