Earlier than she was a VC, Masha Bucher labored in PR and advertising and marketing – an expertise that has formed the best way she runs Day One Ventures.
After years of working in communications – together with govt roles that gave her deep perception into how startups function – Bucher realized she might both use her enterprise acumen to turn into one of the efficient PR reps within the recreation, or evolve into one thing extra.
“I used to be seeing what was happening in enterprise, and since I might perceive the context, I understood enterprise, and since I understood enterprise, my PR pitches can be very enterprise centered,” Bucher instructed TechCrunch on at this time’s episode of Fairness.
She based Day One Ventures in 2018 after realizing she might create extra impression – and make higher returns – by investing in startups and offering them with built-in PR help. By combining these two features, she might assist portfolio corporations extra meaningfully whereas backing solely the tales she actually believed in.
“The construction of PR companies may be very misaligned,” Bucher stated, noting that PR companies engaged on a contract foundation typically lean towards working slower to allow them to stretch out shopper funds. “For startups, it’s actually vital to maneuver quick.”
Past velocity, there’s a value barrier: “Early-stage corporations shouldn’t be paying $10-, $20- or $30-grand per thirty days for six months to get one announcement in TechCrunch. I simply don’t suppose that’s honest, and I don’t suppose it’s sustainable.”
Day One’s built-in mannequin permits Bucher to work with startups at vital early levels once they want help most. Youthful startups may pivot or expertise founder shakeups, and “you’ll want to be trusted to advise and assist them make choices.”
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Backing an organization financially offers her one thing many conventional PR companies can’t provide: she’s actually invested within the story.
“I’ve an ambition to be, ideally, the primary investor in a very powerful and impressive concepts and firms of our time,” Bucher stated. “I believe that begins with you understanding the sphere, understanding the enterprise, getting a conviction on the enterprise. And after getting this conviction – which you’ve proved by investing within the firm – you might have the best to introduce it to reporters with a lot larger integrity.”
Somebody in PR who will get entry to every part from investor decks to a startup’s information room has severe benefits in positioning the corporate and understanding what’s at stake. And for Bucher, it makes the work extra compelling. Doing PR for no matter corporations are sufficiently big to pay is likely to be good enterprise, “however that doesn’t imply it’s a very good story.”
As with every VC, Bucher solutions to her traders – in Day One’s case, greater than 70 LPs together with establishments, people, and greater than 15 of the agency’s personal portfolio founders. Which means her bets must be fastidiously thought-about. When Bucher chooses corporations, she’s not solely asking whether or not she needs to see their imaginative and prescient turn into actuality, however whether or not the founder has the ethics and ethical compass to take care of their values as the corporate scales.
She factors to Valar Atomics, a startup growing advance nuclear reactors, for instance. Day One co-led a $130 million spherical into the startup final month.
“I can’t consider a greater founder,” she stated, referring to Valar’s CEO Isaiah Taylor, noting she trusts him with “actually life-and-death” choices.
That ethical filter means there are corporations she wouldn’t again, even when they’re getting hype. Bucher stated she wasn’t swayed by AI startup Cluely’s rage-bait “cheat on every part” advertising and marketing technique. Quite, she’s proud to have invested in a number of the most revolutionary applied sciences in areas like reproductive tech (Orchid’s embryo choice expertise), accessible healthcare (Superpower), and law-enforcement software program (Abel’s AI-optimized report-writing instruments).
Day One’s portfolio consists of early bets on corporations like Sam Altman’s World, the e-mail app Superhuman, and the distant work platform Distant.com, with not less than 12 unicorns beneath its belt and $115 billion-plus in portfolio worth. Final yr, Day One closed its Fund III with $150 million, concentrating on early-stage founders “fixing humanity’s most urgent points,” and has grown during the last six years from $11 million in belongings beneath administration to effectively over $450 million at this time, says Bucher.
“We wish to use comms to resolve corporations’ enterprise targets, unlock new alternatives, and to assist them, finally, to develop shareholder worth,” Bucher stated.
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