Most importantly, however, I think you omit the point that some “brand” VC firms have *infrastructure* to help you — e.g., a site visit program where big CIO/CTOs visit the VC periodically and are shown a selection of the companies, little networks of CFOs or CMOs who meet, a people person who helps with recruiting, etc.

Most importantly, however, I think you omit the point that some “brand” VC firms have *infrastructure* to help you — e.g., a site visit program where big CIO/CTOs visit the VC periodically and are shown a selection of the companies, little networks of CFOs or CMOs who meet, a people person who helps with recruiting, etc.

don't top tier firms generally get a better price than a second tier firm in an a round? so effectively you get a lower price followed by a higher price?

Is this a good thing? The really good employees join a start-up because they believe in the cause, and are willing to work their tail off to build something..

The “VC worshiping” employees don't really understand what makes a good start-up. They tend to follow the herd, and chase the next IPO.

My experience is VC brand matters a lot more at CEO and VP level and a lot less lower down. I'm writing from the perspective of a CEO/founder so I am biased in this sense and am assuming the key issue is hiring non senior people.

B2B – I've only invested in B2B companies – never done it myself. My guess is customers care more about cash in the bank and that you have solid backers versus the more granular distinctions between top quartile firm and 2nd quartile firm… (but perhaps I am wrong…).

Not clear how much one “should”, but Prof. David Hsu on the Wharton faculty had some interesting research on the topic back in 2004 which suggested that entrepreneurs certainly do take it into account and were taking 10-14% valuation discounts to take deals with strong “brand” firms and were 3X more likely to accept deals with the strong “brand”.

http://www-management.wharton.upenn.edu/hsu/fil…

IMHO – I'd agree that there is little customer value if your firm is engaged in consumer facing business, but I would argue that if you are a venture-backed company selling to enterprises that many procurement folks will dig into your investors as part of purchasing due diligence and will value brand in decision-making process.

I think a VC's brand is very important. And brand means much more than awareness. A brand is a set of values and beliefs that transcend rational attributes. It goes beyond a statement on a site but to EVERYTHING a company does, says, acts, etc.

For instance, if a seed capital VC positions itself as “the entrepreneur's ally”, the company should only have partners, associates, assistants, etc. that are helpful, pleasurable and certainly far from toxic in any communication to an entrepreneur. Being an @sshole to rejected opportunities would be off brand to say the least! The VC's culture should naturally attract the right type of talent. Whether that talent is of the celebrity/star variety (e.g. Fred Wilson) or successful people who shun any spotlight, the values of the company and individual talent at the firm should be in complete sync.

Further quick hitters (some already pointed out) using Kleiner Perkins as a strong brand and the fictitious Clown Venture Capital as a perhaps unknown or in-the-crowd commoditized player.

* saying you got funding from Kleiner Perkins goes a longer way on almost all levels than Clown Venture Capital.

* someone who has Kleiner Perkins on the resume probably gets more looks than a veteran of Clown Venture Capital.

* Kleiner will more often have their calls better received from other VC firms when club deals are the play.

* Kleiner will likely attract better entrepreneurs – and likely get first-look at their ideas.

* The Kleiner network of law firms, marketing firms, sector experts, etc. I'd bet would be of a higher quality and talent pool.

And for start-up VCs who might not have worked together before, there is borrowed equity from what the individuals involved. As such, I sure as hell would want a meeting with Founder Collective any day of the week over Clown even if Clown has had some modest successes.

Most important: it's paramount that a firm walks the walk. If a VC firm tells LPs they will get superior returns and don't back it up, a brand promise can not possibly make up for poor product performance. As the saying goes, good advertising will kill a bad product quicker.

That said, you can't totally rely on “We we were early on Under Armour” to prove you are a great firm. One star investment goes a long way but success is fleeting. Greatness endures again and again…especially as even the best and smartest have Boo.coms and Webvans in their closets.

It is an elusive element. How a brand is perceived is ultimately housed in the minds, actions and loyalties of the target audience(s). And with IPOs-as-exit strategy not as ample today, determining success may not be as visible. I'd argue that for VCs to position themselves above competitors with a dead-similar investment ethos/financial track record, leveraging the intangible can be critical to better performance.

It certainly reduces your funnel, but does it raise the average quality? E.g., the person who knows why it's interesting when Chris Dixon or Bill Trenchard or Keith Rabois are angels in a company.

Or does it simply mean that you get more inside-baseball people who comment on startup blogs on their saturdays, when they should be decorating the xmas tree… For further investigation ; )

The exception for Stanford is probably the result of BASES ( http://bases.stanford.edu/ ) which is super popular (and rightly so) with the CS, EE, Symbolic Systems and other software engineering feeder majors.

I think being in the business we think the brand awareness of firms is greater than it really is. Ask an average non-tech business person in NY to name a VC firm and maybe they can name KP or Sequioa at best. This is even true of many of the potential employees you would recruit, e.g. CS students out of MIT (from my experience the one exception seems to be Stanford undergrads – they must have a class on VC firms there). So my main point is that in practice if you are say funded by Sequioa the people who are most impressed are follow on investors, the second most are potential employees if you don't already have a track record, and pretty much everyone else (e.g. customer) don't really care.

The question is: is the reader pulling the correct meaning from the brand in question?

E.g., shops like Sequoia and KP get a lot of coverage in the mainstream consciousness because of a few high profile, large exits. To less sophisticated 'readers' of that brand (whether entrepreneurs or would-be employees or what have you), that is sufficient, as far as they are concerned.

It's harder work to be able to unpack the real meanings behind those brands, OR, to expand your understanding to include a larger universe of related sub-brands…as you point out, the individual partners.

I would offer that there is another “brand” of financier that is coming online, Union Square, First Round, seed programs like YC, TechStars, and super angels like Mike Maples, Reid Hoffman, whose brand is less associated with a handful of large exits, but rather, a consistent track record of investment in strong companies, strong entrepreneurs, and the fanatical support thereof.

I would note that blogs like yours, Fred Wilson's, and even TechCrunch, that do well to point out the individual partners on the given exits, certainly help deemphasize the importance of that brand totem (e.g., “Sequoia”) in favor of the more nuanced one, (“Roelof Botha”)