📶 Confluence.VC Behind the Scenes: January 2023 Update

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What went right:

• Shared our VC salary data from the past three years. This was our attempt at creating transparency on how much VCs are paid. We break down salary, bonus, and carry numbers for different roles in the full report linked here.

• Expanded on our investor database with more targeted lists of investors using programmatic SEO. If you're looking for funding, you need help finding the right investors to talk to. That's what these lists are for. Whether you're looking for pre-seed fintech investors, digital health investors in Miami, family office investors, or something else, there's probably a list in here for you.

• Our website had higher organic traffic than any other month so far. This is the byproduct of a few posts that generate big traffic numbers, but it feels good to see progress in traffic after we've spent the past few months investing back into that part of the business.

• Created a venture consulting business through Confluence. We've noticed more and more smaller funds are preferring to outsource parts of the job, so we created a service to help with that process. Our venture consultants can help with sourcing, research, and memo creation, and we're adding more services based on demand. If your fund is looking to get more output without bringing on a full-time investor yet, let us know.

• Upgraded our email referral program. Our first version of a referral program was geared to give out merch based on how many new subscribers you referred over. We realized a) nobody wants our merch and b) you all would rather get info products. If you want to get free stuff in exchange for sharing us with your friends, sign up for the referral program at the bottom of this email.

• Published 25 new pages in our tools recommendation page. Our goal is to create review articles, competitor articles (Brex vs. Mercury, Brex vs. Ramp, etc.), and pricing articles so it's easier for people searching for software to find what they're looking for.

• Updated subscriber welcome automations to share everything we do over email sequences. As our list of offerings has grown, it's become harder to simplify everything we do. We've changed our onboarding process for new subscribers of this email to share how we can help each of you.

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What went wrong:

• Earning backlinks is harder than we expected. We want to become more of an authority site, and to become a true authority site, you have to earn a ton of backlinks so that Google rewards you with more traffic. This has been harder than we expected, and it requires a lot of manual outreach to other site owners.

• Paid media revenue is down. This used to be one of the biggest drivers of revenue for us, but this has changed since we've restructured things. We expect larger businesses to drawback marketing / newsletter advertising spend for the next few months especially as layoffs continue.

• Still too early to tell if there is demand for our new consulting business. We've only been live with the consulting business for a week, so it is too early to tell.

January media:

Most popular:

📶 How to 200x your site visitors with programmatic SEO

💰 How much do VCs make?

From the blog:

📖 The Ultimate VC Glossary

📉 Churn: Definition, Formulas, and Examples

📊 MRR: Everything You Need to Know About the Most Important Metric for SaaS Companies

🅰️ Series A Funding Guide

💳 Brex Review: Our Pick for a Corporate Card

🔎 SurferSEO Review: Our Pick for an All-in-One SEO Tool

❓ VC Q&A

Jobs:

📣 Apply to join the talent collective if you're looking for your next role in venture

Deal flow:

Asks:

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- Clay and Tyler