Fuel, Fire, and the Truth About Venture Capital

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know I talk a lot about brand.

About how it drives growth, creates connection, and becomes the clearest expression of your business’s truth in the world.

But today, I want to talk about something deeper. Something underneath the messaging and the design and the storytelling frameworks. Something that doesn’t get said nearly enough:

Venture capital is like gasoline.
It can fuel your business.
Or it can burn it down.

I’m proud to be one of the far too few women who’s raised venture capital.
(Still today, women receive less than 2% of all VC funding. For women of color and other underrepresented founders, the number is even smaller. That has to change.)

It took so much more than a pitch deck and a good idea. It took courage. A ridiculous number of revisions. Hundreds of meetings. A long line of no’s and more than a few flat-out rude rejections. It made me tougher. It taught me grit. And I’m grateful for it.

But here’s the part not enough people say. Especially to first-time founders. Especially to women:

VC isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a contract.

It’s not just capital. It’s pressure, power dynamics, and a legal partnership.
And it changes everything.

Venture capital changes:

• How fast you’re expected to grow.
• Who gets a vote on what.
• What success looks like. And who defines it.
• How decisions are made. And who makes them.
• How you lead your team. 
• And who and how you let go.
  
  

Most significantly, it can shift the center of gravity away from your original vision and toward the expectations and timelines of people who now own a piece of what you're building.

Why does this matter for brand leaders and marketers?

Because if you work in a venture-backed business, you’re not just shaping narrative, positioning product, or tracking pipeline.

You’re working inside a company that may be on fire. 🔥
With urgency.
With stretch goals.
With “move faster” expectations from investors you’ve never met.

And more often than not, that fire doesn't leave room for long-term thinking, experimentation, or brand-building strategies that need time to bake.

This is why I say:

Sometimes your brand doesn’t need gasoline.
Sometimes it needs space.
Sometimes it needs clarity.
Sometimes it needs time to grow into what it’s meant to become.

Founder to founder: choose your fuel wisely.

This is a conversation I’ve been having a lot lately with founders navigating growth. Especially those transitioning from scrappy builder to visionary CEO. The ones reckoning with the reality of venture-backed pace while still trying to build something they actually believe in.

From those conversations, a few truths keep coming up:

"I feel like I'm not running the business anymore. Just reacting to the pressure."
"The VC growth narrative doesn't always leave space for the kind of brand we’re trying to build."
"I wish someone had told me how much I’d have to manage upward, not just lead my team."

This isn’t anti-VC. It’s pro-awareness.
VC can absolutely be the fuel that gets you where you want to go.

But only if:

• You’re building a business that’s ready for that kind of acceleration, and
• You’ve chosen investors who act like partners, not overlords.
  
  

So whether you’re a founder, a marketer, or a brand leader feeling the heat of capital and creativity pulling in different directions…

Take a beat.

Ask the deeper question:

Is the fuel you’ve chosen aligned with the destination you actually want to reach?

And if not, what would it look like to drive with a different kind of power?

This is the kind of work I do every day - helping founders and leaders navigate these nuanced intersections of brand, growth, leadership, and identity.

It’s never just about marketing. It’s about the whole story.