The napkin raised the round.
It can't return the fund.
TOCOBAGA FOR VENTURE CAPITAL - SOLVINGHOW.COM - PAGE 2 OF 8
Why does the napkin stop working?
Daggers resolved in the fine print on page 8.
Tocobaga is a flat-fee, ROI-focused marketing agency for venture firms and their portfolio companies. No percentage of ad spend. No auto-renewing contracts. Every asset stays yours. Average reported client ROI: 9.7x gross, 7.8x after fees.*
Why does the napkin stop working?
Here is a thing that happens at the good bars, politely, every year.
A thesis gets sketched on a napkin. The napkin raises a fund. The fund backs founders.
Then the napkin meets the market.
There are 3,400+ VC firms in the U.S. competing for the same founders (GetProven), and the founders now expect value-add, not a check with a newsletter.
Meanwhile the LP side tightened: just $45 billion raised across 376 funds in the first nine months of 2025 (NEPC), and only about 14 percent of 2020-vintage funds have made a first distribution in the past year (Carta Q3 2025).
Differentiation is no longer a logo and a Medium post. It is a fund brand founders can name unprompted, and portfolio support that shows up in the numbers.
Startups that get real operational support grow about 35 percent faster and are 2.5x likelier to hit board milestones (GetProven).
That support includes marketing - and most portfolio support teams are staffed for intros, not execution.
Somebody has to do the Tuesday work inside the portfolio: the landing page, the launch email, the review reply.
We do the Tuesday. The napkin can keep the thesis.
What does the usual agency actually sell?
So the fund hires an agency, and the agency does what agencies do.
It sells the fund a "content retainer" - four posts a month that sound like every other fund's four posts a month.
It treats the portfolio as an upsell list and pitches each portco a full rebrand it does not need.
It bills a percentage of whatever it can get the portcos to spend, which makes founder burn its business model.
It reports impressions to an investment committee that thinks in DPI.
It asks what "platform" means, twice.
It parks the fund's site on an agency subdomain, so the brand equity compounds - for the agency.
And it auto-renews in month twelve, mid-fundraise, like weather.
This is not a scandal. It is simply the standard arrangement.
We would like a word about the standard arrangement.
What changes on a flat fee?
Tocobaga charges a flat fee. That is nearly the whole trick.
One arrangement covers the fund and stretches across the book, so nobody is incentivized to sell a seed-stage portco an enterprise retainer.
The contract doesn't auto-renew, so March has to be earned in February.
The fund's site, the thesis content, each portco's pages, lists, and rankings - every asset is titled to its owner from day one.
If we ever stop being useful, everyone keeps everything and walks.
The monthly letter reads in your units: portfolio requests served, launches shipped, pipeline influenced, revenue attributed.
Founders get an operator; the platform team gets attribution; the IC gets one page.
Nobody performs. Nobody pads. If a chart needs a legend, we rewrite the chart.
If that sounds ordinary, ask the last agency that pitched you.
The next six pages explain how the work is done for venture firms and their portfolio companies, what it costs, and what it returned. Read on; it is your magazine.
*Resolved in the fine print on page 8. The advertisement continues on page 3.
TOCOBAGA FOR VENTURE CAPITAL - SOLVINGHOW.COM - PAGE 3 OF 8
First the macro. Then the micro. Then Tuesday.
Every engagement starts the same way, with a question so old-fashioned it feels avant-garde: where does the money actually come from?
We call the method macro-to-micro.
Macro is the market: who buys, what they pay, which three moves change enterprise value.
Micro is the Tuesday work: the page, the offer, the follow-up email, the review reply.
Most agencies sell the Tuesday work without ever asking the first question. We decline to, on principle and on invoice.
First, the macro.
We audit your operation the way a buyer audits a target - traffic, rankings, list, funnel, reputation - and we price every gap in dollars.
The audit is free, it is specific, and it is occasionally embarrassing.
It ends with three levers, not thirty.
That is the whole macro. It fits on one page. The plan is signed by a person whose name you know. Then the calendar starts.
Then we pick the three levers you actually need, and we ignore the rest.
No brand safari. No six-week runway of workshops. No deck about your "why."
The audit lands as a numbered list, and the numbers are dollars.
Lever one is usually the website, because the website is usually rented, slow, and invisible.
Lever two is usually founder and fund visibility, because deal flow is a brand problem wearing a networking costume - and warm intros compound where cold decks do not.
Lever three depends on your plan, which is the point of having one.
Strategy is what we are judged on at the quarter. Execution is what we do before lunch.
Pages get rebuilt. Emails get written. Rankings get taken city by city, like a polite land war.
Reviews get answered the day they arrive, by a person, in English.
None of this is glamorous, which is why it compounds. Glamour is a cost center.
Then, the micro.
Each month you receive a one-page letter in plain English: what moved, what it cost, what it returned.
For a fund, the letter reads in portfolio requests served, launches shipped, and revenue influenced - attributable, the way platform ROI should be.
No dashboard tour is required to understand it. If a chart needs a legend, we rewrite the chart.
Month by month, the levers get pulled and the letter gets shorter.
Figure 1. The macro-to-micro method.
Shown actual size. Raised the round.
Three levers, priced, sequenced, owned. It is not a philosophy. It is a work order.
TOCOBAGA FOR VENTURE CAPITAL - SOLVINGHOW.COM - PAGE 4 OF 8
Raised the round. EBITDA, circled hopefully. Absorbs spills. Can't return the fund. Detail of the napkin: the ink, the circle, the bleed.
It gets better when you read the fine print.
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| Tocobaga | The Usual Agency | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | A flat fee. | A percentage of your ad spend. |
| Contracts | No auto-renew. | Twelve months; renews itself. |
| Ownership | You own every asset. | You rent your own website. |
| Footer badge | Never. | A "Site by" credit, in perpetuity. |
| Language | Plain English. | A jargon moat. |
| Exit | We refer you out. | A hostage negotiation. |
The table is unfair. It is also accurate.
TOCOBAGA FOR VENTURE CAPITAL - SOLVINGHOW.COM - PAGE 6 OF 8
Test drive Tocobaga.
[Illustrative composite - verified engagement results to come.]
An early-stage fund came to us between vintages, with a thesis the partners could explain beautifully out loud and nowhere in writing that a founder could find.
Deal flow arrived through two partners' networks. Portfolio companies were left to figure out go-to-market on their own.
We rebuilt the fund's site around the thesis and the founder experience, published the partners' point of view under their names, and built a repeatable marketing playbook the portfolio could run.
[Illustrative composite - verified engagement results to come.]
By month nine inbound deal flow was arriving from founders who cited the fund's own writing, and the partners could point to which pages did it.
Portfolio companies had one shared playbook instead of ten different agencies, which showed up in how fast the next round got told.
Total fees for the year: flat, known in advance. The audit that started it took twelve days and cost nothing.
“The thesis was excellent. It lived entirely in our heads and in three partners’ inboxes.”
[Illustrative composite - verified engagement results to come.]
TOCOBAGA FOR VENTURE CAPITAL - SOLVINGHOW.COM - PAGE 7 OF 8
How we work.
Every engagement begins with the free Fund Brand & Portfolio Audit: ten to fifteen days, no meeting longer than thirty minutes, no deck about your "why."
We audit your operation the way a buyer audits a target, and we price every gap in dollars.
You receive the findings whether or not you hire us. They are yours. That is the theme.
Then the plan: the three levers you actually need, sequenced, with a flat number attached.
Then the work, in monthly cycles, each closed by a one-page letter in plain English.
We would rather be re-hired than renewed.
We aren't for everyone, and we will say so early. If what you need is a recruiter more than a marketer, or a fund administrator more than a brand, we will tell you and hand you the number of someone we trust. The referral is free. So is the audit.
Headquartered in Ybor City, Tampa, Florida. Clients across the USA.
Some straight answers about marketing for venture capital.
Do you work for the fund or the portfolio companies?
Both, on purpose. The fund gets a brand founders can name unprompted; portfolio companies get an operator for the go-to-market Tuesday work. One flat arrangement, repeatable across the book - and "platform" here means your portfolio-support function, not anyone's product.
Can marketing really help us win deals?
Differentiation is the stated problem in a field of 3,400+ U.S. firms (GetProven), and founders pick value-add investors. A visible thesis, founder-grade content, and portfolio proof get you the meeting before the banker or the lead list does.
What about our portfolio support team's ROI?
We make it attributable. Portfolio requests already arrive three ways - 44 percent direct from companies, 29 percent via the investment team, 27 percent via updates (Visible) - so we instrument the marketing help the same way: requests in, work out, revenue influenced, in a one-page letter.
Why a flat fee?
Because a percentage pays us to spend your money, and we would rather be paid to multiply it. The fee is quoted once, in writing, and it stays put for the year.
Who owns the work?
You do - website, copy, data, list, rankings. If we part ways, everything stays exactly where it always was: with you.
Our portcos are early. Is this overkill?
No - it is sized to stage. Pre-seed gets a page, a story, and a launch; growth-stage gets demand and pipeline. The fee is flat either way, so nobody is incentivized to sell a Series A company an enterprise retainer.
Can you help with LP-facing brand?
Yes, carefully. In a market where $45B across 376 funds counts as nine months of fundraising (NEPC), a fund's public evidence - thesis content, portfolio wins, distributions narrative - does quiet work before every LP meeting. We build the evidence; your IR runs the process.
Founder branding: real lever or vanity?
Real when it is specific. Thought leadership is now a vetting gate for buyers and talent alike, and operational support correlates with 35 percent faster growth (GetProven). We ghost-write only what the founder actually believes, in their own cadence.
Where does the 9.7x figure come from?
Client-reported gross return across engagements, unaudited and rounded down when in doubt. After fees it is 7.8x. The daggers are resolved in the fine print on page 8.
What does it cost?
A flat number, quoted after the free audit and good for twelve months. Call (813) 934-6605 and we will say it out loud, slowly, in English.
TOCOBAGA FOR VENTURE CAPITAL - SOLVINGHOW.COM - PAGE 8 OF 8
YES - send me the free Fund Brand & Portfolio Audit.
Or mail to: Tocobaga, 1327 E. 7th Ave, Suite 2, Ybor City, Tampa, FL 33605.
Soon there'll be just two kinds of venture firms and their portfolio companies. Those that grow, and those that renew.