Register Today
Wednesday, February 18 — Friday, February 20, 2026
We can’t wait to have you at our 7th annual VC Comms Con, the invite-only gathering of marketing and comms professionals in the venture capital industry. We cap attendance to 120 people as usual to maximize the experience for all of us. Snag your ticket today.
VC Comms Con is invite-only. Don't have a code? See the FAQs below.
Power Panel
Bommy Lee , Head of Comms at Sofinnova Partners
Bommy is a 20+ year veteran of journalism, PR, and comms who established Sofinnova Partner’s first comms function in 2020. Since then, she has built it into a strategic engine for global visibility and influence, strengthening Sofinnova's 50-year legacy and helping position the firm for the future. With a lean, high-performing team and trusted agency partners, Bommy oversees global PR, brand, events, community, and design. She also contributes to shaping industry perception as an active member of Invest Europe’s Communications Advisory Group and France Invest’s Comms Council.
Jennifer Bavinger (Smelyanets), Vice President, Marketing and Comms at Sapphire Ventures
Jenny is the VP of marketing and communications at Sapphire Ventures where she’s focused on brand building and supporting deal flow through PR/comms, content, digital, and events programs. A storyteller at heart, she has nearly 20 years of VC and tech experience across marketing and communications. Prior to Sapphire, she worked at companies like Salesforce and Criteo, and at comms firms like Text 100, HORN. and others.
Melissa Sobel, Marketing and Comms Partner at CapitalG
Over the course of her 20+ year career, Melissa has worked with many dozens of startups, big tech companies and VC and PE firms in both in-house and agency roles. As the marketing and communications partner at Alphabet's multibillion-dollar independent growth fund, CapitalG, she oversees the firm’s owned and earned media initiatives and works closely with portfolio company leaders to help them build high-impact communications programs and maximize their big brand moments. CapitalG investments include CrowdStrike, Duolingo, Airbnb, Stripe, UiPath, Databricks, Monzo, Whatnot and more.
Kate Barrett, Partner, Head of Comms and Marketing at NEA
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Kate Barrett is a writer, comms pro and data junkie who loves working at the intersection of creativity and data-driven insights to build compelling narratives. She hasn't been bored for a single day since joining NEA as the firm's first communications hire in 2007, where she focuses on strategic comms, content and brand for the firm while supporting founders and executives across NEA's 500-plus-strong portfolio. Prior to joining NEA, she held a variety of communications and project management roles at MedImmune (acquired by AstraZeneca), The Kroger Co. and The E. W. Scripps Company. She started her career at The Cincinnati Enquirer after earning a degree in English/Journalism at Miami University.
Session 1 Breakouts
Allison Hoffman, Head of Marketing at Define Ventures
Expanding Your Strategic Marketing Toolbox Beyond Comms
In many VC firms, the line between communications and marketing is increasingly blurred. But expanding into marketing requires more than simply adding a few channels to your plan. This session walks through a practical roadmap for layering marketing capabilities onto a comms foundation without losing focus.
Allison will cover:
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How to identify and prioritize marketing activities that have the highest ROI for your firm and portfolio.
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Frameworks for integrating brand, content, and demand-generation thinking into comms work.
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Metrics and reporting methods that resonate with partners and investment teams.
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Participants will leave with a shortlist of tools, processes, and quick wins they can implement immediately to broaden their scope and impact.
Becca Chambers, CMO at Scale Venture Partners
The Anti-Guru Guide to LinkedIn: Building Authentic Influence
Most comms pros treat LinkedIn like a digital press release. The posts are polished. Forgettable. Safe. And completely ignored.
Becca did the opposite. In just 18 months, she went from lurker to top-ranked voice on the platform — growing from 4,000 to 75,000+ followers and hitting 10 million monthly views — by breaking every so-called rule. Her strategy? Authenticity on purpose. Writing like a human. Saying something that actually matters. Showing up with consistency, not perfection.
Becca breaks down:
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What actually performs, how to work with (not against) the LinkedIn algorithm.
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Which tools are worth your time.
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How to coach even the most LinkedIn-averse investors to build a presence with staying power.
Cliff Worley, Head of Portfolio Marketing at Kapor Capital
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Top AI Marketing Tools For 2026
There are over 50,000 AI tools out there. Most of them are noise. A few are lethal.
In this fast-paced session, Cliff Worley—Head of Portfolio Marketing at Kapor Capital and one of the most trusted voices in AI for business—cuts through the hype to deliver the tools that actually work.
You’ll get the definitive shortlist of the top AI tools for 2026:
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Tools that make you faster
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Tools that make you smarter
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Tools that make you look like you have a 10-person team behind you
Each tool shared isn’t just cool—it’s been vetted, tested, and proven to get results. Whether you’re in marketing, operations, leadership, or creative work, these tools will give you an edge most professionals don’t even know exists.
Every AI tool you learn in this session is a career cheat code.
Because the people who know how to use the right tools? They’re not replaceable—they’re unstoppable.
Elyse Crowston, VP, Operations at Active Impact Investments
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Less Money, More Magic: Making Founder Events as Scrappy (and Brilliant) as Founders
As budgets and teams get slashed but expectations stay sky-high, it’s easy to let sponsors call the shots and dilute the magic. We flipped that script. Learn how I built a Founder Summit with pro sales training, a destination bike ride, and a dinner-turned-afterparty, all on just $3K from our Fund.
Founders raved, sponsors were over the moon, and maybe the most surprised of all were my GPs (who now want more). This is the unvarnished playbook for running gatherings that are magnetic, memorable, and way more fun than the budget should allow.
Session 2 Breakouts
Sophie Buonassisi, SVP Marketing at GMTfund
Media as a Moat: Building a Content Flywheel for Your Firm
In this tactical session, Sophie Buonassisi shares how GTMfund built GTMnow: a media engine designed to drive firm visibility, attract LPs, support portfolio companies, and elevate the thought leadership of its operator community.
In this session, Sophie will share:
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The content flywheel framework behind GTMnow, including how to grow an owned audience, turn community into an editorial advantage, and scale content with AI without sacrificing quality.
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How an AI layer sits on top of the media engine, transforming content into a tool for winning competitive deals and enabling portfolio companies in real time.
Pauline Jimenez, Head of Marketing at KOMPAS VC
Mastering the Impossible: How to Manage 3 Bosses, 10 Jobs, and Still Make It Home by 6pm
Being a one-person marketing team in VC often means juggling PR, content, events, and brand — all while managing multiple internal stakeholders and staying sane. You'll walk away from this session with a toolkit you’ll actually want to use on Monday.
Pauline will dive into real frameworks, tools, and tactics to:
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Win buy-in from partners without nagging.
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Say 'no' with grace.
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Prioritize ruthlessly.
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Deliver high-impact decks fast.
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Balance execution with strategy.
Ashley O'Connor, Senior Marketing Manager at B Capital
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Turning Ideas Into Influence: Building a Thought Leadership Engine
The firms that shape the market conversation do so with discipline, not luck. At B Capital, we’ve built a thought leadership engine that turns sporadic ideas into a sustained narrative across platforms, audiences, and time zones.
It’s about more than blog posts or bylines: it’s creating signature content formats that compound over time, aligning partners around distinct lanes of expertise, and linking every output, whether a panel, a LinkedIn post, or a portfolio spotlight, back to a coherent story of who we are and where we invest.
I’ll share the principles behind building an engine that is rigorous enough to earn trust, flexible enough to run consistently, and differentiated enough to cut through the noise. Content isn’t just communications, it’s competitive strategy.
Liana Corwin, Director of Marketing and Comms at N47
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Rebranding As Strategy, Not Aesthetic
When is the right time to rebrand, and how do you do it without losing what made your brand meaningful in the first place? In this session, Liana will take you behind the scenes of Next47’s evolution into N47.
Going from concept to execution in 8 months, she’ll share how her team knew it was time to evolve (and how to get stakeholders on board), what the end-to-end process looked like, and how they launched a coordinated global rollout across teams and time zones. You’ll walk away with actionable insights on navigating GP alignment, managing complexity, and maintaining (and even uncovering) authenticity through a major brand transformation.
Robyn Park, Head of Platform at Designer Fund
How I Stopped Hating Content and Built a System That Runs Itself
When you're the only person running platform at an early-stage fund, traditional content playbooks break down fast. Robyn went from dreading every newsletter to building repeatable systems that generate high-impact thought leadership while preventing burnout.
In this session, Robyn will share tactical content flywheels, including:
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Turning interviews into evergreen Substack content.
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Creating reports.
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Building an event-to-content pipeline.
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Developing portfolio resources that showcase expertise while serving founders.
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AI workflows and recommended tools, plus areas where AI falls short.
Kira Colburn, Director of Comms at SOSV
Charting Your Career in VC Comms and Navigating Your Next Move
In VC comms, there’s no standard career ladder. Roles can be broad or highly specialized, tied to firm performance, and shaped by market cycles. That means your next move could look like a bigger firm, a smaller one, an in-house role at a portfolio company, a return to agency life, or even a pivot into brand, platform, or investor relations.
Kira will share her experience navigating a VC comms career shift and share best practices on:
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How to assess where you are now and clarify what you want next.
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Tips for evaluating opportunities against both personal and market realities.
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How to identify your non-negotiables, read between the lines in job descriptions, and align your skill set with where the industry is headed.
Elise Houren, Partner + Chief Comms Officer at Build Collective
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When There’s Hype, What Really Wins: The Power of Restraint in VC Storytelling & How Thoughtful Communications Build Lasting Brands.
In VC, it can feel like a merry-go-round of more press, more panels, more content but that noise doesn’t build lasting and legacy brand equity. The firms, GPs, and founders who last are the ones who know when not to speak, when to go deep, and how to align story with true purpose.
For the past 7+ years Elise has helped Tony Fadell the inventor of the iPod, co-inventor of the iPhone, founder of Nest, and principal of Build Collective shape his voice and brand as an investor. She will explore the myth of visibility, the cost of noise, the power of precision, quality vs. quantity in “the attention economy,” and redefining what a brand means in venture today.
Iris Mansour, Former Senior Creator Manager at Linkedin
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Stop Guessing: LinkedIn Strategies for VCs, Straight from the Inside
LinkedIn hired Iris Mansour to work with the platform’s most influential VCs. As the Senior Tech Creator Manager, she developed strategies for investors who were reluctant to post but still needed visibility, deal flow and credibility with founders.
She was inside the machine, seeing the data, testing ideas, and honing what works for high-profile investors and their teams.
Because the truth is, unless you’ve been inside LinkedIn, it’s all guesswork.
Now, for the first time since leaving LinkedIn, Iris is sharing the frameworks, content formats, and strategic models she developed there — built for reluctant VCs and their time-strapped teams.
In this hands-on workshop Iris will share:
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Top-performing VC content with examples and breakdowns
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How to consistently generate and execute high-performing VC content
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A lightweight process for getting ideas and insights out of investors’ heads
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Live Q&A — bring your toughest questions, Iris will deconstruct and demystify
Session 4 Breakouts
Marissa Sterling, Platform Associate at Burnt Island Ventures
How to Vibe Code Your Way to a Dream Marketing Team on $25 or Less
Marissa is a one-person platform team that handles all aspects of the platform: IR, reporting, marketing, events, and portfolio support. You name it, she's on it.
She is on a mission to transform how the world thinks about investing in the world's most fundamental molecule: water. And she does all this with almost zero budget.
Join Marissa for a conversation on how to use vibe coding to make AI your bestest bestie and create a customized, killer marketing machine.
Maggie Mouat, Communications Manager at Toyota Ventures
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Walking the Internal and External CVC Communications Tightrope
As a comms professional, we know how hard it is to balance the distinct demands of internal and external communications for a CVC.
In this session, Maggie will walk attendees through actionable strategies for building brand credibility, communicating strategic value, and creating a unified messaging strategy that serves both the customer (the startup) and their partner (the corporate parent).
Learn how to:
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Clearly communicate your firm’s mission, investments, and strategic value to the parent company using a variety of tactics.
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Build strategies to build a credible, founder-friendly brand that overcomes common CVC stereotypes.
Lorraine Sanders, Head of Content at Alpaca VC
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Hypno-what? The Subconscious Solution to Your Founders’ Stubborn Blocks (Or Your Own)
As a VC comms or platform pro, you've seen this before: brilliant founders who struggle to publish a LinkedIn post, refuse to speak on stage, or freeze up during podcast interviews. What if there was a tool that could help your portfolio founders (or yourself) break through these barriers in hours instead of years?
Enter hypnotherapy: the goal-oriented cousin of meditation that's quietly trending among top performers.
Lorraine will share:
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The neuroscience behind why it works faster than traditional therapy.
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How to identify when a founder might benefit from hypnotherapy vs. traditional coaching.
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Real examples of how this tool is being used in the startup ecosystem.
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A 15-minute guided self-hypnosis session you can customize for any goal.
Kirk Patel, Co-founder of M'idea Hub
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Crafting the Perfect Presentation: From Data to Decisions with Design-Driven
Storytelling
After designing over 300+ decks for 50+ VC and PE firms, we’ve seen what works—and
what doesn’t—when it comes to communicating performance, credibility, and vision
through presentations.
This isn’t theory — it’s a behind-the-scenes look at how top firms use smart design and
clear storytelling to make complex ideas simple and memorable.
In this session, Kirk will share:
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Practical slide design templates and frameworks.
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Real examples of successful VC/PE pitch decks.
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Actionable tips for improving their current decks, regardless of where they are in
the process.
Panels
Joshua Goodfield, Executive Director at VC Platform
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How to Get Sponsors to “Yes” for Your VC Event
You've nailed the event vision, venue, and guest list. But now you need to find sponsors. Josh will use real-world examples to cover:
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How to position your event beyond just the marketing headlines.
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What sponsors really want and how to give it to them.
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How to not compromise your event while keeping sponsors happy.
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How to get in front of top-tier partners.
Michael Zucconi, Managing Director at BAM
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What Media Want in 2026
Join Mike Zucconi once again for a candid conversation with our media guests including Michael Nunez from VentureBeat, Kia Kokalitcheva from Pitchbook, and Zach Rubin from TradedVC.
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