Sunday, September 23, 2007

Today's Globe column: Why VCs Do (or Don't) Blog

Today's Globe column deals with the ways that blogging is changing the relationship between entrepreneurs and VCs. From the piece:

    There's a bifurcation happening in the Boston venture capital world: Some firms blog, and some don't. And the divide isn't just about being hip to the latest trend. It signifies an important shift in the way VC firms interact with entrepreneurs.


The video is below (it features Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, Jon Radoff of GuildCafe, MIT Sloan student Sim Blaustein, and Mike Feinstein)... and after it, some additional thoughts e-mailed to me by VC bloggers Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures and Jeffrey Bussgang of IDG Ventures.




From Fred Wilson:


    [Blogging is] a huge benefit to our business. Of course it brings incremental deal flow, but it also filters the deal flow and makes it more targeted and more relevant

    Its also a great way to bring needed attention to the companies we invest in

    And its a way to do research on new sectors and learn about other companies that compete with our companies

    And its a great way to learn about emerging technologies. Check out the comments to my andreessen post yesterday or my post on AIR last week. You can't buy that kind of education and I get it every day for free

    I could go on and on. Its the best tool for vc investing that I've ever seen and I've been in this business for more than 20 yrs

From Jeffrey Bussgang:

    - Definitely less about deal flow and more about transparency and providing accessibility, humanizing the VC process
    - Open dialog helps me keep in touch with entrepreneur’s latest issues and hot buttons
    - Provides sense of accountability to the entrepreneur community
    - Helps me understand social networking, community, blogging, and many other Web 2.0 phenomenon from a practical standpoint as a practioner, not theoretical

Interestingly, one thing I didn't mention in my column... at least one Boston firm, North Bridge Venture Partners, has an internal blog that's visible only to their partners and entrepreneurs.

(In my blogroll at right, I think I have a comprehensive list of all the Boston-area VC blogs.)

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Scott Lawton said...

Here's a manual trackback: In my Blogcsom post I summarize your article and reactions from Fred Wilson, Mike Feinstein, Bijan Sabet, and Jeff Bussgang.

September 25, 2007 8:05 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Isn't Spark Capital's Sabet saying that John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins doesn't blog but has put money into Amazon.com Inc., Google Inc., and Intuit Inc. about the same as saying Henry Ford was a great businessman without ever flying on a 747?

Great article, Scott. The old school is "protecting its intellectual property" and listening to a bunch of limited partner dinosaurs (they don't call them "limited" for nothing) and getting eaten up by the new school.

Go West, young man. Go West. Leave Boston venture with the biotech cause it take 12 years to get a product to market and you don't need to blog.

September 25, 2007 9:17 PM  

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