Sometime say 10ish years ago a venture capitalist started a blog where he talked about stuff he liked in great detail.
He called himself “A VC”. His URL was like Avc.blogger.com or some such.
He seemed kind of with it (music taste) but also absurdly naive — VCs are far too busy and important to blog!! — so I figured he was some loser associate about to blog himself out of a job.
I had a blog before, during, and after a period when I worked for a mighty and secretive institution: McKinsey and Company. One day when a client we were working on was in a front page WSJ story I blogged “it is fun to work on stuff on the front page of the WSJ”. I got a talking to not long after (someone could have pieced together who we were working for?), and decided then that my days in consulting were numbered. (It was a great place in lots of ways though.)
Back to this silly blogger. Well he eventually dropped the pseudonym/incognito angle and is now basically too famous for such nonsense: Fred Wilson, the top investor of the present age, was that blogging rascal.
He credits the blogging often: be the change, basically. And the change agents will come to you.
Some, maybe most, early stage VCs seem to have cloned this basic model. Have a blog. Tweet. Be into youth culture. Games. Geekery. Dispense with high finance airs. Cf. McClure, Dixon, A16Z, Mark Suster. All impressive people.
And so too has virtually every associate or similar who calls themself an investor. Formula: posts and tweets about killing it and nails it and owns it that rarely exceed techcrunch writers in insight. I read a post from one today highlighting a shelf in a coffee shop that shows amazing attention to detail!! Learn from it budding founders! A place to set your coffee as you head out!! (Never mind a swinging door.)
So thanks Fred Wilson for opening the curtain but beware wannabe wizards. Say dumb stuff and you will attract dumbness.
And jeez will someone change the channel? I am bored senseless of the formulaic Wilsonite blogs. They mirror structure but lack insight. High time for a new smartest VC playbook.