You know what I find really, really, really frustrating?
When VCs pitch to you, they talk a lot about how much they provide more than money… it’s sometimes true, oftentimes it’s not. But what is really damning is when I am trying to contact a given company for a business development deal and contact a VC to have them make an introduction and nothing, nada, zilch.
Funny thing is VCs brag about 9 out of 10 of my investment fail, and 1 is a grand slam. Well, well… maybe if you tried to provide more than money, then the others would not fail…
Any self-respecting VC should at least:
- respond to confirm that they got the email, and say that they have sent it in to someone at the company you are trying to reach.
Any proactive VC should:
- reply to you, thank you for reaching out, then add a contact at their portfolio company and have you follow up with one another.
I won’t call anyone out… but when you get an email from someone saying they are looking for a contact at a given company, for the love of all things holy act man, act!
You only ensure that we don’t take you seriously when you tell us a few months later that you bring more than money to the table.
In fact, you as a VC look foolish because it’s not like I won’t find a way to reach the company down the road anyway? And when I do, I’ll mention: “did so and so at VC X tell you I was trying to reach you guys? No… I am sure they meant to…”
All right, I feel better… back to work…
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WatchMojo NewsletterSo I get an email by someone… before replying, I search for them and land on LinkedIn. Once there, I am told I might know some other people. I actually do know a bunch of them… but I am not sure that means I should add them as “friends” - or I guess, contacts. I can drive with my feet, too, not sure I should.
Then in the Recent Activity (of my network) I see the following:
Now, I am only commenting on this because it’s public news, but last week, word got out that B5 Media and Technorati were about to merge but that went nowhere. I added some commentary here…
Anyway, it’s worth noting that Richard Jalichandra is CEO of Technorati and Rick Segal is a Toronto-based VC who has invested in B5 Media.
I don’t mean to be a smart ass and rain on everyone’s “open and transparent” hippie love vibe thing, but business would not really get done if everything and everyone is out in the open. Had the news not broke out, for example, and I would have seen
I would not have needed to be a genius to figure out that something was up between the two people, then connect the lines and put two and two together. In the context that Tech Crunch broke the rumor and said “Technorati is looking at buying company X” then it was pretty clear who company X was.
Would the deal have fallen through over a leak? Who knows… but deals have been derailed over smaller things.
What does this all mean? Not much, but at the same time, a lot. I am using LinkedIn to illustrate that social media and all that jazz is a bit like a Pandora’s box… be careful what you ask for it when the genie is out of the bottle.
That’s in the B2B space. In the B2C space, social media affects advertising. My argument, believe it or not, is that as much as LinkedIn helps business connections (and obviously it does), it also hinders it. There’s a reason people don’t release press releases, for example, before a deal is closed. By the same token, I think most of social media’s “benefits” actually hurt advertising.
We might not want to admit it… but ask yourself, if social media sites (which I basically count as UGC sites) were not around, then maybe, just maybe, the sites that would be getting said attention, eyeballs and audience would be in a better position to monetize it.
This all sounds like a crazy comment on a Friday afternoon… but if you think about it, it’s not that crazy. The Web in fact shrinks marketing quite a bit. This does not mean that everyone loses, but by and large, a lot of companies who benefit most from advertising (major media companies) sure will…
Judging from this, I guess PaidContent.org’s parent Content Next Media is planning and prepping for a roll-up.
Maybe that’s where Greycroft’s money will go.
Interesting to see what Rafat Ali et al. are planning to scoop up, and how other networks react.
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