Jean Serra

Bio

Jean Serra is Founder and CEO of V2 Communications, an award-winning Boston-based communications strategy firm specializing in AI, B2B, healthcare and climate technologies. Since launching V2 in 2006, her firm has created high-impact programs for organizations including UiPath, Cloudera, AlphaSense, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Instride Health. A pioneer in communications, PR/AR, social media, content marketing, and brand visibility in the AI era, Jean is known for developing programs that shift market perception, fuel growth and deliver measurable business impact. Learn more at www.v2comms.com.

Intro

The primary focus of today's discussion revolves around the transformative nature of communications in the tech industry, as articulated by our distinguished guest, Jean Serra, the founder of V2 Communications. With a wealth of experience, Jean elucidates how traditional perceptions of public relations are fundamentally misguided, positing that effective communications are pivotal for establishing credibility in an increasingly competitive market. She emphasizes that many founders fail to grasp that securing press coverage is merely a facet of a broader narrative-building strategy essential for their survival and growth. Jean's insights are particularly salient in today's landscape, where the advent of AI answer engines is redefining how brands are perceived and interacted with in digital spaces. As we delve into this conversation, we aim to illuminate the critical importance of strategic communication for startups, ultimately challenging preconceived notions about its role and efficacy.

Conversation

The dialogue between Jothy Rosenberg and Jean Serra unveils the transformative landscape of public relations (PR) in the technology sector. Jean, the founder of V2 Communications, elucidates how her agency has redefined the conventional paradigms of tech PR by prioritizing genuine communication that fosters credibility rather than merely securing press coverage. She recounts her journey from being an English major with no clear career path to establishing a successful agency that has navigated challenging economic climates, particularly during the 2008 financial crisis. Through this narrative, listeners are introduced to the notion that effective communication is essential for startups not just for visibility, but as a fundamental component of their survival and growth in a competitive market. Jean emphasizes that many founders misconstrue PR as a luxury rather than a necessity, thereby highlighting the critical need for startups to recalibrate their understanding of communication as an integral part of their operational strategy, essential for attracting investment and building a brand narrative that resonates in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Takeaways

1. The fundamental tenet in communications for startups is to regard it as infrastructure rather than mere marketing, which is critical to establish credibility and market presence.
2. Jean Serra's agency, V2 Communications, emphasizes a service-oriented approach, aiming to be indispensable partners to their clients amidst the competition in the tech industry.
3. In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI, startups must now consider their visibility in AI answer engines, as traditional Google searches become increasingly less relevant.
4. The foundation of success in public relations lies in building trust and a solid reputation, which Jean has cultivated through transparency and integrity with her clients.
5. During financial crises, like the one in 2008, maintaining a conservative approach to business growth can be pivotal for survival and long-term success in the industry.
6. Founders must understand that effective communications are crucial for investor relations and that narrative crafting can significantly impact fundraising efforts.

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Hello. Please meet today's guest, Jean Serra and.

And from a media perspective, you know, we have seen a real shift in the tide where 18 months ago, if you, you know, AI was a conversation every journalist was excited to have about, you know, what our clients were doing.

Let's be honest, PR has a reputation problem with startups. Too expensive, too vague, too focused on vanity metrics. But what if everything you think you know about communications is wrong?

Today's guest, Jean Serra, has built a 45 person agency that's rewriting the rules of tech PR.

She's helped countless startups craft the narratives that landed their funding rounds. And right now, her team is at the forefront of something that's about to change everything.

How your brand shows up when someone asks Claude chatgpt or perplexity about what you do. Because here's the thing, Google search is becoming yesterday's problem. AI answer engines are today's battlefield.

And if you're not thinking about this yet, you're already behind.

So whether you think PR is a waste of money or you're just not sure where it fits in your startup journey, this conversation is going to change your mind. Let's dive in and hello Gene. Thank you for joining me on this podcast.

Oh, hello Jothy. Thank you for inviting me.

I am thrilled to be doing this with you. I like to always start with the simplest question I could ask, which is where are you originally from and where do you live now?

Okay, originally from Boston, Live just outside of Boston now. That's amazing. I've never left. I went to school at Boston College, never went far.

Thought about going to New York for a little bit in my early 20s, never did it. And then fell in love with Boston and realized like, this is where I'm meant to be.

Well, that's awesome. And is your husband from Boston too?

Yes, he grew up outside of Boston. We both went to sister brother schools and met in high school. Met in high school, friends for a long time. Did not start dating until after college.

And he didn't go to the same school. He didn't go to B.

No, no, he went to Holy Cross.

Listen, some people move thousands of miles and some stay put and, and they could build a. You know, they have longstanding contacts that way. So we're going to get to your company, which. Which is not a startup anymore. But.

But it was a startup at some point. But first, before you started your own company, you obviously wouldn't do that without having a lot of experience already and knowledge.

So what sort of companies did you work at and what were the core things you g. That you would then be able to carry into your own firm?

So I have always worked in PR agencies and I really fell into the business.

I was an English major, had no idea what I wanted to do for a career, and just kind of stumbled into this profession thinking I was going to go into advertising because, you know, that's much more mainstream in terms of, you know, your awareness of it with. Without doing any research. And I was fortunate to land at a local ad agency.

Small, worked with a wide range of clients, from consumer to hospitality to be. And there was a small but mighty PR team in this agency, and they increasingly just fed me work and taught me the basics of what PR was.

And I realized very quickly that that spoke to so much of what I just enjoyed doing, reading, following the news, writing, and. And business pretty quickly also realized I gravitated towards more of the B2B clients as opposed to the consumer brands. So that was the start.

And then I ended up in technology probably three years into my career, and that has been my focus, working with technology companies.

And so at some point you were working at, you know, companies in a couple of companies in Boston, as you've mentioned, and something must have given you the itch to go do one yourself. Did you see some gap in the market or what was it that motivated you to go build your own?

I mean, the first motivation was just my own competitiveness with myself.

I had spent, I don't know, 10, 15 years working at agencies and just advancing in my career and had always sort of personally been driven by, you know, what are the next set of skills that when I look at my bosses or mentors, I'm so impressed by and feel so unattainable and scary. And then, you know, I worked really hard and I would achieve that.

And once I sort of felt like I had mastery over those skills, I was always looking for the next thing. And, you know, I sort of got to sbp, EVP level at an agency able to win new business, which, you know, was a really a huge skill shift.

For me, because so much of your career is learning the practice of communications and how to build messaging and how to bring that message to market.

And then you hit a point in your agency career where, yes, that is still very important, but a lot more of your focus is on bringing in new business to the firm. So it's becoming much more of a salesperson and a networker.

And so, you know, I had been doing all of that and to me, what was the next big scary thing that I needed to prove I could do and that was start my own firm. So, so that was the, the motivation.

But I certainly did look at is there a product market fit when you're talking about a service agency, you know, the people are the product. But.

And it felt like at first, especially in Boston with tech at the time, and still there were so many agencies and really did the, did the market need another tech PR firm?

But we talked to a couple of VC firms and in particular the heads of marketing within those VC firms because they're really the channel for referrals and they're seeing what the portfolio companies need.

And overwhelmingly we were told, yes, there is a need in the market for an agency that was aiming to do what we wanted to do, which was really focus first and foremost on the service and becoming an indispensable business partner to clients as opposed to, you know, trying to be the biggest agency out there, grow it to a certain size so that we could flip it and so that, you know, was validating and the start of it all.

So that's really interesting because I would say having built nine startups myself, that over a long period of time PR hasn't had a great reputation with startups.

With startups in general.

Well, okay, maybe, maybe. And that's, I think that's because we only saw PR working with bigger companies.

Most PR firms prefer to work with bigger clients because you don't get, when you think about what was the cost to acquire a customer for you.

Yep.

And, and then how much, what's the lifetime value of that customer to you? And the, the cost to acquire a big customer versus a small customer is probably similar, but the lifetime value was nowhere near the same.

And so we saw them working PR firms working for bigger companies. And we also. I don't think I'll speak for myself.

I didn't until many, many startups in did I understand and, and, and value communications as much as I, and I, I didn't value it in the early days at all. And so I think those two reasons, those are Two reasons why I feel like it's an uphill battle to convince startups to, you know, use a PR firm.

But now I understand completely. You don't know what you don't know.

And communications is not a skill that many people have just innately and yet you need it so badly in order to raise money, acquire customers, learn. Learn about what the market, the perfect market for your new product is.

Right?

Et cetera, et cetera.

Right, right. And build credibility. I mean, that's something that we often talk about with earlier stage startups.

Yes, I think all of those things are true and contribute to the, the stereotypes and the bad reputation that PR can have.

And it is, you know, you can look at it as a challenge working with earlier stage startups, but there is so many, there are so many bonuses or points of, of encouragement that, that I've found, that my colleagues have found. You never know who's going to be the next hypergrowth tech company.

And when you're working with a really passionate founder, entrepreneur, early stage startup team, it's exciting and you really feel like you're, you know, you're part of that team and you're making a difference and you know, you're working on messaging and like you said, like what's going to work in the market.

The wins all feel so big and meaningful, but there is a lot of education that goes along with that and that's, you know, a significant investment of time and sometimes it's, it's really hard to penetrate with that education, why communications is valuable, why it is not a lead gen function, but more of a brand building function.

And you know, I've had so many instances where I, I, and we at V2 have been thanked by those entrepreneurs and CEOs who have said they learned a ton working with us, what the value of communications is at the different phases of the business.

Okay, so you've mentioned the name. So your, your firm is called V2 and what made you name it that?

Is it, is it V2 Communications? Is that.

Yep.

Right. Okay. Okay, so first tell us the, you know, what events, what moments were, were you most proud of Your company, your team. Which is.

Which is how big, by the way? The team.

So we're 45 people now.

Wow, that's a lot.

Yeah, yeah, it is. That's a big moment of pride, you know, getting to that size.

Right. So what other big moments were you proud of? Whether it was overcoming a challenge or just achieving something, I did see that you got.

You've gotten quite a few awards.

Yes, there's so many. I mean, it's almost been 20 years. Next year, we'll celebrate our 20th anniversary.

That's a moment in time where I think an early, you know, business that's only a couple of years since its founding could have faltered. And, you know, we've always been really conservative about building the business. You know, not over hiring and keeping things as.

As lean in the early days as we could. And I think that served us very well, coupled with, you know, the reputation that we had started to build for the kind of work that we did for the.

The integrity that we had as a firm. This is the kind of business where there's client comes into the relationship with often, you know, really big expectations.

You know, they want to be in the Wall Street Journal, they want to be in the New York Times, they want to be on cnbc. It's. It's not a given. Right.

Like, you are paying for a relationship that at the end of the day can't be guaranteed, that you're going to get those kinds of results. And to. To have clients who've trusted us and been able to be partners with us and helping achieve those kinds of successes.

I think that helped to build our brand and our reputation.

Okay, I'm going to flip the coin over every.

Everyone who has a business, especially one that's been around as long as yours, has made some mistakes and in some cases, quite a few mistakes, but you're still here, so clearly you survive any mistakes you might have had. Well, can you tell us about a mistake that is particularly memorable and how you recovered from it.

You know, I think in the course of working with clients, there are lots of mistakes that in the moment feel insurmountable. You know, the wrong version of a press release goes out or, you know, we missed the mark in how we prepped somebody for an interview.

And those are, those are so crippling to the whole team that was involved when it happens.

I think in those situations, what we always aim to do and you know, it's sort of part of our culture and our DNA is be real, not be the kind of service partner who is going to try and gloss things over, who's going to, you know, always just paint the positive side of things like we will fall on our sword and in addition to falling on our sword, do whatever we can to come up with a solution and make that solution the best possible solution we could deliver. And I think in a service business, in a relationship business, that's really critical.

And so, you know, those have been my lessons learned throughout the whole journey.

Hi there. I hope you're enjoying the show.

In addition to the podcast, you might also be interested in the online program I have created for startup founders called who says you can't startup in it?

I've tried to capture everything I've learned in the course of founding and running nine startups over 37 years with no constraints like there were with my book Tech Startup Toolkit. The program is four courses, each one about 15 video lessons plus over 30 high value downloadable resources. Each course individually is only $375.

The QR code will take you where you can learn more. Now back to the podcast. What have you learned about leadership now that you're, especially now that you're leading.

A team of 45, to recognize that I'm not going to know it all and I. And to lean on the great people that you have around you, have great people around you and lean on them and bring them into the process with you.

That has been the best recipe for building the business in particular over the last few years.

The leadership team that, that we have has been here at the firm for long time and partners together working on client programs, working to build the business. And every time I'm, I'm sort of sitting and thinking, okay, what's next? How are we going to tackle this?

Whether it's bringing in new service offerings and we've done a lot of that over the last five years starting something from scratch that we've never done, that, you know, that sort of paralysis starts and then once I get the team together and just sort of open things up. I feel that sense of community and we do it together.

Are you mostly all operating virtually or do you. Do you all go to an office?

We go to an office where we're a hybrid agency at this point, where folks come in two days a week, three days a week. Most of our employees are in the greater Boston area, but we do have remote employees in New York and D.C. and Pennsylvania.

And that was really born out of COVID We had had a New York office pre Covid, which was really a service office. We had a few account folks who, like I did early in my career, thought, oh, I'm going to go to New York. And they wanted to.

And so we created this opportunity for them. You know, how do we work space and, you know, toyed with, do we make this a real office that's going to grow?

And realized New York just wasn't the market for us, you know, from. In terms of the kind of B2B tech that we were working with here in the Boston area. But it was great for our staff.

And we've had such longevity with our employees, unlike I think most agencies. And having that flexibility has been key to keeping people here, but more importantly, keeping them motivated.

Motivated and gratified by the kind of work that they're doing.

And did. Did the company take kind of a gut punch when Covid happened?

No. You know, things were sort of in. I feel like the first month was kind of pause, you know, like the world and our clients.

And we were like, what is going to happen? But our clients pretty quickly adjusted and started thinking about how they were going to do their marketing programs differently. You know, they.

They pivoted to virtual events and they leaned on us to help with that. And.

We talked a little bit, but I want to talk a little bit more about. And I want us to speak directly to the founders of tech startups.

But more than just tech founders of companies, you know, now today, as opposed to 10 years ago, communications has become more important. And we'll talk later about the role of AI, but just communications and building a reputation, building a brand has become more important.

And I'm not sure why why, why do you think that has happened?

Well, I think the need to differentiate, the need to show momentum and progress and gravitas quickly to not only establish the brand, but have credibility in this very competitive environment. I think those are two important factors why communications is critical.

And then the, you know, the volume of information out there, number of channels where you can get information that has grown considerably, which has sort of diluted the ability to have an impactful message in one way and means that you need to be thinking about where are your audiences. They could be in all of these channels, they could be in a lot of them. And how do we reach them?

And do you end up helping these companies with their fundraising activities to their communications to prospective investors?

We do. You know, in some cases they may ask us to, well, back up.

I mean, with a lot of earlier stage companies, we're helping them with their corporate messaging. So it's, how do we talk about who we are and what we're doing? How do we talk about where the market opportunity is?

We've had, you know, the great opportunity to work with so many market disruptors and category creators, which is such fun work and, and being, you know, having a seat at the table to help guide how we're going to tell that narrative to the market. That's an important piece of, of that investor activity is what is our, what is our narrative? What is our story?

It can move into the, you know, developing the slides and in some cases providing coaching to the folks who are going to be in the room giving the pitch. You know, if they've never been in that kind of a situation, helping them to practice, rehearse, get better at telling that story.

And then, you know, the, the associated market conversations. So Earned Media owned Media thought leadership that supports the story that you're telling in the pitch room.

And it's resonating in the larger world because the communications function is helping to get it out there.

I'm somebody who was thrown into a situation where, you know, first time CEO, this was in 96.

So in fact I was working with an investor, Highland Capital, and they had invested in two companies, one of whom you already mentioned, they'd invested in Avid and they invested in another one called novasoft. And I had, just prior to this, I had founded and led a company that had a phenomenal exit.

It was a company that on 2 million in revenue, we sold it for 106 million, which is better multiple than you're, you'll see very often. And it's all about how huge the Market was.

But after that, I was interacting with the patriarch of Highland Capital and I was asking him for, you know, leads, suggestions, and he said, well, let me have you go talk to the CEO of Avid and, and also the CEO of NovaSoft. And so I did. And the idea was that I would go in as, as a CTO in those, in those cases.

Well, the end, the end result was through, I think, some pushing from him, I ended up going to novasoft, otherwise we would already know each other. And of course, Avid kept going, you know, up and to the right. And novasoft was fourth in a declining market.

The market was document management and, and that was already declining. And yet, and to make it much worse, we were fourth.

So it was, was a tough experience, but that was the first time where I was actually the one leading the charge to go raise money and had to do pitch decks. You know, since then I've probably had coaching, I'm not exaggerating 25 separate times, you know, pitching.

And I've gotten, you know, better and better at it to the point now where, you know, I can teach it. But, you know, that is not a skill that someone who comes out of whatever industry where they got this great idea to change the world, right?

And, and they're passionate about it and all of those things are wonderful.

And then you put them into a situation where they've got to pitch this to an investor and an investor who's probably seen a thousand pitches and, you know, the first thing they want to do is they want to talk about their technology and it's the last thing the investor wants to hear. I mean, literally, they don't want to hear about it till the very end of the pitch.

It's, it's, it's so funny to continue to see this, this phenomenon and that's something that, that, you know, that you must see all the time. And maybe this is a good segue to, to talk about AI because it complicates things, but it might also be helpful if you use it, you know, correctly.

Yeah, yeah. So it has been moving fast and I think it will continue to move fast and change dramatically.

But we have spent the better part of the last year as a firm really diving into how brands are showing up in AI search engines, AI answer engines, and helping our clients think through what is becoming very quickly the primary go to for anyone searching as opposed to just the traditional Google search. But we haven't spent enough time working to make sure we show up the right way as brands in those answer engines.

So we as a firm have been getting really smart about how to measure the benchmark of where brands exist, how to understand where there is white space for telling your story and then all of the channels that help influence that and help help transition the way that you're showing up on those answer engines so that it better reflects where the brand wants to be in terms of the messaging and a market perspective. And like I said, I think it's going to continue to change and evolve.

And so we've got some small team here that is staying on top of that with some of our vendors who are part of that equation and then working with our clients to do the audits, to start to implement some new best practices that will be read better by the LLMs to have that influence.

I use, so I tend to use Claude the most and I use it heavily. I'm never sure whether I should say him or her Claude. I know, I know a woman named Claude.

So I, I'm pretty sure it's, it's a, you know, androgynous name. But I'm using it mostly to create this online course I might have mentioned to you.

And it's, it's probably, it's going probably, no exaggeration, at least 10 times faster than it would have if I didn't use Claude all the time. I mean I had to, you know, I'm just doing it myself.

It's not a company paying and I had to keep raising the sort of level I was at with, you know, with Claude from a price standpoint. And, and you know, it's now I'm, I'm now paying.

I think I'm at the max and I'm, it's a hundred dollars a month, but it's worth it for what I'm getting. It's, it's, it's really, it's really pretty amazing.

And you know, all my friends that, that are not in tech whatsoever that are, you know, including my, my wife is discovered chatgpt. She loves it, she's using it to help her plan trips of everything. She's, she's using it for everything.

So it's, it's going to transform a lot of things unfortunately.

I think a lot of, there's going to be a lot of this is something that humans do, they overhype things and then, you know, then they're going to be, there's going to be a, I predict there will be another inflation of, you know, a bubble and a pop. It's getting such a strong foundation.

I, I think Even if there's this pop, which is, which is going to be the, you know, it's going to be the market, the, the, the stock market because people are over investing.

Yeah, that's something that, you know, we're paying attention to because so, you know, our client base is technology companies.

And, you know, I think there's still a really healthy pipeline of emerging companies, a lot that are vertical focused AI that are, you know, just getting enough investment that they're starting to think about doing communications.

Myself, having lived through the dot com bust, you know, I'm very mindful of, of what's happening in the headlines around the investment cycles here and what the fallout could be.

Something that we're watching closely and from a media perspective, um, you know, we have seen a real shift in the tide where 18 months ago, if you, you know, AI was a conversation every journalist was excited to have about, you know, what our clients were doing and where there was opportunity.

And now, you know, there's just so much noise in the market that we're having to, you know, work hard to figure out how we, how we craft a narrative that is unique and that is going to break through. Because the AI conversation is just overwhelming.

The journalists, rightly so, are being much more critical and skeptical about, you know, where they're going to spend their time and where they're going to, you know, put their print dollars or their broadcast time dedicated to AI tech companies.

Yeah.

And it would be nice if for once the VCs didn't act like lemmings and all chase after the same thing, you know, and instead try to, you know, be critical of a new pitch and say, well, that's just like one that my buddy down the street and the next guy down the street already invested in. So because they have one of those, I should have one of those. It's like, well, no, not necessarily.

Why don't you just, you know, push for something that's truly different. So, so let me, let me close the, our discussion on my favorite topic, which is about grit. Your grit.

Because, you know, doing what you do, building a company from scratch, building it up to 45 people, carefully managing it, getting through difficult things, pandemics and whatnot. Where does your grit come from?

I. Partly from my experience.

I mean, I've been doing this for more years than I want to say, so I've lived through a few things and came out the other side. So I know there is another side.

But I would also say, you know, it was just the way that I was raised my Parents instilled a really strong work ethic and also a you can do anything attitude. So I, I hear that even now when I'm challenged by something that it's going to be challenging.

You're going to prep for it, you're going to do all the things you need to do, and you'll come out the other side of it.

By the way, have you had a chance to read Kay's book yet?

I have, yes.

So does any of it resonate with your experiences?

Some. I mean, I think it's an amazing book. I think that it's.

It's going to be part of what she wanted it to be, which is instructive to women in the tech industry.

So many of the situations I can relate to, particularly the, you know, the situations around just being in a meeting and nothing being overtly offensive in any way, but sort of like the subtle things that in the moment and in the early days of my career, you didn't even sort of register, you know, I saw her LinkedIn today. One of the anecdotes was about, you know, just being talked over, interrupted, and I don't even know how many times that's probably happened.

And for me, I also look at it with the sort of the dual influences of maybe being women at the table, but then also being the PR people at the table and the, you know, the outsiders at the table.

Yeah, well, I think it's. It gets launched in a couple of weeks on the 12th, and, and I talked about it on her episode. But I'll mention the book name here again.

It's called Not Made for your. And the idea is that the reader is a woman, most likely.

But I keep saying, I think men should read this book, by the way, but not made for you, meaning these industries, these positions within the companies, were not made for you women.

And she's shining a bright light on that and calling that out and saying, well, that's, you know, that's bs and, and everybody should stop playing along with that, that kind of attitude.

Right, Right.

Anyway, well, thank you very much.

Thank you, Jothy.

I've. I've loved this conversation, liking this. I hope we get a chance to interact in the future in some way, but thank you for this.

Before we wrap up, let's extract three critical tools from Jean's nearly 20 years building v2 communications tool number one. Treat communications as infrastructure, not marketing. Jean's clients don't come to her just for press releases.

They come for corporate messaging, investor narratives, and market positioning. This is foundational work that happens before you pitch, before you launch, and before you scale.

If you're thinking of communications as something you do after you build the product, you're thinking about it backwards.

Tool number two audit your AI answer engine presence now when someone asks ChatGPT or Claude about your company or your market category, what shows up? Gene's team has spent the last year mastering how brands appear in AI search results. This isn't SEO 2.0.

She built a reputation for being real with clients, even when it meant falling on her sword in a relationship. Business integrity isn't just nice to have, it's your competitive advantage. Now go ask an AI answer engine what it knows about your company.

If you don't like what you see, or worse, if nothing shows up, it's time to get strategic about communications. That is our show with Gene. The show notes contain useful resources and links. Please follow and rate us@podchaser.com designingsuccessful startups.

Also, please share and like us on your social media channels. This is Jothi Rosenberg saying TTFN Tata for now.