Heartland Ventures: Showcasing The Silicon Valley/Middle America Connectors
TL;DR: Leveraged national media to drive Heartland Ventures’ mission of connecting Middle American companies with Silicon Valley tech and talent.
the concept
Based in the Midwest with deep connections on the coasts, Heartland Ventures (HVC) is a venture capital firm connecting large Middle-America companies with technology being developed on the coasts. The organization functions not as a standard VC firm, but as a bridge connecting established Middle-America companies to growing coastal startups. After finding success in South Bend, IN, the Heartland Ventures team knew it was time to scale. In 2019, Founder Max Brickman decided to expand to Columbus, OH, which was when he brought Geben Communication on as the organization’s PR partner.
Heartland Ventures had one main business objective: To connect with quality and engaged LPs (investors) in preparation for HVC’s second fund. In addition to the business objective, HVC’s founders wanted to focus on securing national business or tech media placements in which they were seen as connecting venture capital to the heartland. Geben developed a media relations strategy that aligned with HVC’s business and communication objectives.
Partnering with Geben as its PR firm, Heartland Ventures set a goal for Geben to secure coverage in national business and tech publications to attract more investors, increase overall awareness and change the narrative around traditional VC models and corporate innovation in the Midwest.
the execution
Our approach was to insert Heartland Ventures into relevant conversations happening in the news cycle. To do this, we were constantly monitoring trends, pulling new stats and studies to support our pitches and ingraining ourselves in how tech journalists work.
Due to a media and competitive audit, we knew that media tend to focus on VCs that have a presence in coastal cities, so during our research and planning phase, we made sure to identify Midwest reporters at outlets that would reach our ideal target audiences. Additionally, the venture capital and startup news cycle are very competitive, so we got creative with how we could keep Heartland Ventures top of mind. This included an informal coffee meeting between the Wall Street Journal Reporter and a Geben team member when they were in Chicago.
the result
A 1,000-word article ran both online and in print in The Wall Street Journal with the title: “Startups Pitch Tech Hubs Far From Silicon Valley”; Entrepreneurs want to attract venture funding, tech talent to inland locations.” A title that matched Heartland’s initial story goal of “Connecting Venture Capital to the Heartland” almost perfectly in one of the largest newspapers in the U.S. with an estimated audience of 3MM subscribers and 48MM unique visitors a month.
Furthermore, the amplification of this story led to the client being included in a special report conducted by The Economist, which piqued interest in coffee meetings with journalists at outlets like Axios as well as several other outlets including the article in news roundups. The article was also shared 228 times on social media, including by 12 other journalists.