Phone > Email > Blogs

Brad Feld instigated this post with his “Why Blog” piece.

When I got into the venture capital business in the mid 80s, the only way i could network effectively was to go to events, conferences, trade shows, etc and then work the phones incessantly.

Then in the early 90s, email hit the scene. Suddenly, everyone had an email address. And my ability to network grew by an order of magnitude. I could “touch” hundreds of people every day, ask what they were up to, hear about new deals, etc. It suddenly became a lot easier to be a venture capitalist.

I think blogging is the next quantum leap in networking. Today I can “touch” 1000 people a day with the things i am thinking about, deals i am seeing, technologies that interest me, and i hear back from at least 20 or 30 of them via comments or email. That is making my job a lot easier again.

Brad’s partner says that “NOT everyone deserves a printing press”. I disagree. Everyone deserves one, but not everyone will use it effectively. Hopefully, I am not in the latter category.