Dave McClure is leading a new charge where VCs are doing outreach and education to stimulate deal flow. He is at Founders Fund.
Who are VCs trying to charm?! — waves of entrepreneurs able to launch lean start-ups.
Sales oriented VCs like McClure romance entrepreneurs by reaching out to influencers like Jeremiah Owyang (Altimeter), Eric Reis (blogger), or Marcus Nelson (UserVoice/SalesForce). These influencers are the people who entrepreneurs look to for guidance, advice and support.
Smart VCs are also “speak-sponsoring”… it’s where they speak and sponsor simultaneously. For example, at Stanford, David Hornik of August Capital introduces VIP guest speakers and hosts Fraiche frozen yogurt receptions.
A third component to speak-sponsoring is producing afterparties to tech conferences and events. On a small scale, Second Market hosted the green room at Girls In Tech Conference. Second Market provides VCs, LPs and founders liquidity to pre-IPO companies. Brita Moeller, VP of Private Markets, revealed, “For a small sum of money I got access to all the speakers basically coming to me in the green room.”
Another example is when Canaan Partners hosted Web 2.0 Summit afterparty. They paid for an event at the Swank St Regis to get entrepreneur deal flow. The Web 2.0 Summit was at the Westin and Canaan decided to upgrade the entrepreneur experience and use a five star resort
Bryan Chao, senior associate at Canaan said, “Nothing activates our brand more than supporting entrepreneurs”. Canaan gave away a booth that allowed a non portfolio company to showcase and promote as if they were already Canaan portfolio company.
VCs pitching entrepreurs is also happening at South by Southwest (SXSW). For the first time at SXSW, there is the Reverse VC Pitch event. It has VCs pitching entrepreneurs. Recently, at Stanford, Luke Nosek of Founders Fund pitched (Video) http://bit.ly/vc0224v.
The upcoming event Sunday March 14 has over a dozen top venture firms including GRP, Bessemer, First Found, Benchmark, Austin Ventures, Draper Fisher, S3, Shasta, Sierra and more.
Larry’s mentor Mark McCormack wrote this in 1983. He started IMG which represents athletes.
I wrote this in 40 minutes. If I missed something, email me… larry @larrychiang dot com and include your cell in the subject line.
DISCLOSURE: I started the credit company that changed an industry Duck9. I make money selling credit cards to college students and I got a bill passed that outlaws 90+% of my competitors. The new law takes effect Feb 2010 and is called Student Credit Card Protection Act of 2009. Before credit card companies used to screw college students. Now, college students have the tables turned in their favor. Yes, I plan on doing this college marketing job until 2069 (I’ll be 90 then Text or call me during office hours 11:11am or 11:11pm PST +/-11 minutes on my cell: 650-283-8008.
I had a little spa day with friends yesterday, and it was the welcome reprieve I’d hoped it would be. But the subject of social media found its way into career-oriented conversation, and I found myself warning my friends against the perils of spending too much time in our growing world of on-demand work and entertainment. It takes away from the personal development that needs to go into the building of our relationships in the offline world.
I’m not saying that we should move away from social media outlets all together, but specifically for the business and marketing use of social media, a balance needs to be met. One of my friends yesterday noted the amount of time needed to maintain a social media presence, which cuts into her actual time spent with customers that are in her shop at any given point of the day.
The conversion factor for moving relationships from the online world into the offline world is still a matter of large concern, particularly when it comes to building one’s brand. Yes, you need a web presence. Yes, you need to find a way to quickly and effectively share information with your customers and clients. Yes, you need to become a resource for others seeking industry-related information, for the purpose of becoming discovered by those using search mechanisms. And yes, you need to engage your customers to maintain open correspondence and receive valuable feedback to use towards the development of your brand.
But find some time towards converting all of that social media activity into something you can benefit from offline. We all know that popularity in the online realm means little for brands with a focus on bricks and mortar locations, unless there’s a way in which they can easily turn that popularity into something more monetizable.
Finding a way to develop those relationships both offline and online is a serious focus for brand owners and those seeking a more powerful association with their company and its principles. Otherwise, brands will be able to hide behind their avatars, getting little out of everyday experiences that lend towards the betterment of in-person correspondence.
As brands seek more social media involvement, it’s important to take a few cues from the course social media has taken for individuals that have already learned this lesson.
Google and MySpace have forged a new deal, primarily for real-time search results. The search engine company has confirmed the rumors that the two companies have been in talks regarding an SEO deal, and Google will begin including MySpace content in its real time search results.
Despite issues between Google and MySpace in the past, MySpace may be able to provide some value still to the large search engine company. As Google looks to build out its real time search options, MySpace is being leveraged towards providing relevant and immediate search results for added context.
Real time search has largely turned to social media content for the past few months, highlighting social media’s ability to add another layer of context to th data we receive in the form of search results. For a given query, we can gain a certain level of instant gratification based on content published from user-generated sites such as MySpace, moving away from the validation process required by more trusted news sources. As the content from social media outlets is also rather plentiful, the ability to pull from all that time/date-stamped data has been a low-hanging fruit tempting search engines for quite some time.
Twitter helped to bring real time search into the mainstream, with Facebook and MySpace quickly following suit. For Google, the deal with MySpace means that the search engine can expand its real time search offerings, potentially improving the context behind such social searches. This goes along with many of Google’s other initiatives on the social front, including socially-oriented search results that now appear for signed in users. Along with Google Buzz and a few other social efforts, Google is clearly moving towards a more inclusive format regarding its real time search.
Whatever Google ends up doing with MySpace content for its real time search products, we’re likely to see something more useful than what other search engines have provided. Jumping head first into real time search has been something other search engines have done in the past year or so, while Google already has a founation upon which real time, socially-generated search results can be provided. Nevertheless, Google has had a harder time incorporating real time search into its established methods, especially when it comes to forging certain deals in order to access social media outlets.
Facebook has been another large database with a great deal of potential towards the real time search efforts of several search engines. For the time being, Microsoft has a better standing with Facebook regarding the use of its increasingly public interface towards real time and social search content. Google’s deal with MySpace may help overcome some of the shortcomings of its deal with Facbook, especially as it looks to stay competitive with the likes of Microsoft Bing.
For MySpace, the social network has been losing ground to Facebook for quite some time now. Having become a trend passed, MySpace has spent the past year or so rebuilding its company and its network. Returning to the basics of user-generated content and social networking, MySpace is also looking for a way to get back into the game. A real time search deal with Google may be a good outlet for MySpace, given its intentions towards its own marketing efforts.
We’ve had those managers that have asked us to do things that they themselves would never do. In fact most of the time they have asked us to do certain tasks because they refused to do those tasks themselves.
What about those managers that have called the meetings and then haven’t shown up for their own meeting?
How about this? Your supervisor asks you to do something and then they come back later and change their mind simply because they hadn’t thought the project through from the beginning?
What about the times that your manager has gotten in your face about something or confronted you on an issue, when they themselves have done the exact same thing?
What is it about management that makes managers think that there untouchable?
The truth is that is how corporate cultures are set up today. Most of Corporate America is set up in a “dog eat dog” environment. As the authors of Tribal Leadership would describe it, the corporate culture in America is set up for the stage 3 leader. The battle cry of this leader is:
“I’m great”
“What’s it for me?”
“How can I climb the corporate ladder to get what is best for me?”
This culture has created an environment where managers don’t really think about employees, they just want to get the job done. Managers have become task driven – task oriented – task focus, not employee focused. We have become more concerned with “getting it done” and do not give much thought as to how we can do it smarter, how can we do it better, or how can we do it faster by empowering our people to own the vision and go after it.
I’ve heard so many stories from individuals that tell me they feel their managers take advantage of them, as employees. These folks would rather be part of something great! Most employees want to be part of something exciting, something that matters and that really truly makes a difference.
Let’s be honest, there are times that it is not just about the paycheck.
Yes they need the money.
Yes they need to pay the bills.
Yes they need to keep the lights on.
Yes they’ve got to provide for their family.
But deep down at their core, they would like to a part of something that is more meaningful than just the money. The way that management treats their employees, doesn’t help the situation. They frustrate their employees. They tell the team to show up to a meeting and then don’t show up to run the meeting. They make sure that all employees punch in on time, but then they are late walking in for the day. They do what they want, because that’s what benefits them, not for what benefits the team.
What if your place of employment was different? What if you worked in an environment, where employees wanted to come to work each day? What if you worked for a company where the management actually cared about the employees? What if your role as a leader was less about getting a job done and more about investing in the lives of your employee?
Let’s stop the cycle of seeing employees as simply means to an end, but the end itself.
Let’s start asking ourselves: How can I add value to my employee’s life?
That’s what company culture and core values do. Core Values speak to those things that are important to the company or organization. Core Values unite the people, they bind people together and they get everyone moving towards a common goal. Corporate Culture is not just a buzz word anymore, it’s the way the business must be done if it is to truly make a difference and move into the future.
It looks as though Facebook is rolling out more payment options through its social network, if we can correctly assume from recent job postings from the company. Facebook is seeking new employees to bulk up a team to handle Facebook Payment Operations, reports CNN.
One such position is a Payment Operations Strategist, which would work with the Product and Engineering teams towards the designing of tools and systems to reach its hundreds of millions of users and advertisers. The mention of products to serve both aspects of Facebook’s user base implies that Facebook is looking to concentrate on its applications platform, virtual goods, and direct consumer marketplace.
These are all areas in which Facebook has been expected to expand for at least a year now. With an unrealized partnership between PayPal, MySpace and Google, the pressure was put on early for Facebook to come up with a payments platform to call its own. The result was a buzz about Facebook Wallet, which was stalled for some time and also unable to come to fruition.
The emergence of Facebook’s app platform, however, has proven a better way to bring businesses and users together around the concepts of making payments through a social network. Businesses have long been benefiting from the use of Facebook’s app platform, some of which have found direct ways in which to monetize Facebook’s user platform.
Social gaming is an area of particular interest, as it has allowed a very direct way in which businesses can generate revenue from a socially oriented user base. This is something Facebook is also interested in, as evidenced by its eventual launch of the Facebook Gift Shop. Entering into th virtual goods market is another way of introducing the option of socially integrated payments on its platform, leveraging users’ heavy use of third party apps.
The ongoing acceptance of online payments, as supported by a security-enhanced banking system better equipped for the digital age has increased comfort levels around such actions. hi5 has spent the past year or so moving in this direction, seeking better ways in which to directly monetize its user base. One such tactic was the infusion of third party game apps, which makes hi5 a conduit for these direct sales.
In the end, I think we’ll see a push for individuals to directly profit from social networking transactions as well. This will move beyond a business’ use of Facebook’s platforms, widening the use of Facebook as a marketplace. I think the provision of such a market, especially in a digital realm, could change the way in which businesses is done, and enhance any monetization options Facebook is currently working towards.
Text or call me during office hours 11:11am or 11:11pm PST +/-11 minutes on my cell: 650-283-8008.
