Kerry Bennett, Partner, Head of Platform at Upfront Ventures

So You Want to Sit On Boards: Top Tips for Success

Are you a board-curious platform leader? Are you wondering whether, and how, to put yourself forward to engage more with the portfolio in an advisory capacity? Then this session is for you! 

I'll provide some practical, actionable ways to set yourself up for success at the board. We'll cover how, when, and even whether to start gaining board experience; building credibility in both functional and fiduciary responsibilities; adding value in your first board seat (AKA how not to F*** it up); and how to navigate the internal firm dynamics. 

Camille Creighton, Head of Communications and Content at Baukunst

The 6-Step VC Social Media Playbook: How We Built an Audience of Nearly 150K

Two years ago, Baukunst had virtually no online presence. Today, we've built an audience of nearly 150K founders, co-investors, operators, and LPs, largely by betting on Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn instead of fighting for attention on X. In this session, I'll break down the six-step playbook we used, what's actually worked for us, what hasn't, and how you can apply it to your own firm's social strategy.

Ola Jewusiak, VP of Marketing at Jump Capital

Marketing Is Change Management: How to Bring People With You

I was dropped into Jump Trading and asked to build its brand and website from scratch in 12 weeks. After 25 years as a successful "if you know, you know" company, almost everything I needed to understand about what made Jump special lived in people's heads. And leaders who seemed completely aligned didn't always agree once we started putting those ideas into words.

I quickly realized the website wasn't going to be the hard part. The people were.

I'm sharing what that experience taught me about treating marketing like change management, from finding the disagreement hiding underneath consensus to building internal champions, understanding what's really behind feedback, and giving people a voice without turning every decision into a group vote. 

Elyse Crowston, VP at Operations Active Impact Investments

I Fired Our Spreadsheet: How Me and my Team of Robots Quarterback Our LP and Co-Investor Outreach

In every fundraising process, both our fund or when we help portco's, I used to drown in spreadsheets. Prospect hit lists, who's been reached out to, follow-ups, next actions. It's a mess that starts to decay as soon as you've got it ready. Those days are gone! Now a big, enriched Airtable base hums in the background, stitching together our CRM history, LP prospect research, and the cap table data we’d been sitting on for years.

AI is my offensive coordinator, I call the plays: which teammate reaches out to which investor, and why. Each person gets the context to write a message that sounds like them, then every reply flows back into the base on its own, so the funnel updates itself while we spend our time creating actual value for our founders and fund.

This session will demonstrate the live playbook—no code, uncomplicated, actionable examples that you can apply to any outreach process your fund operates.

Megan Dubofsky, Partner + CMO at Ten Eleven Ventures

From a team of 1 to 4+ over 8 years: Building a Scalable VC Platform/Comms Function

VC platform teams are often expected to handle every function, from PR launches to founder introductions, often as a team of one initially.

In this tactical workshop, I'll share my tangible model and specific timeline for growing my team into a full-fledged machine over eight years at Ten Eleven.

I'll give frameworks for portfolio onboarding, communications, founder communities, events, vendor relationships, and thought leadership, which can be adapted immediately without sacrificing the high-touch relationships that make venture platform work effective.

Aaron Brindle, Partner at Radical Ventures

From Lab to Lede: How I Turn Technical AI Into a Story People Actually Care About

Some of the most interesting AI founders I've worked with can explain the science behind what they're building for hours. Turning that into a story a reporter actually wants to tell is a completely different challenge.

I'm sharing how I work with deeply technical founders to find that story without watering down what makes the technology compelling. I'll walk through three real AI startup launches, how to pull a narrative out of technical conversations, how to decide which parts of the story actually matter, and how to match that story to the right reporters. I'll also get into what's working and what's not when pitching AI right now, especially when every company is fighting to cut through the same noise.

Michelle Kung, Head of Marketing at Wing Venture Capital & Karen Lee , CMO at Mayfield Funds

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What We Kept, Cut, Hired and Handed to AI: Lessons From Going Big to Small

We've both worked inside some of the biggest names in venture and tech, including a16z, Bessemer, Index, and Amazon. We know what it's like to have a deep bench and a big budget. Today we run leaner teams, and we'd argue they can move faster, tell sharper stories, and punch well above their weight.

In this session, we'll open up exactly how we do it: which agencies and freelancers we contract with, what we've brought in-house and who we've hired, and where AI has taken on real work. We'll also cover what we miss about big teams, what we don't, and the trade-offs every lean marketing and comms team has to make in today's VC landscape.

Amanda Bell, Vice President of Public Relations at XRC Ventures

How I Booked Bloomberg TV 10+ Times (and Kept Getting Invited Back)

I've built a relationship with Bloomberg TV and have booked more than 10 segments with them to highlight portfolio companies. Nobody has walked off set yet, and I'd like to keep that streak going.

In this talk, I'll share my playbook for building relationships with booking producers, making it easy for them to say "yes" to a segment and training your founders to interview well.

I'll also share the tips and tricks I've picked up along the way to keep a founder from making a fool of themselves on live TV (no pressure), plus how to use the segment afterward to get investor and customer attention.

Allison Braley, Partner + Head of Marketing at Bain Capital

Zero Ad Dollars-->Millions of Views: The Playbook Behind Bain Capital Ventures' $1.6B Fund Launch

We've all done fund announcements. So for our 11th fund launch, $1.6B to back founders building for a post-AGI world, I tried something a bit different.

In this session, I'll walk through the playbook that got us a full hour on TBPN, two Bloomberg pieces (online and broadcast), millions of views on our launch video with zero dollars spent, and how we leveraged 33 founders as our evangelists to spread the fund's news.