I was listening to a sports call-in show the other morning and the host made an interesting point.

In the NFL, the coaches pick the players.  In college, the players pick the coaches. 

He tried to generalize and say that's why all the college coaches are the fresh-faced energetic types and why the NFL coaches look like they've been doing nothing but pouring over video at a desk for 90 hours a week with coffee and a donut.

I don't have the stats to prove or disprove that particular point, and I try to avoid generalizations, but what is certainly clear to me that the most important thing in college football as a coach is being able to recruit the talent.  You have to be able to walk into someone's house, meet mom and dad, garner trust, and shake hands to close the deal and bring a wary high school kid to your program.  If you can't recruit, you're dead--because at the end of the day, the best kids are choosing the schools, not the other way around.

It's the same in venture capital.  It's not about stock picking, like in the public markets, where everyone has the same access to opportunities and everyone can buy a stock. 

Actually, it's about VC picking.  The investors get picked, not the companies.  The best opportunities will get funded by someone, and it's the entrepreneur's choice as to who that will be.

Furthermore, you also need to be able to recruit talent.  The most important way that you can help a company is to help recruit employee #1, #2, #3, etc... be it a developer, marketer, salesperson, etc.  In that case, too, you and your investment are the ones being picked, because the best talent has their choice.

So over and above everything else, things like personality, energy, trust count for just as much as ability to call plays, manage the clock, or pick out the right technology trend.  If you can't get the talent, your program is toast.

1) An investor is taking a meeting with you to confirm or deny a hypothesis they undoubtedly already have about your business.  Find out what those are right off the bat by saying something like, "Based on what you know, what interests you about what we're doing so far and what are some of the concerns I can address?"  No sense going on and on about the market if being excited about your market is why I asked you to meet me in the first place.

2) Investors will jump around no matter what order your deck is in--be comfortable about it and be able to answer any question at any time.  Don't get visibly frustrated if they interrupt. 

3) Have offline copies of whatever you're doing, so you can demo using screenshots if you have to.

4) Be able to say what you do in a concise manner, in the pitch, in the opening e-mail: "We do X for Y using Z solution, and that's exciting because there are a billion Ys who currently pay a million dollars a year for that."

5) Be clear about the ask:  "We're here to get advice about the following specific three questions."  "We're raising 500k to get us launched and a growing userbase."  "We're here because we have an offer on the table to sell the company and we're not sure what to do."  Don't try to pretend you're not raising.

6) Be honest about your situation.  If you can't figure out what grows traffic yet, just say it, because pretending you have growth when the numbers don't look good is even worse.  If you made mistakes, say what they are--because otherwise I'll be scratching my head trying to figure out how you spent what you spent to get to this point.  Mistakes happen.

7) Know that back of the napkin math of how many people need what you have and why this could be a big business.  

8) Persistance is good, but when someone is clearly not going to get there on your deal, figure out what else they can be good for, besides other intros to investors.  Most of the time, an investor is going to take a pass, statistically, so have a backup ask--like a contact you know they know who can help you with biz dev.  Don't spend a ton of energy on one investor like they're the last investor on the face of the earth.

9) Speed is not a reason to raise money--unless lack of it is hindering basic aspects of your development.  Usually, being the fastest one to market isn't necessarily an advantage.  Actually, it often makes a company look too nervous about the competition--as if there aren't enough barriers to entry or execution in your market.  

10) Know how much time you have for the pitch and stick to it.  Don't be halfway through your hour long version before you realize the investor only had 30 minutes.  Finish up five or ten minutes early in an hour long meeting and an investor will love you--because they'll have time to think, get coffee, use the bathroom, or make the intro you asked them to. 

Fifty years ago this year, the New York City Board of Estimate voted down Robert Moses' plan to build a ten-lane elevated highway across lower Manhattan--leveling fourteen blocks along Broome Street in Little Italy and what is now SoHo, as well as the West Village.  Jane Jacobs, a community activist, led the community resistance to the highway.

When it was turned down, Assemblyman Louis DeSalvio said in a speech:

"Except for one old man [reference to Robert Moses], I’ve been unable to find anyone of technical competence who is for this so-called expressway. And this old man is a cantankerous, stubborn old man who has done many things which may have, in their time, been good for New York City. But I think it is time for this stubborn old man to realize that too many of his dreams turn out to be nightmares for the city. And this board must realize that if it does not kill this stupid example of bad city planning, that the stench of it will haunt them and this great city for many years to come."

I'm kind of a NYC history wonk.  The other night, I went to a great Brooklyn Brainery talk on Moses.  The talk brought up these words, which I had heard before, and gave me a new context for them.

The image of the lone, grumpy old man made me think of the supporters of SOPA--old media, entrenched cable companies and Washington bureaucrats who don't know how the internet works.  Meanwhile, no one "of technical competence" could be found to support it. 

So it collapsed, just like the dreams of Robert Moses' highway.

What's interesting to me, though, is the parallel between how Moses came to power and this bill.  Robert Moses got his start as a Parks Commissioner.  And really, who doesn't like a park?

In fact, his early work to put parks in the city was pretty popular--especially in an era when NYC wasn't nearly as green as park-friendly as it is now.

Being "pro-park" back then sounds like the words that Chris Dodd wrote today after the blow to SOPA:

"We applaud those leaders in Washington who have chosen to stand with the millions of hard working Americans all across this nation whose livelihoods are threatened by foreign criminal websites designed to steal. "

Pro-park, pro jobs, anti-people stealing using technology.  It all sounds pretty good--until you realize that being "pro-park" somehow leads to plowing a ten-lane highway across New York's most vibrant neighborhoods--killing them off the way highways strangled East Tremont in the Bronx and Red Hook in Brooklyn.

How could things get so far?  Centralization of power and broad, sweeping, somewhat vague authority.  Robert Moses held over a dozen various government appointments at one time, controlling a huge amount of resources and having little to no oversight whatsoever. 

Kinda sounds like this bill the big media companies wanted passed doesn't it?  That was the problem with PIPA and SOPA.  They were vague in their implementation and centralized authority in a system that could be seriously harmed by one, far reaching authority holding too much power.

It's ok.  They just want to build some parks and take down some foreign "rogue" websites--and protect jobs.  You see, it's really all about language and marketing.  Everyone wants a park, everyone loves jobs.  That's how it almost passed.

But we, the people... we knew better than and we know better now.

The end of the Lower Manhattan Expressway was the beginning of the end for Robert Moses and I think it may signal the beginning of the end for current content industry.  It will have to change.  They'll have to invent new business models to reflect our modern world the same way urban planners had to stop thinking of cities as places you drive around in.

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I am ecstatic to announce the creation of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures--my new seed investment fund.

It is the first venture capital fund based in Brooklyn--the city’s most exciting and creative borough.  It is home to cool startups like Etsy, Makerbot, Pontiflex, HowAboutWe, Energyhub, and Loosecubes.  Gilt Groupe maintains a significant presence there, as does scores of creative agencies and design firms.  By some estimates, 50-60% of New York’s startup community lives in Brooklyn--and at Etsy it’s as high as 80%.  It has grown to be a dynamic place to build a company--and has the potential to be the very best place in the world to start a technology business.  I will be working hard to help it reach that potential, while continuing the work I’ve been doing for NYC’s tech community as a whole for the last seven plus years.  I'll be back and forth over the bridge taking meetings all over, but you'll often find me at the new NYU-Poly Incubator in DUMBO where I'll have a desk.

Brooklyn is my home.  In fact, I’ve never lived outside the five boroughs.  I grew up in Bensonhurst.  My dad was a NYC firefighter and my mom worked as a teacher’s aide helping physically challenged students.  I went to high school and college on scholarship.  Succeeding through the generosity of others is the reason I’ve always wanted to contribute something back to my community.  It’s why I teach entrepreneurship at Fordham University and why I find the job of being a venture capitalist so rewarding.  

My experience at First Round over the last two years has been amazing from day one--and I thank Josh and the rest of the team for giving me the opportunity to work with them.  I got a term sheet out less than 100 days into the job and was lucky enough to get to work with my friend Rob May as a Board Member for my first investment, Backupify.   I'm grateful to have also worked with Steve and Jared from GroupMe, Chantel from chloe + isabel, Sean from Salescrunch and Wiley from SinglePlatform.  The last year was especially helpful to me in my career development.  It not only brought opportunities to work directly with great teams like Philippe and Justin at Refinery29 and Matt and John at Docracy, but I learned a lot more about being a team player, a better board member, and what it takes to build a successful firm. 

Every up and coming venture professional thinks about what kind of a firm they would want to build if they could start their own firm.  I was no different--and the possibility of doing something on my own has been a long term goal.  In fact, it’s what Henry Blodget told me I should do the first time I met him--back in May of 2007 during a pre-Business Insider lunch at Coffee Shop.  Josh Kopelman said the same thing to me about a year ago and we’ve talked a lot about firm building in my time at First Round.  

It has always been of critical importance to be able to sit across the table from an entrepreneur and believe in my product.  Now, I’ll have to work twice as hard to ensure that I can say that about my own firm--that I can believe in the value that I can bring, along with the community and platform that comes with it.  I will certainly write more about this in the coming weeks, but there are some key aspects to the way I’d like to conduct business that I’ll be focusing on:

• Leading or co-leading seed deals--having enough capital to meet a team at a hackathon, for example, and telling them, “I’m in and you now have a round.”  I don’t like the idea of telling an entrepreneur to go get someone else interested and then I’ll be able to commit.  
• Being the first call--making sure I’m the kind of investor that people feel like they get value out of by going to first, before they have all the answers and way before they have the investor pitch together.  I won’t fund everything, but hopefully I can help everyone out who comes to see me.w
• Being decisive early--realizing that there will always be risks and choosing to be a part of eliminating them as an investor, not waiting for them to go away.  
• Adding value--especially around recruiting (I’ve placed over 20 people at startups in the last two years), PR and product management.
• The Brooklyn ecosystem.  Given that many of the companies I work with don’t even have offices yet, and that many of their founders and future employees live in Brooklyn, I won’t be surprised of the majority of the fund winds up being invested in Brooklyn startups.  It’s a great place to build a business--creative, less expensive, flexible, etc.  However, my goal is not to geographically limit the fund but to help create and leverage an ecosystem that connects and attracts talent and knowledge in such a way that people all over the city want to be a part of it.  I want to erase the barrier to attending a Meetup in Brooklyn and make building here a bigger part of everyone’s consideration set.  I’ll fund deals elsewhere for sure, but I hope to convince folks that you won’t want to be elsewhere.

To that end, I'm excited to show you "Made in Brooklyn", a short video about some of the entrepreneurs and companies building in Brooklyn and what attracts them there:

Made In Brooklyn from Brooklyn Bridge Ventures on Vimeo.

I’m looking forward to continuing the dialogue about Brooklyn Bridge Ventures and furthering our community together.  I thank everyone who has supported me and the companies I’ve worked with over my ten plus years in venture capital and startups.  New York City, more than any other innovation hub, has been built on community and I’m excited about continuing my journey as an inspired participant. 

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I haven’t spent much time talking about SOPA and PIPA, the two twin bills trying to make their way through Congress right now.  When I saw folks like Fred Wilson, who has a much bigger reach than I do, and all the major internet companies lining up against it, it’s easy to think, “Well, what more can I do to add to the volume… they’ve got it covered.”

That was until I found out that New York’s own senators, Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, appear to support these bills. 

Let’s take a step back from a moment.  I understand why policymakers would think these bills are a good idea.  It’s basically all in the marketing.  “Stopping Piracy” and “Protecting IP” sound like good ideas in theory.  Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of destroying the conditions around which internet innovation has thrived. 

Since the DMCA, we’ve basically operated in an environment of “ask forgiveness rather than permission” when it comes to copyright and IP online.  I could make a video recreationally, include a digital copy of a song, and it was up to the rights holder to decide whether or not they wanted me to take it down.  That allowed me the freedom to create and innovate, and to show the rights holder how cool it could be for me to use their stuff.

Many rightsholders asked for their stuff to be taken down, as was their right, but many were fine with it.  That’s the way it should be, because if you had to wait for many of the big media companies to innovate with their content, we’d still be in the media dark ages (in many ways, we still are). 

Now, there are bills on the table that would basically allow the government to shut down my website—my entire website—for putting up content that someone else has the rights to.  It’s the equivalent of trying to perform delicate brain surgery with a meat cleaver—they’re trying to eliminate bad behavior by breaking the whole internet ecosystem. 

And let’s be clear about what this is about—it’s protectionism.  Big media companies don’t want innovation.  They don’t like the idea that they can’t charge us $16 for a CD with only one or two good songs anymore.  That was a good business.  They don’t like that people are unplugging their cable and just using Netflix and Hulu instead. 

The reason why people are turning to technology isn’t because they like to steal content.  It’s because they pay $120 a month for cable and they really only watch two shows and some sports.  Big media has been abusing consumers for years and they want to continue doing that over the medium of the internet—but they’re losing ground.  Technology and the internet is inherently pro-consumer, because it empowers us and gives us more choices. 

iTunes, Spotify, Kindle, and Netflix have proven that if you give us better choices and more convenience, we’re more than happy to pay for media content.  This is what movie studios and the rest of the SOPA supporters need to do.  Instead, they’re kicking up a notch the kind of mentality that the record industry had when it was suing its own customers instead of coming up with innovative new business models.

Back to Senators Schumer and Gillibrand.  Senator Schumer spoke at Internet Week in 2011.  It’s been a pretty popular move for New York area politicians to jump on the bandwagon of the emergence of New York tech growth—a phenomenon they largely had nothing to do with—and say they’re supportive of the community.  He told an audience of technologists and entrepreneurs:

“What we need to do is figure out the right ways to nurture you, to encourage more people like to you come here, and to support you and those that join you, so that the businesses represented here today can thrive and grow."

Well, Senator, a group of 83 prominent internet investors and engineers wrote an anti-SOPA letter to youand the rest of Congress in December.  These were people like Vint Cerf, the guy who designed the way the internet works.  The people you say you want to nurture are against this bill.  Yet, you’re siding with big, protectionist media companies.

It’s an embarrassment, frankly, to our tech community.  If you support this bill, you are not supportive of us.  All of our local politicians—our Senators, Mayor Bloomberg (his company, Bloomberg LP, is against it, but haven’t heard where he stands personally), and other policymakers need to be fighting this. 

Chuck Schumer and Kristin Gillibrand need to switch their positions immediately on these bills, which should really aptly be named the “Stop Innovation on the Internet” bill.  If NYC is going to fulfill its potential as an innovation hub, we can't have our senators supporting SOPA.  They’re on the wrong side of history here, and they don’t understand enough about the internet and how it came to be to see why.