Certainly in our world I think that what I've been searching for
at least the past 15 years, is a way to have conversation with every single entrepreneur.
And make them, give them the opportunity to tell their story, um, in a way that doesn't take up an hour of my time, or my time and my associate's time. And be able to have an ongoing dialogue as opposed to a come in, pitch, and it's yes or no.
And so the tools have just started to emerge to do that, at least in my mind.
Blogging is not a one way thing - it's a two way thing. And if I write, I wrote a blog post today, for example, about this idea I have for a new form of online advertising.
I've been thinking about it for a year or so now and I just put it, put it out there and said this is, I think, a new way to think about online advertising.
We're looking for people who, who are going to build businesses in this area. We want to talk to them.
And you know I've got a bunch of comments on that. I'll get maybe fifty or a hundred comments on that.
And I can reply to every single one of those comments, if they're worthy of a reply. And then, uh, and then some of those discussions will then migrate, you know, off the blog and into email, and they'll be uh, discussions.
And then some of those people will actually say, I want to come show you what I'm doing. And I often say, to them that um, I'm happy to meet with you real early - well before it's time for us to make a decision.
We'd rather have an opportunity to get to know somebody over the course of a year (or more) before we have to make an investment decision, so I really encourage people to take the time, again, as I said, to have a dialogue with us.
And over that time we will start to, um, see who we think are really the best thinkers and best entrepreneurs in a given category and then we can decide, you know, whether or not we want to get behind somebody or not.
And I think that's a much better way to make an investment decision, particularly at the early stage when there really isn't anything else to invest in.
There's no hard assets, there's no cashflow, there's no revenue, there's no customers, so all you have are the people and the ideas.
And I think it's so much easier to evaluate the people and the ideas if you have had a ongoing relationship with them for an extended period of time.
So that's what we're trying to create and do it at scale where we can have a thousand or five thousand of those conversations a year, which is kind of an impossibility in the traditional way of doing business.
And make them, give them the opportunity to tell their story, um, in a way that doesn't take up an hour of my time, or my time and my associate's time. And be able to have an ongoing dialogue as opposed to a come in, pitch, and it's yes or no.
And so the tools have just started to emerge to do that, at least in my mind.
Blogging is not a one way thing - it's a two way thing. And if I write, I wrote a blog post today, for example, about this idea I have for a new form of online advertising.
I've been thinking about it for a year or so now and I just put it, put it out there and said this is, I think, a new way to think about online advertising.
We're looking for people who, who are going to build businesses in this area. We want to talk to them.
And you know I've got a bunch of comments on that. I'll get maybe fifty or a hundred comments on that.
And I can reply to every single one of those comments, if they're worthy of a reply. And then, uh, and then some of those discussions will then migrate, you know, off the blog and into email, and they'll be uh, discussions.
And then some of those people will actually say, I want to come show you what I'm doing. And I often say, to them that um, I'm happy to meet with you real early - well before it's time for us to make a decision.
We'd rather have an opportunity to get to know somebody over the course of a year (or more) before we have to make an investment decision, so I really encourage people to take the time, again, as I said, to have a dialogue with us.
And over that time we will start to, um, see who we think are really the best thinkers and best entrepreneurs in a given category and then we can decide, you know, whether or not we want to get behind somebody or not.
And I think that's a much better way to make an investment decision, particularly at the early stage when there really isn't anything else to invest in.
There's no hard assets, there's no cashflow, there's no revenue, there's no customers, so all you have are the people and the ideas.
And I think it's so much easier to evaluate the people and the ideas if you have had a ongoing relationship with them for an extended period of time.
So that's what we're trying to create and do it at scale where we can have a thousand or five thousand of those conversations a year, which is kind of an impossibility in the traditional way of doing business.
