Rev1 Ventures was a unique venture capital and startup accelerator that worked in close collaboration with the state of Ohio’s Third Frontier initiative. Rev1 was a well-known venture capital investor, and they were also a remarkable group of commercialization and entrepreneurial experts dedicated to helping organizations take groundbreaking research and turn ideas into marketable companies by providing consulting, advisement services, and team building.
Sector: Professional Services
Subtype: Venture Capital FIrm
Rev1 Ventures was well known in the midwest as a key venture capital investor helping catapult innovative business to commercial success with the support of Ohio’s government. Though they were established experts in the fundamental strategies underpinning the creation and growth of technology businesses, Rev1 was often seen as a funding source, and needed ways to draw attention to the wealth of other services they offered.
The firm came to Notable looking to reposition themselves to better showcase the value they brought to the startup ecosystem outside of funding, and we embarked on a content campaign to balance their position more equitably between capital services and entrepreneur education. As true subject matter experts in what it takes to build a tech business, Rev1 already had the content and information in house - our goal was to help package and distribute it to create momentum and awareness.
For a service business like Rev1 Ventures, education and marketing are parallel functions. The firm was walking the walk - creating high-value content for those in their startup accelerator program and building materials to help founders take their businesses from concept to commercial viability. The challenge they faced was in distribution and messaging. They needed ways to draw would-be founders in prior to the point at which they decided to seek funding, in order to better prepare them to be funded.
In addition to their audience of startup founders, Rev1 had established corporate partnerships and a steadily growing internship program that drew those intersted in working at venture-backed tech companies. The final piece of their audience was investors who could help build their funds. We needed to draw from Rev1’s extensive content library to highlight and focus on these other business capabilities in order to rebalance the focus.
Rev1 was not a content-generation novice. They had a vast library full of webinar video, podcast interviews, founders’ stories, and more, along with a well built out website packed with tookits and partnership information. This provided exceptional resources from which to draw as we embarked on the effort to reposition the focus. The firm had done much of the building - the next step was repackaging and distribution in key channels.
Through exploration of priorities with internal stakeholders, we developed key content pillars on which to focus, and from there audited the extensive available media. Designers and copywriters repurposed existing long-form content into a variety of easily consumable and visually compelling formats, and these were built into an editorial calendar geared to create a consistent stream of high-quality content driving focus to all of Rev1’s capabilities.
As a well-known capital funding leader in the MidWest, Rev1 already held a credible position. By implementing the three storytelling pillars of Ethos, Logos and Pathos, they moved into a leadership role in entrepreneur education and successful innovation commercialization.
Demonstrating impact through quantifiable metrics in posts drives trust and credibility.
Though the midwest is considered “flyover country,” Rev1 demonstrates impact and investment far beyond Ohio.
A strong focus on the humans inside innovation drives Rev1’s perception as approachable and authentic.
People are at the center of Rev1’s values and philosophies, which is why the Founders’ Stories they capture routinely work so well. These existing video interviews were clipped and repackaged to be sharable and relatable, positioning these successful founders as educators for the next generation of startups. The problems and stories highlighted are common to entepreneurs and demonstrate how Rev1’s resources made it possible for these founders to overcome issues and forge paths ahead.
Hearing stories directly from the mouths of innovators is impactful, and utilizing portfolio companies as spokespeople for Rev1 created an exponential distribution effect when these stories were shared by the founders themselves. Part of content generation is distribution - and providing easily shareable assets to those most likely to share gave Rev1 access to networks of like-minded people who might not have known what kinds of resources and tools they had to offer.
The firm spent years developing a vast repository of blog content and toolkits specifically designed to help entrepreneurs take their companies from ideas to commercialization. Creating carousels with highlighted copy and relatable imagery along with Rev1’s branding resulted in shareable and linkable pieces of content that tech founders and other entrepreneurs could discover, bookmark and share. The content provided value and education, along with a reminder of what Rev1 has to offer.
In addition to driving Rev1’s traffic, they worked on campaigns to drive eyeballs to their portfolio companies, showcasing their stories in the same compelling way they highlighted their own valuable content. Not only does this drive attention to their investment recipients, leveraging Rev1’s social reach to benefit portfolio companies, but it emphasizes the success of Rev1’s ventures.
