Partner storyteller @baincapVC. Co-host of "Attention Shift" pod. Ex: @playground_vc @theinformation. Mom of 2 scamps and a spaniel. East Bay.
Joined December 2007
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Anytime you make your entire story about how “good” or “altruistic” you are, that story will come into contact with the for-profit nature of your business and bite you.
Remember The Wing? I loved it. Space for women to work and collaborate… hyper woke branding killed it. They meant well but one disagreed-with decision and the whole thing falls apart.
Greenwashing has tons of examples. Volkswagen emissions scandal was bad, as being caught lying always is. But it wouldn’t have been as bad without the storytelling behind it. The Honest Company took some big hits here too.
Anthropic Safety just another example.
Go ahead and do good things! But make it clear how those things serve your business too. Nobody in this era of complete distrust in institutions believes you’re doing anything out of the kindness of your heart.
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Allison Braley 🦊 retweeted
Jun 12
Narrative capitalism is the winner
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Jun 11
So beautiful and cinematic. Should run this as preroll in movie theaters in affluent non-SF cities across America!
Jun 10
Introducing “Comeback City: A Love Letter to San Francisco.” Proud to call this place home.
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Jun 10
GEO/AEO is a downstream benefit of great comms and brand work, but we can’t let the tail wag the dog. Shaping perception is the goal — the means are plentiful and this is just one shiny new tool in our arsenal.
But if you follow the trend to its conclusion, I worry about its eventual effect on startups and all challenger brands. If AI suggests everything we buy, how will we browse? How will we discover things that are off the beaten path?
If you’re a considered purchase and a luxury, IYKYK type of brand, you can afford to wait and see a bit on GEO.
If you’re an impulse buy, mass product, challenger brand — you’d better get to work on it now.
Jun 10
AI is rewriting how your company's story gets told, and most leaders haven't caught up yet.
BCV’s @allisonbraley joined Sean Garrett (@Affirm) and Terra Carmichael (@lyft) at #MediaSummitSF2026 to unpack what that means for brand perception when the narrator is an LLM.
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Marketing sells the product. Communications sells the vision.
It's an oversimplification, perhaps, but as someone who wears both hats in my current and last few roles, it feels directionally salient to me.
You need both perspectives in the boardroom.
As we see more and more startups building two teams -- one orienting around "brand / comms / content" and another org around "marketing / growth / revenue" -- it's an interesting trend to watch.
Great article from @DollyDeighton linked in the comments.
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Allison Braley 🦊 retweeted
That’s a wrap on BCV Converge! This Tuesday, we hosted leaders from Fortune 500 companies across major industries to tackle one question:
How are enterprises turning experimentation into real operating impact?
Their answers are coming next week. Stay tuned.
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Allison Braley 🦊 retweeted
Jun 4
Very excited to share our interview with @polynoamial on AI for math — the Erdős unit distance problem, saturating the IMO, the future of math research, and more!
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This really hits several of my interests -- narrative / storytelling, Star Wars, design / architecture.
Cannot wait to go see it in person.
First look at George Lucas’ new Los Angeles museum. Life size Star Wars spacecraft will soon be on display for visitors.
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Allison Braley 🦊 retweeted
Getting discharged from the hospital should be the easy part.
Yet, 4 in 10 home health patients get turned away not because clinicians aren't available, but because the system is too admin-heavy to route care efficiently. Adaptive Innovations rebuilt that from scratch.
100k patient visits. 500 referring health organizations. A patient mix most providers won't touch, and they're profitable doing it.
@joinadaptive just raised a $50M Series A. We're thrilled to keep supporting them as they grow.
The category is about to get very interesting. Explore more: baincapitalventures.com/insi…
@ChristinaPhili5 @AlexRWendland @ryanatolsma
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Allison Braley 🦊 retweeted
Healthcare's new rule: the surgery isn't over when you leave the OR.
So who owns the recovery? Medicare's TEAM model makes hospitals financially accountable for the full 30-day recovery. 743 hospitals. Five procedure types. No opt-out.
Our partner, @alysaaco, shares why hospitals aren’t ready (and what to do about it)
baincapitalventures.com/insi…
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Allison Braley 🦊 retweeted
May 28
When Chris Turlica and Hugo Dozois-Caouette started @maintainx, they were solving a problem that Silicon Valley wasn’t paying attention to: 80% of the global workforce wasn’t working at a desk, yet only 1% of software spend went toward tools for them. MaintainX built world class software for the factory floor.
Today, this early insight becomes mainstream with Autodesk's proposed acquisition of MaintainX for $3.6B.
We are proud to have led MaintainX's Series C in 2023 and co-led the Series D in 2025 alongside our friends at Bessemer. The tenacity, vision, and consistency that "Killer Teddy Bear" Chris Turlica and team bring to work every day are unparalleled. It has been a joy to work with them.
Congratulations to the entire MaintainX team on this well-deserved milestone.
baincapitalventures.com/insi…
cc @BainCapVC @Abby__Meyers
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May 27
Come for the cute dogs (including my Boykin, Penny Lane)... stay for the insights from the brave and brilliant @celinehalioua, who is a personal hero of mine in addition to being a founder we get to work with.
May 27
This startup wants dogs to live longer.
If that’s not enough to get you to watch, we’re not sure what will. But if you need more convincing, @celinehalioua built @loyalfordogs after years of doubt and is now running the first ever FDA-concurred lifespan extension clinical trial.
Featuring 1,300 really good boys and girls. And yes, everyone will get a pup cup after.
Full Outlier Briefing with @kevinzhang out now.
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May 27
Your messaging is *extra* and not in the good way.
The situation looks like this:
1) We need to solve [PROBLEM]
2) If [NONDESCRIPT AUDIENCE] knew [LONG CONVOLUTED STRING OF MESSAGES] our problem would be solved
3) Let's try to tell them [3-5 MESSAGES] all at once
This approach does not work. Your fledgling startup's ICP should be well defined, and even then, they can *barely* grok the one message. You will have to choose, and it will be hard.
Once you absolutely hammer that message a million ways, in a million places, only then can you move down the list to Message No. 2.
This is the problem with messaging that's designed by committee. Everyone has their own pet version of the messaging that they want to shoehorn in and it becomes easier over time to just sigh and acquiesce. It quickly devolves into alphabet soup. Lots of letters, low on meaning.
Resist this impulse if you can. You can do it all, but not all at the same time.
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Allison Braley 🦊 retweeted
May 26
Can confirm. Need comms support? You need to lock someone in 3 months before you need to announce.
May 26
word of advice to founders: lock in your comms support way earlier than you think
seeing a huge influx of inbound for launches and positioning sprints, and many of the best strategists are already booked out for the entire summer
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Allison Braley 🦊 retweeted
May 21
Anyone who rides shotgun alone in a Waymo should be studied
May 21
Fellow @Waymo riders: shotgun or backseat?
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May 21
In addition to insulting the reporter (basically calling them a slop cannon / shill), it insults your own client to ask for this.
Do you have so little faith in your own story that you have to resort to JV control tactics?
Negative aura points.
May 20
lots of corporate press / comms people asking me to share drafts of stories before publication (??) these days. baby that is not how it has ever worked
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May 20
Be yourself and be early.
There have been a few threads here that all lead back to the same place for me.
1: The commodification and naming of various aesthetics
2: 996, grindcore becoming aspirational / performative
3: Slop in all forms
As soon as you try to model yourself after another thing -- "see! we're like [ASPIRATIONAL THING]!! We talk like them, look like them, act like them!!" -- as soon as you're thinking this way, you've lost.
The first few companies to have a specific culture, or branding or aesthetic get a significant boost. It's authentic to them. It's theirs.
The 100th company to try to squeeze into that space finds it very crowded and the framing they've selected provides very little benefit.
The real work in marketing IMO is in spending time with founders deeply thinking about why they're building, what they're building and how it should feel.
Be like [OTHER THING] is the worst possible direction, and you'd be amazed how often it's given.
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