When Masha Bucher launched Day One Ventures in San Francisco in 2018, she brought something unusual to the table: a conviction shaped by her experience helping high-growth companies scale through communications and the realization that backing those companies directly was a natural next step. In a market saturated with capital, she built something concrete: a VC firm with communications as core infrastructure from day one.
It was a bet rooted in her own unconventional path from PR exec to angel investor to fund founder. Six years later, with twelve unicorns in her portfolio, that bet has paid off.
The PR Prodigy
Bucher’s entrepreneurial instincts surfaced early. At 18, while still a student, she founded a social media and PR agency. Within six months, it had grown to nearly 100 employees.
That early win set the trajectory. By 23, Masha Bucher was Vice President of Communications at Acronis, the data protection company backed by Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, managing public relations across 18 countries. She later moved to Runa Capital as Head of Communications, where she got her first real exposure to the venture capital world while leading PR for the fund.
In 2014, Bucher launched M&A PR Studio, a tech-focused PR firm that would become her proving ground. The agency generated eight-figure revenues, but Bucher was selective—she worked with roughly 30 high-potential clients rather than taking on everyone who inquired. Her approach was hands-on, guiding startups from early stages through funding rounds, acquisitions, and IPOs.
The results spoke for themselves. Nine of her PR clients achieved unicorn status. The roster included PandaDoc, Gett, HotelTonight, Houzz, and WeWork—companies that needed compelling narratives to match their ambitious growth plans.
From Advising Founders to Backing Them
After successfully exiting her communications firm, Bucher transitioned to angel investing around 2016. The move made sense: she had spent years identifying promising startups through her PR work and helping them scale. Now she wanted skin in the game.
Her angel portfolio included Truebill, Lithic, Chatfuel, and Acquired.io. The returns were exceptional—significantly outperforming industry benchmarks in an asset class where 3-5x is considered strong. Bucher was onto something.
Building Day One Ventures
Bucher founded Day One Ventures in 2018, emerging as one of two female solo general partners to launch a venture fund that year. The firm’s name came from a meeting with Jeff Bezos, echoing his philosophy that companies should operate with the urgency of their first day.
The model was straightforward but novel for venture capital: Day One wouldn’t just invest in startups, it would actively lead their communications. The firm provides comprehensive PR support to portfolio companies free of charge—defining narratives, guiding moments of public visibility, and building trust.
Bucher started with Fund I of $20 million. By 2021, she had raised a second fund of $52.5 million. The portfolio began generating results: 22 exits by mid-2024, including the IPO of satellite maker Terran Orbital. Among her early bets were eight companies that reached unicorn status—Superhuman, Remote.com, World, Truebill, and DuckDuckGo among them.
The Truebill investment exemplified the Day One playbook. Bucher invested at a $15 million valuation in 2018. Three years later, Rocket Companies acquired the personal finance app for approximately $1.3 billion.
In 2024, Bucher announced Fund III at $150 million—one of the largest funds ever raised by a female solo-GP venture capitalist. Portfolio companies now collectively exceed $115 billion in combined valuation.
The Philosophy Behind the Model
Bucher’s investment thesis centers on a specific observation: technological progress often outpaces public trust. At a moment when humanity faces converging crises—climate change, healthcare access, economic inequality—the technologies that could help address them often struggle to gain adoption. Many people remain wary of artificial intelligence or crypto, and that wariness can slow progress regardless of a product’s merits.
Bucher’s philosophy is rooted in a simple belief: breakthrough technology only succeeds when people understand it well enough to trust and use it. For founders building in complex or emerging categories, clarity isn’t optional—it’s a prerequisite for adoption. Her solution is proactive storytelling, embedded from the earliest stages of company-building.
Day One typically invests in pre-seed or seed rounds, targeting founders with what Bucher describes as “deep-seated customer obsession.” The firm looks for traits like speed of execution, focus, and a commitment to solving humanity’s most pressing problems.
Thematically, Day One invests across AI, deep tech, fintech, climate technology, enterprise software, the future of work, and health. With Fund III, Bucher introduced a new category she calls the “Future of Human”—backing companies working at the frontier of human health and capability, from longevity science to neural interfaces.
Bridging Tech and Culture
Bucher’s approach extends beyond traditional PR into art and culture. She draws inspiration from historical precedents—Leonardo da Vinci bridging art and engineering, Andy Warhol’s involvement with early personal computers—as evidence that creative expression can bridge the gap between innovation and public acceptance.
In 2022, Day One partnered with OpenAI to host one of the first gallery exhibitions of DALL-E generated art in San Francisco, attracting hundreds of investors, founders, and art collectors and generating over 188 million media impressions. The goal was to help people imagine generative AI’s creative possibilities rather than fear the technology.
This philosophy earned Bucher recognition as a Milken Institute Young Global Leader in 2024, where she engaged with business and policy leaders on how innovation can address societal challenges.
From early leadership roles in communications to building one of the most differentiated venture platforms in the market, Masha Bucher has built her career around a single conviction: that breakthrough technology fails without cultural adoption. In a venture landscape crowded with capital, that understanding—paired with investment conviction—has become a defining edge.
