Creating Narratives that Convince Institutional Investors - a16z's Podcast Strategy
A 500-people firm whose punching above its weight with ideas like "Software is eating the world"
How Venture Capital Firm a16z's Ideas Punch Above Their Weight
If you are in the world of startups or finance, or any industry they invest in, you must have heard of their ideas, if not the company itself.
It’s personal: one particular talk that triggered my interest in fintech or financial technology “every company will be a fintech” by a16z’s partner Angela Strange. But they similarly touch many other people.
Here’s a video breakdown of their podcast. I’d call it a shallow dive, because it’s a broad overview, unlike last month’s deep dive into one of Ahrefs’s videos.
TL;DW (Too Long; Didn’t Watch)
a16z is a 500-employee Venture Capital firm whose ideas punch above its weight. They invest heavily in content and have developed a podcast network. They’re the ultimate example of a B2B company, their clients are mainly large institutions, that looks like a media company.
A few takeaways for B2B brands:
If you sell multiple products, consider creating a podcast (or content series) for each one
Interview external guests, but mix it up with internal guests to showcase the expertise within your firm
Create shows - not just Zoom conversations
Behind the scenes
I was encouraged that over 250 people watched the previous video on Ahrefs without any promotional efforts. That’s mainly thanks to the YouTube “Browse features”, that help people to explore new content. It shows you that getting a video optimized for YouTube is a lot more efficient than spending time to share it on other platforms.
With the a16z episode, I wanted to narrow the brief and liked the idea of brands that “punch above their weight” with content - which led to the “ContenTer” title, which sounded very lame. I kept it in as ChatGPT encouraged me to go for it with this answer that fits what I had in mind:
Unlike the previous one, the video, so far, has barely been watched. This is the result I expected for the first one. It’s waaaay too early to conclude anything, but I will dig into the analytics before making changes for the next episode.
Next:
I’m transforming this series into a podcast. I’ll probably start with repurposing a conversation from a previous episode of my former b2b fintech podcast with Nvidia, as they’re very hot right now and there were great marketing insights.
Previously: