The venture capital world moves at digital speed and digital scale, but all digital is now changing in VCs’ offices. Investment firms are relearning how to use their printers and make physical documents. After years of going paperless, there is a quiet return to physical papers for high-stakes meetings.
Why printed portfolios are coming back
Investors handle the most sensitive of information. These are cap tables, financial projections and term sheets the contents of which would send markets soaring if they were ever leaked. Cloud storage and email are easy, but they can be hacked, forwarded, accidentally shared.
When investment teams continue to print brochures for board meetings where sensitive information still sits offline, they are choosing control over convenience. There’s no metadata to trace, no server logs to steal and no chance that the documents will be left lying around in a recipient’s inbox after a deal has gone south.
Printing companies like HelloPrint said that demand for more secure printing solutions has surged among financial service firms and they believe it’s not just a thing of past.
What is the psychology behind printed presentations
There’s a human dimension as well, beyond security. Limited partners writing eight-figure checks expect to see professionalism commensurate with the stakes. Temple University’s Fox School of Business: People who read information on paper scored 26% higher on comprehension tests than those reading the same content on a screen. For complex investment theses, that information makes a difference.
Pitch books printed on expensive paper also send a message of permanence. While slide decks are a dime a dozen, a well-conceived brochure implies that effort (and cash) was spent and preparation is serious.
How to find the balance
That’s not to say venture capital is fleeing technology. Today, most firms have a mixture of these approaches. They do business on a daily basis digitally but makes printed materials for quarterly reviews, annual meetings and first-time pitches to potential limited partners.
Companies like HelloPrint have made this practical, with quick turnaround times and small batch printing, meaning organisations are not stuck with stacks of out-of-date materials.
The costs are manageable too. A 16-page pro booklet costs between $2-$8 a copy professionally printed in orders of 50 and 100. For all those firms with hundreds of millions in assets, that´s a rounding error when the value is being able to present information in the most efficient manner.
What this means for other industries
The venture capital shift has lessons beyond finance. Restrictions would apply more to fields that manage sensitive information or high-value decisions, which may want to reconsider an all-digital life.
Many legal firms handling sensitive cases face the same tradeoffs between convenience and security. Turns out the old way isn’t always worse than we remember.
