Now that the blogging community has been graced with the arrival of Commander Kawasaki and his oratory from above, or below, sideways, or wherever; we must pause to consider the future of the list. Guy’s VC blog has given the community a wide variety of lists.
Guy’s lists have told us you lie, I lie, and we pretty much don’t believe you, your spreadsheets, your market share, your plans, or your momma. For bonus points, we got a wish list of what all us VC liar, don’t believe ya anyway types, want.
It was on that last wish list entry that I actually started a screaming, all caps, rebuttal, complete with professional commentary. (Don’t yell at me, it’s from Saturday Night Live.)
I think telling people to get a referral is rude, elitist and just continues to feed the not so hot VC reputation. The latest pronouncement of “show some traction” concerns me as well because the most successful VCs should be helping to grow the farm team by helping the new start ups instead the no referral, no traction blow off.. But, no rant today…
To be fair, Guy has some great posts and some great suggestions. He’s a master at evangelizing and I was fortunate he wasn’t at Apple when I was at Microsoft as the job would have been way way harder.
Having said that, the VC community, newbies like moi, and veterans like Guy need to call a truce/halt to the endless lists. Believe me, every VC out here has said, don’t read your powerpoint slides, tell me a story, keep it simple, show me the model, yadda, yadda, yadda.. No more lists.
[Interesting side note: When you type into Google “Don’t read your PowerPoint slides”, you get 1 result, so maybe we haven’t yelled it enough.]
So, I promise, no more lists of stuff you’ve already heard a 1000 times before. No more dribble. I promise to try and present real stuff you can use, that makes a difference, and will help you make some moves down the road to success.
Like this:
Nothing is more important to your success then people feeling that what you do is personal and matters to you. Alex Eckelberry runs a software company called Sunbelt Software. From the “we keep the bad guys out” to Alex’s blog, you can get a sense that the company is real and he is real. Consider his “Security on the Cheap” entry as a pretty good example of making it personal and helpful which, in the end, will hopefully cause you to buy some product. Alex is a super guy, running a super company. I recommend you read his blog.
I have a list of these amazing people around here someplace…. Oops.
The lists are interesting actually - frankly I can't tell if he's joking or not. But I have to agree with you on this: "I think telling people to get a referral is rude, elitist and just continues to feed the not so hot VC reputation."
Posted by: Xavier Casanova | January 22, 2006 at 22:01