Mischa Vaughn
.svg){kind=icon}
The culture of a company mirrors the product. Great founders understand how what you ship reinforces culture and vice versa.
Mischa is the Head of Content at Felicis, where he works with the team to share stories and insights that will empower, inspire, and enlighten founders worldwide. With over a decade of operational experience and an extensive understanding of multiple formats and channels, Mischa also helps Felicis companies achieve their creative ambitions. Previously, Mischa was a content and communications leader at several high-growth, multi-billion dollar companies (Webflow, Carta, and Pivotal). He was also an early employee at Twitter and Upworthy and started his career consulting with the TED Conferences. As an angel investor, he’s invested in Orbit and Eppo. He holds a degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Bard College.
The culture of a company mirrors the product. Great founders understand how what you ship reinforces culture and vice versa.
How has your upbringing shaped your worldview?
I grew up in Costa Rica and lived there for nine years with my family and many dogs. It was easy to appreciate nature in Costa Rica, which is one of the most biodiverse parts of the world. I got to see how marvelous and also how fragile ecosystems can be. My parents were also social entrepreneurs, starting a restaurant that eventually became a non-profit cooking school and a for-profit catering business, which they brought back to the States. The non-profit trained people how to work in food service, gave them jobs in the catering business, and also conducted after-school activities focused on food and nutrition. Getting to witness a business create such a positive impact in people’s lives was revelatory. It’s why I think that mission-driven businesses have an edge and why I have a lot of optimism about the positive change that entrepreneurs can manifest.
How do you support founders?
It all comes back to storytelling. Whether it’s an announcement or creative ideation, I’ve helped dozens of founders figure out the most intriguing part of their story and how to harness it to drive value back to the company—like getting customers or helping with hiring. Specifically, I’ve helped founders announce their funding rounds, figure out creative strategies, and how to structure early marketing teams.
What do founders often misunderstand about content?
Content isn’t about outwitting your competition; it’s about consistently capturing the right kind of attention. You want to deliver a consistent message at a maintainable quality and cadence while using bold moments to generate momentum. People are rarely convinced the first time they hear a story, so repackaging the same message through multiple formats and reusing content across different mediums is overlooked but important work. Also, it’s crucial to avoid making too much content that’s one-dimensional. Owning your audience list and getting them to participate authentically is the key, and it’s never too early to think about how to build that into your product or marketing lifecycle.
What’s an unconventional truth you believe?
Making and documenting predictions is an extremely worthwhile practice. Crafting predictions requires you to combine data analysis, intuition, and pattern recognition. These are all abilities that are worth cultivating, especially if you’re entrepreneurially minded, and they can be honed. You can reflect on and learn from the predictions you get wrong, and you get to have receipts for the ones you got right.
What’s a lesson you want to teach your child?
He’s just a baby right now, but eventually, I hope to teach him the value of focus and tenacity and how to form your own opinions in this noisy world of ours, as well as how to participate in and care for the environment he’s a part of. More immediately, I hope to teach him the value of longer naps and that he shouldn't pull on the dog's ears.
