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David Gardner, The Motley Fool

I would say two things underlie our choice of Maveron. The first is their belief in the importance of brand to the success of a business. That's something that we have always believed as investors, and something we've always tried to create as entrepreneurs. The second is their focus on the customer. That is a belief and practice that has always been at the very heart of the Motley Fool. Our process for selecting venture capitalists was exhaustive-we met with every leading light of the industry, and after considering all options, we made our choice with extreme confidence.

We're very early on in the relationship, but we've begun weekly calls with Dan to sort through opportunities and challenges. We've already benefited from Maveron's connections, including our choice of an executive search firm.

Choosing Maveron was actually pretty easy. Their approach of attacking the conventional wisdom of what a venture capital firm should be fit well with our attack on the conventional wisdom of Wall Street. Plus at our first meeting out in Seattle, they all had Fool caps on.

We've always viewed the spirit of our organization and our relationship with the people using our site to be all about developing lifelong loyalty to our brand. Maveron, out of all the firms out there, has consumer brands as the focus of their investment approach. Dan and Zack have a lot of insight into how companies in our stage of growth, with our aims, have been successful and how they've failed. They bring a lot of expertise to tending a brand, making promises to consumers, and making good on those promises. Other firms we considered didn't have company-building and sustainability of success at the forefront of their proposals.