{"id":21462,"date":"2024-08-22T21:43:46","date_gmt":"2024-08-22T21:43:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21462"},"modified":"2024-08-22T21:43:47","modified_gmt":"2024-08-22T21:43:47","slug":"how-a-chief-brand-officer-navigates-the-vc-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysourcefunding.com\/?p=21462","title":{"rendered":"How a chief brand officer navigates the VC world"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Michael J. Miraflor is a bit of an advertising connoisseur. From the looks of his X account, he\u2019s constantly checking the vibes<\/em>, <\/em>offering <\/em>takes honed from nearly two decades in agency life, where he led strategy for brands like Puma, Gucci, and H&M at Publicis and led projects for LVMH and Google at MediaLink.<\/p>\n

Today, he\u2019s chief brand officer of Hannah Gray, a VC firm where he says he sometimes \u201cslots in as a short-term, interim CMO\u201d for some of the firm\u2019s portfolio companies. Marketing Brew asked Miraflor about his gig differs from agency life, and how he offers founders ways to troubleshoot marketing challenges.<\/p>\n

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.<\/em><\/p>\n

How do you explain your job to your parents?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I usually start with explaining what venture capital is\u2014I didn\u2019t grow up in a household where finances were talked about out in the open…I\u2019m someone at a firm that invests in founders who are trying to get their businesses off the ground to one day be household-name brands.<\/p>\n

What does a chief brand officer do within a VC firm? I don\u2019t think of marketing when I think of venture capital.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is a very unique title for VC, but I think it speaks to our unique value prop as a fund.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m equally obsessed with brands and creativity as I am with technology and innovation\u2026not only [is Hannah Gray] capable of identifying founders with a lot of potential, but we can actually help them, both strategically and tactically, with their go-to-market\u2026It boils down to helping portfolio companies and their founders with everything that they need to go from zero to one with all things marketing\u2026It doesn\u2019t matter what category, every brand needs a website, they need to do some very fundamental things like SEO, SEM\u2026In some ways, for some of our portfolio companies, I sort of slot in as a short-term, interim CMO, just to get the house in order\u2026A great example: We have a consumer brand that we invested in called Stand. They are a footwear company that is designed for people who have jobs where they need to spend a lot of time on their feet\u2026They used to be called Gales, and they used to be narrowly targeted towards healthcare professionals and nurses. I assisted with helping to kind of reposition from Gales into Stand and also helped them find who eventually became their chief design officer\u2026There aren\u2019t a lot of people who cross over from the brand and agency world into venture capital, but it\u2019s my opinion that more people should consider it. There just isn\u2019t a very clear pathway to make that transition, but people with similar titles or similar experiences are starting to find each other.<\/p>\n

How is VC life different from agency life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The big fundamental thing that I sometimes still need to pause and wrap my head around is that when you\u2019re on the agency side, there are a lot of deadlines that happen in rapid succession, fairly quickly\u2026In VC, especially in the early stage we invest in\u2014pre-seed and seed\u2014we know that a breakout hit won\u2019t happen for five to 10 years. It\u2019s going to take that amount of time for even the most talented of founders to grow their company to a point where they can either be acquired or go public, which are the ultimate best-case scenarios, and that just takes time.<\/p>\n

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We\u2019re taking bets that these founders will be successful in the long term, which is a totally different time horizon than the agency world. That\u2019s the biggest difference, I would say.<\/p>\n

What do you spend most of your time working on? When you\u2019re talking to these founders, what are the challenges you\u2019re helping them troubleshoot?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Some [founders] are very marketing savvy, or they have really good instincts. Conversations I have with them are mostly to validate what their intentions might have been, and just put some structure around it and introduce them to people to help execute what their vision is.<\/p>\n

There are other founders that are quite technical and really need an education to bring them up to speed, but ultimately, my goal is to understand what their problems, challenges, and opportunities are, and build the perfect brief for them to find the help that they need to grow their companies.<\/p>\n

You can be a founder and you might have the best intentions with marketing, but you\u2019re juggling like 15 other things, right? So you might get around to it when you have time, and you probably don\u2019t have financing to hire a senior marketer, or that probably wouldn\u2019t be worth spending your capital on; that\u2019s where I slot in.<\/p>\n

What is a mistake you see from a lot of these early-stage companies in terms of branding and advertising?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s use B2B for example\u2026SaaS companies, it took them a while to understand that even though their customer is B2B\u2026you will exist in the world, and people will form opinions on what you stand for and how they feel about you upon first impression, based on how much you pay attention or care about your branding and positioning.<\/p>\n

What else should I ask you about your gig?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There should be more people that consider crossing over to venture or platform roles within VC, whether it be like chief brand officer, like what I do, or, you know, to be like growth marketers or people in PR. I feel like there\u2019s a need for it.<\/p>\n

Founders appreciate it, and, you know, just the cold reality of the agency world is that at a certain point or age, you kind of get kicked out, right? And where do you go? Where\u2019s a good landing spot? I think VC should be an option.<\/p>\n

When I was on the agency side, I went to one retirement party, because everyone else had left prior to that, unceremoniously, because that\u2019s just the way the industry works.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael J. Miraflor is a bit of an advertising connoisseur. From the looks of his X account, he\u2019s constantly checking the vibes, offering takes honed from nearly two decades in agency life, where he led strategy for brands like Puma, Gucci, and H&M at Publicis and led projects for LVMH and Google at MediaLink. Today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-marketing"},"yoast_head":"\nHow a chief brand officer navigates the VC world | Brandiary<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Michael J. Miraflor is a bit of an advertising connoisseur. 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