What messaging can I use to support the case for VC Comms Con to my partners (bosses)?

Beyond sending them to this page, we suggest highlighting the four reasons noted above on this page. Further, you can mention that all the material presented is exclusive to this gathering and that there is nowhere else the presentations will exist. In short, you need to be there to up-level your role and your support of portfolio companies in person.

Will all of the content be recorded or captured in some way?

Per our tradition, we won’t be recording the content nor will it be distributed afterward. We want our speakers to be as frank as possible and enjoy the magic of in-person connection. Come hang out with us in person.

What does my ticket include?

Your ticket includes all the events listed on the schedule above. Your ticket does not include travel and accommodations.

How do I get an invite to VC Comms Con?

We keep our gathering invite-only to make sure everyone attending is a full-time comms and marketing professional at a VC fund. Plus, we know everyone in this community and it’s important to keep our No Assholes rule in place. If you’re a full-time comms and marketing professional at a VC fund who’d like to attend, drop us a line: vccommscon@bamtheagency.com.

How will I get in touch with everybody I meet at the event?

Unless you decline when you check in, we will share everyone’s email afterward so you don’t need to worry about cards. Plus, who has cards? Too 2009 for our taste.

What about media that will be attending? Will I get their contact information?

This will depend on the individual journalists. We’ll respect them if they don’t wish to share their contact info with everyone in attendance.

Which airport should I fly into?

San Diego International Airport (SAN) is your best bet. This airport is about a 5-minute drive to all the events in Balboa Park.

Are discounts available for the ticket?

Sadly no. Our tickets simply cover the cost of this event and are not a revenue stream for BAM. Given the limit of 100 attendees, full ticket prices are what we have to stick with.

I’m really excited! How many people are coming to this event?

Our max for this year’s event is 100 attendees like last year. First come, first in is our policy.

One of my colleagues wants to attend. Can I send that person instead of me?

Send us an email (vccommscon@bamtheagency.com) so we can determine if your colleague is a good substitute. Keep in mind: this conference is just for full-time people in marketing or comms roles at venture capital firms. Thus, an analyst, fellow, or operations head would probably not get value out of our event.

What should I wear for San Diego?

San Diego is a pretty casual place. See the San Diego tips above.

If I have any logistics questions or other needs during my time in San Diego who should I call?

We’ll have a number to text during the event, drop us an email for now: vccommscon@bamtheagency.com.

Registration is Closed

VC Comms Con is an invite-only gathering of marketing and communication professionals in the venture capital industry. Stay tuned for our 2024 dates!

What’s VC Comms Con all about?

Sharing last year's VC Comms Con

Our 3rd annual VC Comms Con was held in February 2022, see the highlights in the film below.

VC Comms Con is officially sponsored in part by our wonderful partner, VC Platform.

Event schedule

Wednesday, Feb 22nd

Balboa Park

The lawn bowling greens are located near the corner of Balboa Dr and El Prado.

3:00 - 6:00 pm: Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA)

Join us for a fun happy hour at the beautiful Museum of Photographic Arts (MOPA) of Balboa Park. The MOPA is our favorite in the park, and we're in for a great treat because the Sony World Photography Awards are currently exhibiting. Enjoy San Diego beers and handmade street tacos from our favorite vendors. 🌮

Thursday, Feb 23rd

Mingei Museum

The Museum is located at the Plaza de Panama in Balboa Park.

8:00 am: Registration & breakfast open

Grab your badge and breakfast, and check out our stunning space for the day.

Location: Reception, first floor

8:45 am: Welcome from Beck
Overview of the day and introduction of the “pick your own adventure” format.

Location: Theater, bottom floor

8:50 - 9:45 am: Opening panel, “Everything I wish someone told me about this role”

Our panel of long-standing industry icons drop their learnings from 2022 and what they’re doing in 2023.

Location: Theater, bottom floor

10:00 - 10:40 am: Session 1 - Breakouts

See speaker descriptions below.

11:00 - 11:40 am: Session 2 - Breakouts

See speaker descriptions below.

12:00 - 1:00 pm: Lunch

A beautiful lunch by ARTIFACT

Location: ARTIFACT and Neeley courtyard, first floor

1:15 - 1:55 pm: Session 3 - Breakouts

See speaker descriptions below.

2:15 - 2:50 pm: Media Panel

Our live AMA (Ask Media Anything) by our esteemed media panel who will not be holding anything back! Bring your questions. Led by BAM’s Media Strategist, Mike Zucconi.

Location: Theater, bottom floor

3:10 - 3:45 pm: Fruteria bar break

Mingle with others as you enjoy the classic Mexican treat, one of our favorites at BAM!

Location: Neeley courtyard, first floor

3:45 - 4:30 pm: Playbook reruns

The morning's top-voted playbooks will run again for you to catch in case you missed one.

Location: TBD for each, announced at the end of the media panel.

4:00 - 4:30 pm: Mingei tour

Love the museum and need a little break? Take a stroll with a curator who will give you details about the design, artists, and exhibitions of the Mingei.

Location: Reception, first floor

4:30 - 6:00 pm: Happy Hour

We made it! Grab a drink and toast your new friends and colleagues.

Location: ARTIFACT and Neeley courtyard, first floor

Delights open all day:

Pinata bar
Inspired by the extraordinary exhibit on display, here’s your chance to stuff your own mini pinata.

Location: Main gallery, second floor

Paper bar
Paper, pencils, and other fun goodies by a legendary Japanese brand.

Location: By the stairs to the gallery level, first floor

Mingei Store:
Support the museum and take some trinkets home from the Mingei’s curated store.

Location: Shop Mingei, first floor

Seed bar
Inspired by the gardens of the park? Take some of it home.

Location: Neeley courtyard, first floor

Mental health space
Sit in the sunshine, take a call, or enjoy a moment

Location: Prebys Terrace, second floor

Thank you to VC Platform for sponsoring our incredible gathering!

Friday, Feb 24th

Yoga Deck

Yoga Deck is located in Bankers Hill, near Balboa Park.

9:00 - 9:50 am: Yoga session
Start your morning with some energetic yoga in our favorite outdoor yoga space. Mats included. Then walk to Beck's for breakfast, if you want, located 3 blocks away.

9:00 - 11:00 am: Coffee & Breakfast at Beck's
Stop by for breakfast at Beck's place that overlooks Balboa Park.

First time in San Diego? Lucky you. Here are some tips:

Where to Stay

This year’s VC Comms Con is in Balboa Park, just two miles from the International Airport (SAN). We recommend staying in Little Italy, downtown, or Banker’s Hill. If you want the ocean, La Jolla or Coronado will give you the best views. Not a hotel person? San Diego has a lot of Airbnbs.

Here are some of our recommendations (and we’ve stayed at all of them!):

If you want to walk easily to the park and don’t want something fancy, check out The Inn at the Park.

If you want a stunning bay view and have some fancy feels about it, try the Intercontinental.

If you don’t mind a long walk and are cool with some urban vibes, do The Sofia.

What to eat

Everything! Mexican food and craft beer are San Diego staples, and we’ll be having local flavors at our event, don’t worry. Here’s a great guide to stay up to date on the best bites.

what to do

San Diego is super casual and consistently sunny so you can get away with sandals in a restaurant or t-shirts in an office. Consider these tips for dressing even in February which has mild temperatures.

Meet some of our incredible speakers:

Opening Panel Topic: Everything I wish someone told me about this role

SAM AHMED

Panelist

Vice President, Marketing & Comms

S Ahmed

KAREN LEE

Panelist

Vice President, Marketing

JAMIE VIGGIANO

Panelist

Chief Marketing Officer

Jamie V

KEJI Mustapha

PANELIST

Chief Marketing Officer

keji circle

Session 1 - Breakouts

CLIFF WORLEY

SR. Director of Portfolio Growth Marketing

C Worley

Top Marketing Tools You Should Know for 2023

Platform professionals are commonly asked to do the job of an entire marketing department with very few resources.

Cliff Worley, Senior Director of Portfolio Growth Marketing at Kapor Capital, has tested thousands of marketing tools and is sharing his top marketing tools of 2023 that will make you shine in your role. From email marketing to graphic design, Cliff will focus on how you can be a marketing whiz on a shoestring budget.

RIKE DÖPP BERGÉRUS

Director of Communications

Rike

Visualizing Value to Your C-Suite

In communications, it’s crucial to prove how you contribute to business goals. In VC, even more than other industries, data-driven reporting proves value to the company and secures much-needed budgets.

Rike D Bergérus, Director of Communications at day zero investor Antler, is sharing what KPIs she measures, how she presents data to her executive leadership, and the tech stack she swears by to monitor media results for a portfolio of over 600+ companies.

AMBER QUIÑONES

Head of Platform & Operations

Walk the Walk, then Talk the Talk: Running and publishing a firm-wide DEI audit

In 2020, many startups and VC firms alike declared a commitment to improving diversity and inclusion. Three years later — at a time when all-women-founded companies get only 1.9% of venture funding and companies with 1 or more Black founders receive 1.2% of venture dollars — that commitment to diversity can seem hollow.

Amber Quiñones, Head of Platform & Operations at BBG Ventures, will guide you through how she conducted a portfolio-wide and firm-wide diversity audit; shared results both internally and publicly; and used the results to inform changes to the firm’s deal evaluation, hiring, and portfolio support processes.

BOMMY LEE

Head of Communications

B Lee

How We Aced Our Rebrand and Achieved 3x Traffic in Less Than 6 Months

What does it take to bring a fresh face to an institutional brand, deeply rooted in half a century of history and heritage? This was the mission in rebranding the oldest life sciences VC in Europe.

Bommy Lee, Head of Communications at Sofinnova Partners, will take you through the steps to achieving a successful rebrand. Learn how to create a unique identity that differentiates your firm in a crowded sea of competition. You'll leave this session with do's and don't of a rebrand, website launch, vendors, and platforms it takes to knock your KPIs out of the park.

Session 2 - Breakouts

VINCENT TOUATI TOMAS

Head of Marketing and Communications

V Tomas

Building Narratives That Stick: The backbone of your content flywheel

Investing is a particular art at the intersection of engineered innovation and serendipity. There's a lot of upside in building the right narrative that will shed a light on why your VC firm is truly unique. Building your "narrative" helps with firming up investment theses, spotting entrepreneurs, and influencing stakeholders such as financiers, incumbents, the government, the press, and more. A well-oiled narrative can help your content to scale – across virtually anyone in the firm.

In this session, Vincent Touati-Tomas, Head of Marketing and Communications at Northzone, will guide you through the creation of a brand narrative. You'll leave the session with a Notion template with a content pipeline and some tips from the community on what has worked best for leading VCs.

ANA YOERG

VP, Marketing

Not An A-Hole, Just a D: Using the DISC framework to empower Partner, LP, and Founder communication

Communication is key — we all know that. But not everyone says what they mean nor means what they say.

In this session, Ana Yoerg, VP of Marketing at One Ventures, will work to help you understand why the people you work with daily say what they say, why they say it…and what they really mean.

MELODY HAHM

Platform and Community Manager

The Secret Sauce to Ace A (Sponsored) Founder Summit

2 years ago I launched our "Harlem Homecoming" founder summit. Amidst COVID, I was able to get half of our portfolio to fly to Dallas for a 2-day retreat brimming with tactical sessions, impressive fireside chat speakers, and much more. And most importantly, we were able to secure a sponsor who took care of lodging, food, drinks, facilities, and everything in between.

Melody will share the frameworks and strategies for programming an unmissable founder summit, and ways to secure a sponsor who can be a partner in the planning of the event itself.

NATASHA AZAR

VP of Investor Relations & Marketing

Meet and Communicate with LPs: Even in a down market

2022 was perhaps the toughest fundraising market since the 2008 financial crisis. So how do you attract an LPs attention in this market, especially if you're a lesser-known name?

Natasha Azar, VP of Investor Relations and Marketing, has talked to dozens of IR folks and learned how to focus efforts to efficiently fundraise. During this session, she will share best practices on how and where to meet LPs and communication tactics to grab their attention — plus some creative and unorthodox methods to meet allocators.

Session 3 - Breakouts

KIRA COLBURN

Head of Content

A Playbook For Leveraging Data To Get Press Attention

Getting press attention for your firm in the absence of hard news can be extremely challenging. While having a unique point of view on your industry is important, what really drives the press to write a story is data — specifically data they can’t source from other public databases or firms.

Kira Colburn, Head of Content at Work-Bench, will share her playbook on how to generate topics, source proprietary data, and craft a narrative relevant to your firm’s brand, and then secure top-tier media coverage.

MARIE FABIUNKE

Operating Partner

More PR in IR: How to double down on content, storytelling, and brand experience for LPs

In an increasingly competitive market, VCs need to bring their communication with Limited Partners - existing and prospective - to the next level. They need to invest more content, storytelling, and a unique brand experience in order to build and strengthen trusted relationships and a strong community of backers for their firm.

Marie will share insights and observations from a decade-long experience in building and running Communications & IR programs for European VCs

Jen Derks

Founder, Creative Director

Lead a Brand Refresh

Things evolve quickly in the VC landscape, founders want investors with fresh looks, and LPs want to trust and authority. You know that refreshing the brand would help, but how do you get internal buy-in? How do you find the right partner? How do you guide the process on both sides like a seasoned pro?

In this playbook, Jen Derks, Creative Director of Four Fin Creative, shares branding basics so you can talk the talk, common pitfalls you should get ahead of, and brand examples from her firm with a behind-the-scenes narrative you don't see on agency portfolio pages.

MISTI CAIN

Head of Platform

Misti

From "Startup" to "Success Story": The Top 5 Ways VCs Can Dramatically Increase Their Portfolio Success Rate

Whyzze has provided strategy roadmaps for hundreds of successful (and not so successful) VCs, founders, and delivery teams. In order to articulate why portfolio support is so crucial, Whyzze surveyed approximately 1100 founders and VCs regarding what is needed for their startups to generate sales, turn a profit, and/or become a “did you hear…” press-worthy startup success story. After compiling and analyzing the data, what differentiated the most successful VCs and startups from those that struggled boiled down to five key areas.

Misti Cain, founder of Whyzze (pronounced ‘wise’), will share the survey data results, why these five areas lead to higher than average portfolio success rates, and a step-by-step playbook that shows you how to implement these critical areas of support in your firm in order to replicate the success results.

Media to meet:

Ben Bergman

INSIDER

Senior Correspondent, VC + Startups

Juliet Bennett Rylah

The Hustle

Biz/Tech Writer

Kia Kokalitcheva

Axios

Technology Reporter

Allie Garfinkle

YAHOO Finance

Senior Reporter

Attend VC Comms Con to:

Meet and learn from 100+ comms and marketing pros at funds from around the world.

Get in-depth knowledge and know-how from “secret sauce” playbooks and talks that are not recorded or published.

Start relationships with top tier media that cover VC and portfolio companies.

–

Gain community because this is THE event for VC comms and marketing pros such as yourself.

FAQs

What messaging can I use to support the case for VC Comms Con to my partners (bosses)?: Beyond sending them to this page, we suggest highlighting the four reasons noted above on this page. Further, you can mention that all the material presented is exclusive to this gathering and that there is nowhere else the presentations will exist. In short, you need to be there to up-level your role and your support of portfolio companies in person.
Will all of the content be recorded or captured in some way?: Per our tradition, we won’t be recording the content nor will it be distributed afterward. We want our speakers to be as frank as possible and enjoy the magic of in-person connection. Come hang out with us in person.
What does my ticket include?: Your ticket includes all the events listed on the schedule above. Your ticket does not include travel and accommodations.
How do I get an invite to VC Comms Con?: We keep our gathering invite-only to make sure everyone attending is a full-time comms and marketing professional at a VC fund. Plus, we know everyone in this community and it’s important to keep our No Assholes rule in place. If you’re a full-time comms and marketing professional at a VC fund who’d like to attend, drop us a line: vccommscon@bamtheagency.com.
How will I get in touch with everybody I meet at the event?: Unless you decline when you check in, we will share everyone’s email afterward so you don’t need to worry about cards. Plus, who has cards? Too 2009 for our taste.
What about media that will be attending? Will I get their contact information?: This will depend on the individual journalists. We’ll respect them if they don’t wish to share their contact info with everyone in attendance.
Which airport should I fly into?: San Diego International Airport (SAN) is your best bet. This airport is about a 5-minute drive to all the events in Balboa Park.
Are discounts available for the ticket?: Sadly no. Our tickets simply cover the cost of this event and are not a revenue stream for BAM. Given the limit of 100 attendees, full ticket prices are what we have to stick with.
I’m really excited! How many people are coming to this event?: Our max for this year’s event is 100 attendees like last year. First come, first in is our policy.
One of my colleagues wants to attend. Can I send that person instead of me?: Send us an email (vccommscon@bamtheagency.com) so we can determine if your colleague is a good substitute. Keep in mind: this conference is just for full-time people in marketing or comms roles at venture capital firms. Thus, an analyst, fellow, or operations head would probably not get value out of our event.
What should I wear for San Diego?: San Diego is a pretty casual place. See the San Diego tips above.
If I have any logistics questions or other needs during my time in San Diego who should I call?: We’ll have a number to text during the event, drop us an email for now: vccommscon@bamtheagency.com.

Registration is Closed

What’s VC Comms Con all about?

Sharing last year's VC Comms Con

Our 3rd annual VC Comms Con was held in February 2022, see the highlights in the film below.

VC Comms Con is officially sponsored in part by our wonderful partner, VC Platform.

Event schedule

Wednesday, Feb 22nd

Thursday, Feb 23rd

Friday, Feb 24th

First time in San Diego? Lucky you. Here are some tips:

Where to Stay

What to eat

what to do

Meet some of our incredible speakers:

Opening Panel Topic: Everything I wish someone told me about this role

SAM AHMED

Panelist

KAREN LEE

Panelist

JAMIE VIGGIANO

Panelist

KEJI Mustapha

PANELIST

Session 1 - Breakouts

CLIFF WORLEY

RIKE DÖPP BERGÉRUS

AMBER QUIÑONES

BOMMY LEE

Session 2 - Breakouts

VINCENT TOUATI TOMAS

ANA YOERG

MELODY HAHM

NATASHA AZAR

Session 3 - Breakouts

KIRA COLBURN

MARIE FABIUNKE

Jen Derks

MISTI CAIN

Media to meet:

Ben Bergman

INSIDER

Juliet Bennett Rylah

The Hustle

Kia Kokalitcheva

Axios

Allie Garfinkle

YAHOO Finance

Attend VC Comms Con to:

FAQs

BAM

BAM STORIES

CONTACT BAM