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Fundraising + brand advisory for visionary leaders and their firms

Mission

We advance the stories, visions, and ventures of those forwarding the common good through regenerative capitalism.

For our clients, the work of shaping tomorrow begins today. While our partners are building companies and managing funds, we work alongside them to develop messaging frameworks and communications programs that attract investment, build goodwill, and garner the attention of their most critical stakeholders.

Our Expertise

001

Narrative Alignment

We work closely with mission-driven leaders and teams to unearth their visions and define them with clarity. Through conversation and workshops, we pose questions that penetrate the surface of traditional management consulting and lead us deep into the heart of the individual leader. Our value lays in the ability to collate disjointed streams of consciousness into articulate insights that culminate in a well-defined mission, along with tactical steps to align resources to it.

002

Brand Development

We go beyond traditional consulting services to support executives and their organizations with the creative services needed to embody their visions externally through brand. Working seamlessly with Notable, our full-service branding and communications firm and sister company, we provide comprehensive brand development services in one seamless engagment, including company/personal branding, web development, content creation, presentation design, and more. 

003

Fundraising Strategy

From segmenting and defining your target capital partners, to vetting the investment thesis you plan to present to them, we use stakeholder research and our experience underwriting our own deals to anticipate the objections and concerns of your prospective capital partners. Threading these insights together, we craft executive summaries and pitch decks that present your company or fund in a way that is compelling, differentiable, and opportune. Where possible, we look for opportunities to connect our clients to one another, or to those in our network whose investment interests align.

004

Research & Diligence

By combining qualitative stakeholder interviews with the collation of existing quantitative research, we develop a holistic picture of the opportunity available in your market, the viability of your potential opportunity or project, and the potential risks or known threats associated with it. While there is no such thing as a crystal ball, our approach is designed to remove some of the legwork of diligence for our clients, to uncover non-obvious insights in the process, and to ultimately provide them with the context and panoramic perspective necessary to make informed, confident decisions.

005

CEO Advisory

As a trusted external advisor to CEOs and senior leaders, we represent a missing a voice of insight and accountability on your internal management team. With interests untied to your companies' performance, our loyalty is to your personal mission, and our focus is on helping you fulfill the higher purpose set forth in our initial discoveries. Serving as the chief advocate for your fulfillment and a steward of your brand's purpose, we provide tactical guidance to navigate complex business decisions in a manner that aligns to – and does not conflict with – your mission and individual core values.

voco · verb · (Latin)

To invoke. To summon.
To call together.

Capital and conviction are a powerful duo. We help our clients integrate the two, orchestrating compelling narratives and platforms that influence thought and mobilize both capital and resources in the direction of visionary initiatives.

Our Clients

Who We Serve

We partner with successful entrepreneurs and investors who seek to align their platforms, influence, and investments with for-profit initiatives in innovation, healthcare, and sustainable energy, as well as philanthropic causes. Our clients have capital and conviction, and they share a desire to direct the two towards purposes that will leave a better world for our kids.

01

Serial Entrepreneurs

Making the transition from operator to investor requires intention.

We support current and exited entrepreneurs in ideating and defining the legacies they intend to leave in the stage of life post-operator. As personal brand architects, we develop a platform to reflect your vision externally, attracting the deal flow, board positions, partnerships, speaking engagements, and philanthropic initiatives that align to the values and interests of your second act pursuits.

02

Family Offices

Transgenerational legacy building demands focus and a vision.

We work alongside purpose-driven family offices to promote the goodwill of the family name, attracting opportunities that position families of influence to utilize their resources for the highest possible good. As a fractional CMO to the family and its staff, our work is intimate and flexible, encompassing vision alignment and value definition, and expanding into the development of a strategic narrative and cohesive external image that reflects the ethos of the family and its principals.

03

Private Equity & Venture Capital

Investment capital and deals flow in the direction of trust.

Through stakeholder research, analogous work with others funds, and our experience as accredited investors underwriting our own deals, we spot holes in capital requests well before they meet the eyes of prospective investors. Combining our understanding of the LP psyche with our distinct expertise in strategic narrative, we craft firm-level brands and fund-level theses that equip purpose-driven fund managers to attract capital and galvanize deal flow.

04

Private Foundations

True success comes in the recognition of what one has to give.

Working closely with founding benefactors of private not-for-profits, we help their leadership align on vision, define values, and craft external narratives that effectively communicate their impact to the world. By harnessing the power of high-impact storytelling, we provide the language and tools to build meaningful relationships with donors, partners, and communities, laying the groundwork for transformational partnerships and a continual impact that will outlive the founders.

People who inspire us:

Divorced Jeff Bezos. Donated their $37M estate to fund affordable housing in California. Then founded Yield Giving, to "share a financial fortune created through the effort of countless people, named after a belief in adding value by giving up control." Since 2019, has donated $14 billion.

MacKenzie Scott

Yield Giving

Chairman Emeritus of the purpose-driven business group that has lifted millions of Indians out of poverty through meaningful employment, contributed a record $832 billion to charity, and whose single largest shareholder remains a group of charitable grant-making trusts, the Tata Trusts.

Ratan Tata

Tata Sons

Founder of Patagonia, and a model example of steward ownership and the possibilities that exist therein. Recently donated his family's sole ownership interest in his billion dollar apparel brand to a perpetual purpose trust that  donates Patagonia's profits to environmental causes.

Yvon Chouinard

Patagonia

What we look for in clients:

CONSCIOUS WEALTH GENERATION

Our clients share our viewpoint on wealth: a resource for sustainable, multigenerational contribution to the collective wellbeing. Capitalism shouldn't be a zero-sum game, and those with whom we partner place equal emphasis on the means with which their wealth is generated, as they do on how it is invested and redistributed. 

VALUES-BASED LEADERSHIP

Our clients see leadership as the highest form of service, and a seat that is first amongst equals. The manner in which they interact with others, assess opportunities, and manage conflict is congruent with the belief sets they preach on Sunday mornings. Our clients embody what they believe, and they inspire us to do the same.

THE CALL TO SERVE

 

Our clients seek a purpose higher than material self-service alone, while recognizing that giving and receiving are the opposite of mutually exclusive. What makes our clients distinct is a conviction to align their platforms to philanthropic and for-profit initiatives that will materially benefit the collective, not at an arbitrary date, but today.

How We Engage:

Model #1

Advisory Retainer

For clients seeking the compounding benefits of an ongoing relationship, and the convenience of quick access to a strategic advisor who functions as an extension of the team via standing calls, attending meetings, and spearheading projects as needed.

Model #2

Special Projects

For clients with a focused objective and a fixed timeline, generally ranging from 4-16 weeks. Projects vary in scope from a set of work sessions to align leadership and develop messaging, to a complete case for capital or market research study.

Model #3

Brand Management

For clients looking to elevate their platforms in order to gravitate capital, influence, goodwill, and other opportunities, by leveraging thought leadership programs and ongoing brand management tactics spearheaded by Notable, our full-service sister firm.

About the founder:

SAM MALIK 

 

Founder + Principal

I’ve always found myself gravitating towards humble people who are doing incredible things but don’t quite know how to tell the world. 

That attraction first manifested in my work as speaker coach and producer of TEDx conferences, and later in my work supporting technology companies and nonprofits with capital raising efforts. I recognized early on that for many, communication is the limiting factor to selling a vision, and my work as a strategic communicator has molded itself around alleviating this obstacle for organizations and people whose work inspires me and feels meaningful.

That journey began as a small strategy and design consultancy, and after nearly a decade, has evolved into a full-service marketing and communications firm called Notable. Today, I’m proud to employ a team of world-class marketers, designers, and digital strategists who make my primary occupation – leading the firm – feel incredibly rewarding and challenging everyday.

I dropped out of college, twice (to the disappointment of my Indian grandparents), but I’ve received at least three graduate degrees worth of knowledge in my experience building a company from nothing, closing six-figure contracts, learning to mentor staff twice my age, and getting to work with a group of clients whose expertise spans industries that I never thought we’d be touching when I chose to pursue a creative path. This field complements my insatiable curiosity and academic inclinations, and I like to credit it for the learning agility it’s equipped me to bring to my advisory clients. 

 

I once heard someone say that when you work in-house at a company, you learn your industry, but when you work for an agency, you learn the world. I've always wanted to learn the world.

Like any story, mine has had its plot twists. At one point, I had an idea for a technology company and decided to join a startup accelerator program to bring it to life, while running my services business in parallel. In retrospect, my idea was subpar, but somehow I made it through because of my ability to pitch and design good decks. I suppose that validated that I was onto something.

When I graduated Founder Institute, the relationships I built in the startup community began attracting technology companies who needed help making decades of lab research or technology development meaningful to investors – enough that they’d cut checks to fund them. In the time since, I’ve built dozens of capital cases and deck for founders and funds both raising and deploying capital.

 

While most people see the process of building decks as a simple task, I see it as an art form – one which, if done tactfully with the right integration of reason, trust, and emotion, can result in a narrative that influences transformative outcomes. This work is a labor of love for me, and the more I believe in a story, the more energized I am am to help uncover and tell it.

This work is deeply personal to me.

The inspiration for Voco Insights arose during a group meditation led by my life-changing coach and friend Juan Alvarez (who, ironically, I met while coaching him as a TEDx speaker years ago). In my work with Juan and the community he has formed, I’ve discovered a completely new paradigm for what is possible when clients like his – conscious, deeply mindful entrepreneurs – embed purpose into how they run their companies and use their wealth. 

I’m not talking about the “Conscious Capitalism” movement, whose founder sold Whole Foods to Amazon, a company whose staff works full time without benefits or the privilege of a bathroom break. I’m talking about those who loathe this walking contradiction that is often so prevalent in entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists, and who hold themselves – as leaders – to a higher standard of moral accountability, so that their efforts in business are regenerative, not extractive.

 

This is the model of business I aspire to everyday, and my intention is to lend my expertise to those who share this vision, in whatever shade and color that looks like for them.

Voco isn't designed to scale. At least not today.

Somewhere along the way of building Notable, as well as spinning off a small real estate investing company of my own, my duties heavily shifted from creative direction to management, and I found myself starting to develop a longing to reinsert myself into the creative process, to roll up my sleeves again in a way that wouldn’t limit my company’s growth or distract from our firm's niche focus. 

Voco Insights is a supplement to my running my own companies, which is why I'm very intentional about taking on a handful of clients at a time who value the insights lent by my wide, nonlinear journey as a career storyteller, as much as I value the work they’re doing, and the way in which they’re doing it. My experiencing owning P+L’s, starting my own real estate investing firm, and helping build capital cases for dozens of founders and funds have cultivated a fluency in brand strategy and balance sheets that – as my clients tell me – is tough to come by.

 

If you think I could be of service to your vision, then I’d love to chat. First coffee is always on me.

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