Sacred Cow Dung

« VC Cheat Sheet | Sacred Cow Dung Home | Top 10 Internet Marketing Trends for the Next 10 Years »

July 10, 2005

Opinionated VCs "Bravely" Find Their Voice

I have often characterised venture capitalists as “a bunch of guys who —

• talk to themselves,
• evaluate guys with visions, and 
• treat visions with money instead of medication.”

So when an VC takes the time to actually transcribe their “internal conversations” on a blog, their posts often provide a revealing glimpse into the underlying business logic of our industry.  One must remember, VCs paradoxically tend to NOT be early adopters. So this “VC Blogging” trend has been growing slowly but steadily and is certainly helping to make our industry a bit more transparent — both internally and externally. 

Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) was one of the first VCs to maintain his own weblog.  Partly because it has been around the longest and partly because his “diary” approach to his weblog broadens its appeal over a “VC Insights Only” blog (“Gee, I can’t imagine how people could be fascinated with anything other than venture capital”), A VC remains one of the most highly linked and highly trafficked of the VC blogs.

I find there is a growing trend among VCs treat their blogs more like true “content management systems (CMS)” or “publishing platforms.”  Instead of short daily commentary, they tend to write longer, and possibly more insightful, analyses which are more akin to “articles” than “posts.”  While you’ll still find short “epiphany posts”, taken together, these posts are beginning to form a dynamic repository of current, even real-time, industry thinking.   While providing more structure to this body of thought, such as a VC Wiki, is a possibility, I think the web itself, with its topical search, dynamic links, topical tagging, and news feeds, is doing a great job for now. 

Of course, as with anything new, the forces of change are always resisted by the status quo. David Beisel notes in his  Genuine VC: Stop! You Shouldn't Blog. The Risks of Professional Blogging post five potential professional risks to VCs who maintain their own weblogs —

1. Blogging is viewed by many as a fad.
2. Bloggers are sometimes perceived to have many negative attributes.
3. Professionals (especially VCs) should have a network already to leverage; blogging could signal that one’s network is weak.
4. Professionals are busy people; blogging could imply that one isn’t busy with “real” work.
5. Blogging provides an uninhibited permanent record to ones’ thoughts. Yes, permanent.

David ends his post with a summary of his personal view —

User-generated self-expression content is here to stay, but blogging in its current form will certainly evolve. Currently, I see many benefits to blogging, and will continue to do so until those are over-weighted by downsides. If that point comes, I will clearly articulate why I have decided to stop (or slow down my postings). I feel that transparency here is the best route to chose, as do many others in this community. Yes, the negative attributes enumerated above are both real and tangibly felt by many, and I, along with any professional blogger, do run the risk of these associations. But I believe that the benefits associated with blogging, including the ability to critically think about and express views that are extensions of my work, outweigh the potential drawbacks and risks. And, of course, I am careful to limit what I say to things that are careful and thoughtfully articulated, as I am mindful of the permanent record that online publishing brings with it. In sum, while some in the community may argue that everyone should embrace the self-expression blogging phenomenon, I would argue that each individual should carefully weigh the risks and merits involved with it.

Like a large portion of VCs who regard themselves as extremely independent-minded (even though we still exhibit lemming-like behaviours from time to time), I don’t really spend much time worrying about what others think of me (I probably should).   But for those who do, these risks are real. 

I know on my own Sacred Cow Dung blog, I am getting a lot of very thoughtful comments emailed directly to me.  The authors say I can post their comments anonymously only — they are afraid of revealing too much about what they think in public (especially on a site called “Sacred Cow Dung”?). 

I think this is an extremely sad state of affairs.  Apparently, these days, free speech is considered more of a luxury for the rich and powerful rather than a right for the masses — and has many worried that if they exercise it, they will suffer significant professional hardships. 

There’s certainly lots of hardship to go around and I’ve certainly borne my share.  Thinking is a dirty business and new ideas follow serpentine paths from birth to community acceptance, so a little more hardship from exercising my right to —

•  “think out loud,”
•  “share thoughts with both like-minded and not” and ultimately to
• “change my mind publically”

seems like a reasonable trade-off to me. 

While I continue to find new VC blogs almost daily, these are —

The VC Weblogs I Currently Track (sorry if I forgot you)

• A VC (Fred Wilson, Union Square)
• Allen's Blog (Allen Morgan, Mayfield)
• BeyondVC (Ed Sim, Dawntreader Ventures)
• Bill Gurley's Above the Crowd (Bill Gurley, Benchmark)
• Burnham's Beat (Bill Burnham, Celsius Capital)
• Cleantech Investing (several)
• Deep Green Crystals (Martin Tobias, Ignition Partners)
• Due Diligence (Tim Oren, Pacifica Fund) 
• Feld Thoughts (Brad Feld, Mobius Venture Capital)
• Geekfishing Blog (several)
• Genuine VC (David Beisel, Masthead Venture Partners)
• Infectious Greed (Paul Kedrosky, Ventures West)
• Northwest VC (Steve Hall, Vulcan)
• NW Venture Voice (several)
• Our Man in Nirvana (Robin Bordoli, Mobius Venture Capital)
• Sacred Cow Dung (Christian Mayaud, The Verticom Group)
• Seeing Both Sides (Jeff Bussgang, IDG Ventures)
• SF Venture (Keith Benjamin, Levensohn Venture Partners)
• Software Only (Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC) 
• Southeast VC (Jason Caplain, Southern Capitol Ventures)
• The J Curve (Steve Jurvetson, DFJ)
• VC Adventure (Seth Levine, Mobius)
• VCball (Steve Brotman, Silicon Alley Venture Partners)
• VenChar (several)
• Venture Chronicles by Jeff Nolan (Jeff Nolan, SAP Ventures)
• VentureBlog (several)
• Will Price (Will Price. Pequot Ventures)

BTW, “Nivi” has created a newsfeed called The VC Channel which aggregates selected posts from his favorite VC blogs (not comprehensive but he seems to spend the time to make good selections).

======================

Related Posts

• Infectious Greed: Why are There So Many VC Blogs?
• Software Only: Re: Why are There So Many VC Blogs?
• theQview: Blogging as CMS
• Genuine VC: Stop! You Shouldn't Blog. The Risks of Professional Blogging
• Opinion Column by PC Magazine: I Blog/I Do Not Blog

Posted by cmayaud at 04:11 PM | Permalink| Comments (1)
Del.icio.us Tagging | Digg This | Posted to Blogging | TRENDS | Venture Capital Process

Comments

Posted by: Christian Mayaud at July 11, 2005 07:34 AM

Post a comment