Sequoia Capital’s former head of Communications and PR, Andrew Kovacs, recently joined Softbank as its new Head of Communications at the Vision Fund.
Vision Fund is Softbank’s fund that will look to invest $100 billion in technology startups and initiatives. It will be Kovacs’s job to help the fund better explain their thinking behind investments that are in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Kovacs was a former top PR executive at Google and has worked at Sequoia since 2012, guiding the company’s messaging through a series of hit investments.
Despite its massive budget and outlay, the number of employees at the Vision Fund remains relatively small. SoftBank has been dragged into quite a few PR battles owing to the rather diverse portfolio of the Vision Fund. The most recent one began when it negotiated a mega deal with Uber. Thus, adding an in-house communications official might be of great help.
Backed by tech giants including Apple, Qualcomm, and Sharp, as well as by sovereign funds from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, SoftBank’s Vision Fund has raised close to a whopping $100 billion, making it the largest technology investment fund ever. It has also had a significant effect on Silicon Valley in 2017. Recent investments through the Vision Fund include funding rounds for Slack, Mapbox and Vir Biotechnology. SoftBank is likely to invest up to a whopping $10 billion in Uber, but that deal hasn’t gone through yet.
Here’s a list of all the funding rounds the Vision Fund has participated in to date:
Source: Recode
When it comes to such funds having a diverse portfolio, it becomes important to not only justify but to also promote the deals that are made. Therefore, Kovacs’ hire can be seen as a well placed strategic move that the company was in need of. While compensation and reporting details remain undisclosed, it is safe to say that Kovacs will add a lot of value to the team.
