Venture Capital Firms, Once Discreet, Learn the Promotional Game

Sequoia Capital, the prominent firm behind such tech behemoths as Apple and Google, and several other top venture firms stopped accepting investments from public institutions like the University of California system just to avoid having their financials disclosed to the press.

Self-promotion was shunned by venture capitalists as crass. Eyes rolled when Timothy C. Draper, a founder at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, graced a 2006 cover of the Thomson-Reuters Venture Capital Journal in a Captain America costume.

Investment partners at Sequoia even used a disparaging name for venture capitalists who promoted themselves to the press: “parade jumpers.”

Now, Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley is one long parade route. Venture capitalists are hiring full-time public relations experts to tell bloggers and reporters of their investing prowess. They publicize their every doing and thought on Twitter and in blog posts.

In the last year, several top firms have hired people to handle marketing, branding and public relations full time. Among them: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Lightspeed Venture Partners and True Ventures. Many others, like Benchmark Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Greylock Partners, keep public relations firms on retainer.

A number of V.C. firms ranging from some of the oldest, like Bessemer Venture Partners, to some of the youngest, like Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, are now seeking full-time marketing experts.

Even Sequoia, which sniffed at the notion when the trend began, has hired P.R. staff.

The self-promotion, branding and race to build an admiring Twitter following, people here say, is a symptom of the stresses on the consolidating venture capital industry. Fewer venture firms are trying to raise money from pension funds, universities and others institutions.

There are now 526 venture capital firms actively investing in the United States, down from 1,022 firms in 2000, according to the National Venture Capital Association. In the last 10 years, venture firms returned, on average, an abysmal 4.6 percent to investors. Institutional investors are looking to scale back on the asset class and reallocate funds just to top firms, where the competition to raise money and invest in hot technology start-ups is fierce.

Ten years ago, entrepreneurs needed some kind of insider advantage to get a meeting with a firm. Now the most promising entrepreneurs do careful due diligence — on Twitter, in blogs and in the media — before agreeing to take coffee with a V.C. The best entrepreneurs are courted by the venture capitalists, not the other way around.

But the biggest catalyst for the attention-seeking atmosphere, venture capitalists say, has been the rise of Andreessen Horowitz. The speed with which the venture firm — started by Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, and Ben Horowitz, a former executive there — has rocketed to the top ranks has served as a case study in successful self-promotion.

The two men started their firm in 2009, when Silicon Valley was still reeling from the financial crisis. It was the era in which seasoned investors at Sequoia Capital had just delivered a PowerPoint presentation to entrepreneurs at their portfolio companies titled: “R.I.P. Good Times.”

Mr. Andreessen and Mr. Horowitz based their firm’s strategy on a simple investment thesis: each year 15 deals account for 97 percent of all venture capital profits. To be successful, they would have to pursue those 15 companies. And they would do it by aggressively marketing their expertise to the reporters and bloggers who follow start-ups. And they would appeal directly to entrepreneurs in blogs and on Twitter.

It worked right from the outset. In July 2009, Fortune announced the firm in a cover article. The debut was widely covered in popular technology blogs like TechCrunch, VentureBeat and All Things Digital.

Then in 2010, the firm hired Margit Wennmachers, a founder of the Outcast Communications P.R. firm who had built it into the top adviser of tech start-ups. She was far from being just a hired gun. Ms. Wennmachers was instrumental in the firm’s initial coverage and she was made a full partner, sitting at the table at the earliest stages of investment decisions.

“To be a top five firm, you have to brand yourself,” Ms. Wennmachers said in an interview. “We didn’t want entrepreneurs to say, ‘Who are these people?’ We didn’t want to start a fund by ‘the tall guy who invented a browser,’ so we pushed for press and set up a direct communication channel with blogs.”