Why VCs should send a personal newsletter
A weekly email update to your network on your latest thinking
Venture capitalists have understood for years that exposure is important for success. Being visible and proving their expertise to entrepreneurs creates better deal flow and and increases the likelihood of being in on the best deals.
The Public VC
This wasn’t always the case as initially the VC industry was rather secretive.
Things started changing when visionaries like Fred Wilson or Brad Feld became bloggers. Fred started the amazing ACV.com in 2003, and Brad has been sharing his thoughts on feld.com since 2004.
Fred and Brad are still going strong and posting regularly. And have been joined by many other VCs using a variety of communication channels to get their name and expertise out there.
Actor and angel investor Ashton Kutcher built up an early Twitter following as aplusk and Jason M. Lemkin championed Quora by answering questions people had about venture capital and funding obsessively on his profile.
By now there are even websites like AngelList, which are built specifically for investors and founders wanting to connect and network with each other.
VCs and personal newsletters
While some VCs have built an impressive following with their blogs or through social media, not all of them have become public figures. For the the ones that don’t have millions of followers, a personal newsletter can be a great solution.
In comparison to social channels, the communication style of a personal newsletter is more geared towards one-on-one conversations, which allows for a less formal tone of voice.
Also, personal newsletters work well for any size of the target audience, from hundreds of readers to hundreds of thousands. Sent directly to the inbox of recipients, the newsletter has a much bigger chance of getting seen, read.
Finally, it provides ample space to demonstrate expertise on topic of focus and reassures the curator to stay top of mind.
One of our favorite examples is the personal newsletter of Benedict Evans, who is also a successful blogger and presenter at conferences.
More than 75.000 people are subscribed to Benedict’s newsletter, which he sends out to his subscribers weekly. In his newsletter he curates materials he has seen and found interesting about tech. His newsletter is really a way for him to show his knowledge and establish his position as a thought leader.
With a personal newsletter VCs manage to create a deeper connection with followers than they can on AngelList and Twitter, and keep limited partners, portfolio companies, and future prospects up to date on their recent research and thoughts.
Learn from the best
As always, a good place to start is to learn from others. Revue has created a directory of the best personal newsletters out there, so you can easily subscribe to the ones you like best.
Head over to the venture capital section, follow a few good ones, and figure out what you like or not.
One of our favorites is M.G. Siegler who has done a tremendous job his Revue newsletter.
In his own words, he is using his newsletter for thoughts longer than 140 characters, otherwise it would be on Twitter, and on thoughts shorter than 500 words otherwise he would write a blogpost about it. After starting each issue with some personal notes, like a movie he has seen, or the NBA finals, M.G. Siegler goes on to share ‘5ish Links’. It’s very interesting that he doesn’t only curate content he finds worth reading, but also includes important quotes and his personal opinions about certain subjects right inside the newsletter.
Another great example is one of Revue’s investors, entrepreneur Scott Belsky. He sends a monthly newsletter that focuses on his personal life and findings.
Scott often goes into great detail on recent projects he’s been working on and different thoughts he has about particular topics. His newsletter is like opening up a window into his incredibly creative and visionary brain. Basically, when reading his newsletter issues, he’ll take you along on a journey where he will tell you all about some of his musings concerning the future and what he thinks will happen.
How to get started with a personal newsletter?
Ready to give it a try and publish your own VC newsletter? It’s easy with Revue.
As a VC you probably read a lot. Revue lets you save the most interesting articles and drag and drop them into a newsletter.
You can then reserve half an hour at a certain time of the week, head over to your article collection on Revue, select the best ones and send them out. Revue also connects with other sources such as Pocket, Facebook or Twitter.
After reading this, you realized you want to start your own personal newsletter? Simply head over to Revue and start sending your thoughts into people’s inboxes today! You write and curate, we make sure it looks good.
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