On marketing for venture capital funds with Vincent Touati-Tomas, Head of Marketing at Northzone.

Join us for a true masterclass one of the great thinkers and practitioners of marketing in European VC. Make sure to read Vicent' show notes for a wealth of insights ✍️

Patricia Borlovan

Mar 14, 2024

Transcript

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Today, we have Vincent Touati-Tomas with us. Vincent is the Head of Marketing at Northzone, a global VC firm Northzone that has raised more than ten funds to date, with its most recent fundraising in excess of €1 billion, investing in startups from Seed to Growth.

Northzone is investing out of Fund X and more than 80 active portfolio companies and notable investments, including Personio, Klarna, Kahoot, Spotify, and Spring Health. At Northzone, Vincent focuses on all things marketing.

Now, Vincent is one of the great thinkers and practitioners of marketing in European VC, and we're so lucky that he has taken the time to structure his thoughts on the topic for us in this episode. So, you're in for a real master class.

Some might be a bit hard to follow if you're not doing marketing in your day-to-day, but I urge you to stay tuned because there's so much to learn for any VC thinking about how to build and grow their firm and its impact. So strap in and let's hear from Vincent.

Watch it here or add it to your episodes on Apple or Spotify 🎧

Table of Contents | Scroll ⏬ for all guest show notes ✍️

Episode chapters.
Vincent’s journey into venture.
A pivotal moment in Vincent’s career.
Take a stance.
Marketing in Venture Capital.
Marketing at Northzone.
Shout-out.
Top tips for emerging VCs who are fundraising.
Most counterintuitive learning.

Chapters:

00:02:18 Vincent's Journey into Venture Capital
00:04:15 The Power of Podcasting in Vincent's Career
00:05:51 Marketing Strategies for VC Firms: Insights from North Zone
00:18:36 Building Relationships and the Importance of Content in VC
00:39:54 The Transparency Challenge in European Venture Capital
00:40:48 The Importance of Public Performance Metrics
00:43:18 Liquidity and Performance: A European Perspective
00:46:46 Marketing and Operations: Dream Structures for VC Firms
00:56:03 Building a VC Brand: Narrative and Franchise Development

✍️ Show notes

We always ask our guests to write tweet-style notes for the conversation so we can share them with you all afterward. These are the words of the guest, no alterations made. Feast.

Vincent’s journey into venture.

Started a podcast on digital policies when I was 15, interviewing entrepreneurs & policymakers
Turned this into a marketing business - was practically unemployable anyway and I didn’t want to go to university
After a couple of years running my boutique agency, I joined the startup lobby organisation France Digitale
Being in the VC rabbit hole since then, almost 10 years - in London for almost 5 years now

A pivotal moment.

To this day, the podcast and network associated have had the most impact on my career
Realising that an internet connection would allow anyone to access any decision-maker
The power of content to structure thoughts and learning process
Empowerment when school & education system was boring
P2P, Everything was free before startups and VC money!

Take a stance.

“There is little to no luck in business life in general. It all favours just the prepared mind and hard-working individual.” - Staffan Helgesson, Founder of CREANDUM

Building from that, you have to manifest luck. I always hear that VC is unbreakable but I am the proof that it’s possible, so many others - be differentiated and have a large content book
In our world, pre-existing networks play a large party into what “success” look like, ie. fundraising again and again
But it’s possible to break through the ceilings
Most groundbreaking entrepreneurs had 0 experience in the field they were going after - they are always learning and growing
Invest in therapy and coaching

Marketing in Venture Capital.

Marketing for financial institutions is more of an "Editor" role than "Sales" in StartupLand linguo. There's a lot of information coming your way and competing for your attention - it's the nature of VC - and marketing role is to identify where growth will drive
What would the perfect content flywheel look like in a VC firm? Content-led by investors VS Content-led by marketers? Any tactics to share for people that don't have time etc?…
Americans can make it interesting that they went to the toilets”. Is there a cultural problem with marketing in Europe with VC firms?
Looking ahead at who’s inspiring (in the US), Margit Wennmachers was the first Marketing Partner to really break into VC in that role (founder of Outcast), today most of her team has media background and they write long-term content (can talk about the set up here)
Can talk about European VCs inclined to share their thesis, and the cultural reasons
Culture of writing and why it matters for the long-term
What’s the dream structure for a VC firm when it comes to Operations and Marketing?
Too often, non-investment activities are hot potatoes - meaning no real owner in the org
Having the Managing Partner, or a partner close to LP relationships makes a lot of sense as marketing will be important for internal stakeholders (LPs, Employees) and external (mostly Founders and Media)
Depending on management fees available there are different ways to go about it.
How to build authentic relationships with media?
More important to build a culture of press rather than PR headlines!
Pay for news!
The success and failure of media relations will often boil down to trust
You have to build personal relationships – otherwise you won’t cut through
Don’t throw away as you get more senior – you’re a leader for your franchise if you can be a good spokesperson, scrutiny will (rightly so) increase over time

Marketing at Northzone.

What is the typical marketing support you provide at Northzone and has it changed over the years?
It really depends on stage but we typically start with fundraising announcements support and agency RFP
We were much more hands-on 8 years ago when I started working in the industry, the tech community was smaller and it was a handful of people covering - now startups need to build their own Rolodex
Q on Narrative or “masterclass part” on content.
Content is first and foremost a thought process: structuring your thoughts to be more eloquent, to the point
This elevates the conversation immediately
Publishing content will give you an hedge when it comes to track record – especially when being an emerging fund manager
We all experience this in Slack: "Can you download this PDF from Business Insider…" . Why don’t people pay for it?
This culture around content being cheap or free needs to change
That’s how you will be able to ultimately invest more of your time and money into great content, identify media and channels that are best adapted to you

Shout-out.

My shout-out goes to Annika Sten Pärson.
Annika Sten Pärson.
Partner and founder of The Inner Foundation, investing in mental health startups across Europe and the US - targeting young adults between 18 and 25.
Has completely changed my mind on what for-profit and non-profit could do while well financed and plugged together.
There are a lot of innovation in our tech industry and I genuinely think Annika and the likes are deploying capital more efficiently than most VCs, without using “impact” as a fluffy umbrella term.

Q: What are your top tips for emerging VCs across Europe who are fundraising?

Define whether you want to build a franchise or a micro-fund from the getgo
Don’t fundraise on your local market, go out of your comfort zone

Q: What’s the most counterintuitive thing you’ve learned in venture?

Early winners are almost never liquid!
It really takes time to build into VC valuation and regardless of market sentiment right now it will likely come back in our asset class

Q: Your uncommon belief.

The VC and PE asset classes will eventually come together, as most funds realise the power law model is sustainable as only a limited number of funds are able to attract the very few blockbusters qualifying for VC returns!

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