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SoftBank has a new public relations chief to help it explain its huge deals

Andrew Kovacs jumps from Sequoia to SoftBank.

Andrew Kovacs photograph.
Andrew Kovacs.

The investing firm at the center of seemingly every major tech deal now has more help to deal with the barrage of interest in its every move.

Andrew Kovacs, the former head of communications at Sequoia Capital, has joined SoftBank to helm communications at the Vision Fund, which is investing $100 billion in technology. SoftBank skeptics abound, and it will be Kovacs’s job to help the confident Japanese investors explain their thinking behind investments that are in hundreds of millions of dollars.

Despite its massive budget, the staff at the Vision Fund remains relatively small — the company is trying to aggressively hire more investment professionals and support staff. SoftBank has engaged in some PR battles, though, in the course of the Vision Fund though — most prominently when negotiating a mega deal with Uber. But adding an in-house communications official should help.

Kovacs, a former top PR man at Google, has worked at Sequoia since 2012 and guided the company’s messaging through a series of hit investments. All old-guard venture firms have had to grapple with SoftBank’s rise: Sequoia is raising a fund of more than $5 billion that should give it more firepower to bid on huge deals.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.