What’s the kind of advice you find yourself giving VCs most often?

‍The first piece of advice I find myself giving VCs most often is: if you want to build a strong brand, you cannot be afraid to be different. Marketing is, at its core, about differentiation. Tired, generic positioning like “founder-friendly” and “high-conviction” will not make you stand out. Most of the time, it’s a combination of fear and laziness that holds investors back from putting forth bold narratives, but the lack of a bold narrative can also be a sign that a firm’s investment strategy lacks the edge necessary to be successful.

This is an important time — when these tools are being tested and developed — for writers and creatives to get involved and help shape the narrative. We cannot leave everything to American Big Tech companies. I am particularly interested to connect with writers and creatives from non-Western cultural backgrounds on these topics. We need this kind of collaboration.

What’s the kind of advice you find yourself giving VCs most often?

‍The first piece of advice I find myself giving VCs most often is: if you want to build a strong brand, you cannot be afraid to be different. Marketing is, at its core, about differentiation. Tired, generic positioning like “founder-friendly” and “high-conviction” will not make you stand out. Most of the time, it’s a combination of fear and laziness that holds investors back from putting forth bold narratives, but the lack of a bold narrative can also be a sign that a firm’s investment strategy lacks the edge necessary to be successful.

This is an important time — when these tools are being tested and developed — for writers and creatives to get involved and help shape the narrative. We cannot leave everything to American Big Tech companies. I am particularly interested to connect with writers and creatives from non-Western cultural backgrounds on these topics. We need this kind of collaboration.

What are some of your favourite or most memorable artefacts at the intersection of tech and media? (anything - articles, logos, landing pages, pods, photos)

• The video of a real dog barking at Boston Dynamics’s robot Spot (link) always sticks in my mind. We’ve written a lot about the uncanny valley effect of looking at almost human, not quite robots or representations. How do other species feel when they see machine versions of themselves?
• The Tiny Awards, which celebrate “the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web”, bring me back to the days when we were all making little websites and the internet was overflowing with intimacy and creativity.
• I loved the recent interview between the Japanese music star Utada Hikaru and author Yuval Noah Harari, which was hosted by NewsPicks, about AI’s impact on creativity. He seems so callous about allowing tech to take his job, while Utada's passion and curiosity really shine through — the contrast mirrors how I see many in the tech world think about these tools versus the more humanist approach of actual creatives.

What are you working on these days?

These days, I am busy with a mix of advisory work and writing. I advise startups on storytelling and communications, and support the incredible team at Bek Ventures. My current writing projects include my newsletter about AI and writing and starting my second novel after finishing a first one this year.