Venture Capitalists Don’t Invest in Magic. Neither Should You.

A few months after launching one of my first VC-backed companies, our customer base began growing “organically.” By that I mean a few tech-press news outlets published stories about the company as a result of a recent financing we’d announced, and it drove some quality signups.

As a young entrepreneur, I was thrilled by this early publicity and the resulting growth. After years of reading about countless other companies and the successful entrepreneurs who had launched them, I was finally being featured in the tech press. Now it was my turn. In my mind, I’d officially “made it.”

My investors weren’t as enthusiastic. And it wasn’t just that they didn’t care about my 15 minutes of startup fame; they actively disliked it and tried to warn me about its trappings.

Our differing perspectives about publicity and its value culminated in an uncomfortable exchange during my first official board meeting as CEO of a venture-backed tech company. The meeting took place during the height of our unplanned PR windfall. First, I showed a slide filled with logos of all the media outlets writing stories about us. Next, I showed a graph with our surging growth and revenue curves. Then I proudly proclaimed: “Best of all, we haven’t spent any money on marketing!”