Narratives as Infrastructure - Why Venture Capital Must Think Like Media Companies

Narratives are often dismissed as marketing fluff — the glossy pitch decks, the splashy press releases, the TED-talk-style soundbites. But in reality, narratives are the unseen scaffolding of the venture capital industry. They are the invisible beams that allow new technologies to be trusted, markets to be formed, and talent to rally behind unproven ideas.

Venture capital itself was built on narrative. In the early days of Silicon Valley, deals were not struck in polished boardrooms but in coffee shops, dinner parties, and late-night bar conversations. General partners and founders would gossip about “the next big thing,” spinning speculative visions of what might be possible. These stories, exchanged person to person, carried the weight of belief. They were companies yet to be capitalized, but they were the precursors to capital formation: the social consensus that something could, perhaps, become real.

The Misconception: Storytelling as PR

Because every startup must raise capital, storytelling has become synonymous with investor decks and media campaigns. Too often, narrative is confused with PR spin: a means to get the next round closed, or the next press article published.

But that is like confusing electricity with the lightbulb. The lightbulb is one application; electricity is the underlying utility infrastructure that makes an entire society possible. Similarly, PR is one application of narrative — but the deeper role of narrative is to create the conditions for markets to emerge.

Think of ride-hailing. At its inception, it seemed unworkable and unsafe. Regulators balked, taxi unions protested, and consumers hesitated. But through persistent narrative work — the framing of ride-hailing as democratizing convenience, as disrupting monopolies, as the “future of urban mobility” — the idea shifted from fringe to mainstream.

This is true of all disruptive technologies. They rarely appear “natural” at the outset. They must get on the narrative highway, a road paved not only by entrepreneurs but by the venture capitalists and visionaries who back them.

Of course, not every story plays out as told. Sometimes VCs get it wrong. The timing may be too early, the execution misaligned, the delivery vehicle mismatched to the market. Narratives are necessary scaffolding, but they are not gospel. And yet without them, disruptive ideas have no path to scale.

Narratives as Market Infrastructure

Just as infrastructure like roads and ports lowers the cost of transactions, narratives lower the cost of adoption. They provide the framing that reduces perceived risk, bridges gaps in understanding, and accelerates trust.

For VCs, this function is not incidental — it is central. When firms like Vertex invest, we do so with conviction. That conviction itself sends a signal: a form of market validation that lowers the barrier for corporates, regulators, and partners to engage. We are not simply marketing a product. We are providing a form of infrastructure — a set of ideas and frames that make innovation more accessible.

This is especially critical in highly technical fields. Many frontier technologies are difficult to communicate to broader audiences. Narratives translate them into human terms: cloud computing was not about servers, it was about “the end of IT headaches.” Electric vehicles were not just cars, they became “a moral choice for sustainability.”

The mediums for delivering these narratives vary — a one-to-one coffee chat, an ecosystem dinner, an explainer video, or a thought leadership article. But the principle is the same: to make innovation intelligible, accessible, and therefore adoptable.

And narratives don’t just affect current adopters. They plant seeds for the future. A six-year-old who sees a simple explainer on quantum computing today may grow up seeing it as natural infrastructure, just as today’s generation takes smartphones for granted. Narratives, in this sense, reduce not just present-day friction but future friction too.

Narratives as Operating Leverage

Startups rarely have the luxury of slow, multi-decade market education. They must establish legitimacy quickly. VCs, with their vantage point across multiple industries, have the ability to shape narratives not just for single companies, but for entire categories.

By articulating investment theses and future visions, VCs multiply the value of their portfolios. A single climate tech company benefits not just from its own story, but from being embedded in the larger VC-driven narrative of the “trillion-dollar green transition.” Similarly, cybersecurity startups gain legitimacy when VCs frame them as part of “a new frontier of national resilience.”

This is the multiplier effect of narrative. It is not about marketing one company. It is about shaping the intellectual and cultural climate in which entire industries grow.

The VC’s Evolving Role: Architect of Belief

Traditional venture capital was about allocating financial capital. Modern venture capital is about allocating belief.

The best investors don’t just ask, “What’s the TAM?” They ask, “What’s the story that makes this TAM possible?”

Belief is contagious. Once seeded, it spreads across founders, customers, regulators, and talent pools. Narratives are the vector for that belief. And VCs, sitting at the intersection of capital, technology, and society, are the architects of those belief systems.

Conclusion: Why VCs Must Think Like Media Companies

To build the future, VCs must think like media companies. Not in the sense of running newsrooms, but in the deeper sense of curating, producing, and distributing stories that serve as infrastructure. Narratives are not marketing gloss. They are the underlying operating system of innovation adoption and ultimately driven by conviction.

At Vertex, this perspective shapes the way we approach our work. We don’t see narrative as secondary; we see it as foundational. That’s why we invest not just in companies, but in the narratives that underpin the enduring success of entire categories. We love exploring new creative ways of storytelling, through content that borrows from entertainment and education alike. But ultimately, the medium is secondary.

What matters is accessibility: that narratives are democratized, easy to understand, and open to all. Because only when narratives are accessible do they serve their true role as infrastructure — bridging the gap between the disruptive technologies of today and the mainstream adoption of tomorrow.