Its always nice when other people support your investment thesis...

Link: Wikis, Weblogs and RSS: What Does the New Internet Mean for Business? - Knowledge@Wharton.

When you look at the trends in web development, you will see a shift from what I call host-provided value -- such as CitySearch (where publishers provide local events listings in different cities) -- to user-provided value in websites such as Upcoming.org (a global events calendar managed by users). There is a giving up of control. The new web applications are lightweight, single function and focused on a specific problem or interaction. When you combine that trend with creative developers who are beginning to have the energy and insight to recombine technologies in new ways, you get not the explosive growth of the 1990s, but you get something more relevant. I can't anticipate exactly what that will be, but I see the potential for businesses to change the way they think about developing and deploying technologies.  - Janice Fraser, CEO _ Adaptive Path

"We spent a lot of time developing physical infrastructure, and now we have to develop the social infrastructure on top of it."  Ross Mayfield, CEO - Social Text

Brad and I had a really interesting conversation about our investment thesis, which we're constantly kicking the tires of and refining.  We were talking about businesses whose value is driven by peer production, like eBay, Craigslist, and del.icio.us and we discussed the defensibility of businesses whose barriers to adoption are just as low as their barriers to exit.  This also came up when we recently presented to our LPs a little progress chart on our investments for a number of criteria.  For each of our investments, we had trouble filling in the little defensibility bubble and it made me think about the nature of defensibility in the first place.

What is a defensible business anyway?  Last time I checked, we lived in a free country with a government that promotes competition and curbs monopolistic behavior.  Any customer of a company can choose to stop being a customer at anytime, right?  Now, perhaps switching costs are high, but I would argue that they are capped to the degree that customers would be unwilling to sign up for a product whose switching costs were so high that, in the event of poor performance, they could not afford to leave. 

Plus, I always thought of defensibility, at least the way its been thought of, as a very selfish mindset.  If your model is to be the only company who can do something, that's not nearly as effective as being the best company offering the product.  Shouldn't your focus, when it comes to customers, be on providing the best service--one they want to choose--versus limiting their access to alternatives.  I don't like the idea to build a business around keeping your customers locked up in a pen.  Better to leave the barn door open and know they come back every night regardless because they like being fed. 

Plus, some companies become obsessed with defending, that they lose sight of their offense--their innovation and product quality.  If your customers aren't being serviced, they'll leave, no matter what the business.  We're thinking a lot about that with del.icio.us.  Of course, you always have to keep an eye on competitors, but in the end, what can you really do besides try your hardest to be the number one destination for anyone who wants to remember anything on the web.  I mean, if Google launched a tagging service, do you think Joshua would be like, "Well, screw this then, I'll just go back to trading"?  No, he'd be up nights and weekends making sure that he and his team offered the best product possible--and that's what it would have to be, because it certainly wouldn't be worth the effort to attempt to "defend" and prevent Google from doing anything.  Calcanis posted one before on this... about how businesses are built on 1) hustle, 2) passion and 3) resiliency, and I think in Web 2.0, where services are easy to sign on to and easier to stop using, that's even more the case.

When I was at GM Asset Management, we saw a lot of late stage VC deals whose "barrier to entry" was that they were the only ones who had a certain technology.  However, we started to realize, and this is why the Union Square Ventures pitch rang true to me, that pure technology advantage was a fleeting notion.  Maybe you were, in fact, the only ones with a technology, but that doesn't mean you were the only ones with the solution.  In other words, there are always many ways to skin a cat. 

In today's world where community creates value, I think that you will develop businesses that are actually more "defensible" than their command and control corporate hierarchical predecessors.  Sure, a computer science major could duplicate the eBay website over a weekend, but he certainly couldn't stock it with a million items.  The value of eBay, del.icio.us etc. is in all of these thousands, millions, etc. individual little agents all acting independently.  Its very hard to get them all to act en masse, and there's definitely a power law going on here.  As more people use these services, the stickier each incremental user will get.  Why would that first guy ever use the eBay knockoff without a community of people buying and selling products?  That's not to say people won't leave or new services won't get created, but it will take time...  hopefully enough time for the company to improve themselves enough to make someone not want to leave.

I've been talking to a counterpart up in Boston and we're throwing around the idea of collaborating on a "Venture Blog, Jr." blog...   Lots of people ask me how to break into the VC world, so we thought it would be interesting to publish our thoughts about life in the bottom rung of a really interesting ladder is like.  We were thinking that we could have representatives from NYC, Boston, the Valley, and perhaps an out of the way spot less known for venture.  If anyone is interested, please let me know.  We're looking for analysts in their 20's who haven't founded multimillion dollar companies quite yet.  Pre-MBA's preferred.

In our regular Monday meeting, we were talking about what being a firm doing thesis driven investing meant for getting deal flow.  "Deal flow investing" may be dead, but you still actually need a flow of deals.  We're well on pace for getting enough deals in the fund, but our main concern was making sure we see all of the deals related to our investment thesis...

Link: Thwarting Identity Thieves.

Since 1995, over $954 trillion has been invested in the creation of over 543,000 venture backed security companies.  Yet, no one has solved the two fundamental problems with computer security:

1) People are morons.

2) People are in charge of information security.

I cannot believe that, in 2005, Citigroup is sending computer tapes with the personal information of 3.9 million customers, including Social Security numbers, via UPS.  Fuckin' UPS!!  I mean, I know those brown trucks look pretty official and all, but...   Isn't there a way to send this over... hmm... what's that thing called...    oh yeah, the INTERNET. 

The thing you gotta wonder is whether or not they figured out that the package was gone because an admin was tracking it via their tracking number.  I'd love to see that screenshot:

4:43PM: Package picked up at Citigroup.

6:53PM: Package arrives at JFK.

7:02PM: Package x-rayed and subsequently opened with a box cutter by underpaid airport loading guy.

7:28PM: Empty cardboard box loaded onto plane.

Status:  Fucked.

Link: VC Adventure: Making your threats real.

I'm LinkedIn.

I have a Friendster profile.

I'm a member of NYSSA, an alumni of Fordham and an alumni of Regis High School.  I have various levels of data about myself at each of these institutions.  NYSSA and Regis have online databases available for people inside those organizations.  Regis lets me post a resume/bio.  Fordham... well, Fordham puts out a book (yes, with actual pages and everything) every five years or so, which is already obsolete in my case because it doesn't have my current work address.

I have an About page here and here.

I just registered for the NYPEN.

I'll admit to some online dating... but I'll let you match me to those profiles on your own.  ;)

I play kickball and dodgeball for ZogSports, and softball for Fordham in the NYC MetroSports League.  Both of these leagues have enormous online social networking potential that I'd be very happy to participate in, but they don't take advantage of that in any way.  Sportsvite is trying to solve that problem and while its a great idea and a neat implementation, its Y.A.F.P.  (Yet another...err... profile.)  If anyone is looking for an OF/3B in softball who catches and hits a lot better than he runs for a fill-in or a pickup game, that's the site to contact me through. 

The Downtown Boathouse is the same way.  They don't attempt to leverage their network at all.  I don't even know the last names of most of the other kayaking volunteers, let alone what they do for a living.  Its actually kind of an unspoken taboo there that when you're there, you're a kayaker and that's all that matters.  In a way, its sort of cool, but I'm sure I'm probably missing out on a lot of good professional networking because it never gets discussed.  Its a great place for free kayaking in New York City on the Hudson, but a terrible place for efficient social networking.

I also have an outdated profile at MonsterTrak where I'm listed as an alumni contact for Fordham students.   Now, Fordham wants me to fill out Y.A.F.P.  for the alumni mentoring program that I helped start two years ago so that all of the other students in the program can contact me.  I'm all for being helpful, but, to be honest, I'm a little profiled out.  I'll fill it out, but there has to be a better solution, for ALL of these things I'm a part of.

As far as I'm concerned, LinkedIn, at least for all this professional stuff, is far and away the best answer.  Their site is extremely professional.  Their set of permissions based contacting prevents me or my network from being spammed.  That's my favorite profile, but it doesn't solve half my profiling and networking issues.  I can't take that profile anywhere and use it for anything, nor can anyone else use it to really solve their member database issues.  Everything about LinkedIn has to be done on the LinkedIn.com site.  So, people see it as Y.A.F.P. when they already have enough trouble managing all of their member database and profile data everywhere else.

LinkedIn should open up the network through an open API and "Powered by" type services.  Take Fordham, for example.  Fordham University as a whole is never going to get LinkedIn for Groups.  They already have an alumni database.  They don't need two.  However, LinkedIn could provide a "Powered by LinkedIn" front end that would, with permission, give anyone in the alumni database all of these great networking tools that the LinkedIn users already use.  So, lets say I'm Joe Blog, Class of '57.  I've already given the school all my data, but its going to get stale pretty quickly, because they don't have a clunky online database which will take a million years to implement.   Besides which, it becomes Y.A.F.P. for people to manage, and Joe's not interested in that, especially since his own participation in the database might not provide him any direct value.

But, what if Joe gets an e-mail or sees on the alumni website that he can now log-in and get connected via Linked-in automatically to all of these great features if he so chooses.  So, his profile is on the system, but he can opt-in to a Linked-in for Groups type functionality.  If he's already on LinkedIn, that's great, because his profile has been autopopulated, and if he's not, his LinkedIn profile has been autopopulated with the data he gave the university.  If he wants to turn it on, great!  If not, that's his choice.  For LinkedIn, its mostly coming up with a school skinned UI, because they already have the database backend for groups.  For the school, its a really really lightweight, simple, opt-in implementation of the online database everyones been asking for.  Why every professional member database doesn't have a LinkedIn frontend with a one click option to be a LinkedIn member, I have no idea.  Joe would love it, because then he could use the same profile for his school, his professional society, or his softball team.

If you open up the API, you can let people develop stuff on top of the LinkedIn backend.  So, the Sportsvite folks can choose not to show your professional resume, but instead throw on a rating on how hard you can throw.  Currently, aside from the attempts at FOAF, I haven't seen anyone open up their system and attempt to be the profile engine for everyone, but I think LinkedIn has the best shot.  I don't think you can just do this with a closed, LinkedIn.com offering.  You need NYSSA to choose you as their front end provider and Fordham and whoever else wants a "Powered by LinkedIn" database.  Until then, LinkedIn is just going to be Y.A.F.P. and we're still going to have to log on and put our stuff into these clunky pseudo address books.

Seinfeld's got a great skit about shopping in a supermarket... no windows... no clocks.  They're designed to make you forget the existance of the outside world.  Casinos are the same way.   Some corporations are the way

Got some link love from Brad and it comes at the right time, too, because I've been noticing a lot of the VC Analyst crowd popping up around the Blogosphere, and its made me think about my own role.  Brad charactorizes me as a "New VC Blogger", I'm more of a new VC than I am a new blogger.  Nevertheless, I was thinking the other day that when I do post about being exactly who I am, a new analyst in the VC world, it generally gets a good response, but I don't do it too often.  As I've said before, I'm really pretty overwhelmed (in a positive way) about all I'm learning at USV, and I'm probably too caught up in the idea that my blog posts and ideas need to be completely baked (as oppossed to half) before I should post them.  I don't do a lot of thinking aloud on the blog, but when it comes to the new leaf I've turned over in my career, perhaps I should.  Ok, note to self:  post more about what its like to be a new VC creating your own role in a very small shop.

Also, on that note, I like to think of myself as a consummate networker and I love loose connections.  I find a lot of value in professional societies, but, admittedly, that's not something I've investigated thoroughly enough.  Rachel Masters, who should be blogging herself, who just left Starvest, introduced me briefly to a young venture capital professional society here in NYC but I haven't done much with it yet.  That's something I need to jump on.  So, now, that my first 100 days are over at USV, its time to redouble my professional efforts.  Look for more professional posting here, not because I want to, but because I need to be, for myself.  This blog can and should be my space to think and connect, and, after some self assessment, I feel I should be doing that more related to my new position.

On that note, I'd like to thank my former colleagues at the GMAM Private Markets Group, who are spinning out and moving within the next couple of weeks.  The team, now called Performance Equity Management, got me this great engraved Tiffany clock for my four years of service to their group.  It finally arrived all finished up and shiny this week, and it now sits on my desk.  Thanks!

Link: Opinion Column by PC Magazine: To Tag or Not to Tag, That Is the Question.

Dvorak just panned tagging over at PC Magazine.  Remember PC Magazine?  During the mid 90's, it was like an encyclopedia, or more fittingly a bible.  It was the crown jewel of the Ziff Davis tech publishing empire...  an empire whose fall has seriously cratered the LBO fund who bought it and then threw lots more money in it. 

Well, today, the latest news on PCM is that it cut its guaranteed circulation numbers nearly in half over the last year and the magazine isn't nearly has thick as it used to be.  Frankly, I'm not surprised.  Word of mouth, especially in tech, has become so inexpensive and efficient, I'm not quite sure why I'd pay to read an "experts" opinion, when you've got 10 million bloggers out there already consuming products and writing about their personal experiences with them.  I'd bet that most of the 700,000 paid PCM subscriptions are dentists offices.  People seem to like reading about which PC to buy when they're waiting to get a root canal.

Anyway, so here comes Dvorak writing in PCM and he's ripping apart tagging.  (Thanks to Anil for the link.)  Now, instead of bashing this guy, I'll use a lesson that Brad taught me:  Try to understand why a seemlingly smart guy thinks the way he does before you bash him.   Ok, so here's the summary:

"So far, tags have not even gotten popular enough to reach the stage of vandalism and spam. That they've attracted so little attention does not bode well for them"

So John thinks that if the masses haven't broken something yet, it isn't popular.  I guess he never looks up anything on Wikipedia either.  Frankly, I think its possible to build a system in a way that only incentivizes people to contribute something useful and meaningful.  You know, "spam" isn't the only garbage content people will create for monetary purposes.  I mean, for example, hypothetically, do you think there is more monetary incentive to write ANOTHER "tagging is great, bloggers are great" article, or a potentially congtroversal "tagging sucks and bloggers are brain-dead" article to buoy a dying magazine?

"The "folksonomy" notion is the bloggers' last hope of invention...   ...doomed to failure. The utopianism and idealism that exist in the online societies ignore the real problem with tags, metatags, übertags, folksonomies, and the like...   ...they honestly think that most people are goodhearted. The online world, because of its anonymity, encourages bad behavior. "You suck!" is a common post, and it would be the number-one tag if tagging ever became popular."

Actually, John, two of the most popular del.icio.us tags for your article are "idiot" and "ignorance" so maybe tagging is more popular than you thought.  Is that spam or is that just the voice of the people?

"Apparently it's lost on all of them that the term "tagging," in popular parlance, refers to the worst form of public graffiti. These people don't get out much, it seems."

Yes, and all phrases only have one and only one meaning.  Tagging, those idiots, means graffiti (and of course, all graffiti is bad, right, and never art...  who doesn't get out much?)  So scientists, stop using the word tagging for tracking endangered species.  Don't you know that words means graffiti?  Oh, little kids, too.  You can't play "tag" anymore.  Didn't your parents ever tell you that means graffiti?  Jeez...

So, basically, from reading the article, it seems that Dvorak's argument against tagging is that the public is evil and can't be trusted to catagorize their own world.  So, instead of intelligently designing systems to draw out the best in people, we shouldn't even try to leverage off of social networks and self organizing systems, b/c of the 1% who'll just wind up messing it all up.  We're not smart enough to do that, nor are we smart enough to deal with the 1%.  Perhaps all John needs is a good spam filter or did he not realize the spam war is over.

Link: CNN.com - Cell phones can now receive Amber Alerts - May 17, 2005.

No good reason not to sign up...    Go here to put your cell number in.

Link: VentureBlog: Why Are Startups Like Peacocks?.

I can't add anything here.  This speaks for itself...  good article.

The USV guys and I had lunch with a great company that, probably more so than a lot of other companies, because of the relationship between its founders, exemplifies a startup's growth from something emotional to more of a business.  OK, so not to say that businesses can't be emotional, they are, and I know the founders and management team are very emotionally invested in this company.  However, there comes a point in every company's life where the founder has to let go--at least enough to allow other people to get in there and help create something bigger than the founders themselves.  I don't envy founders that face this, because I know I was never able to do this well myself, to the detriment of the things I had created.

When I was at Fordham, I started a monthly business newspaper: The CBA Business Journal.  While I had lots of writers and a couple of people helping me on layout, it was mostly me putting it all together.  There were so many little things that were just easier for me to do that the incremental effort it required of me to show someone else how to do it.  Most of the time, it was never going to get done exactly how I wanted it to get done anyway, so I just wound up doing most things myself.

The problem was, not only did I not scale, but there was no continuity without me.  Nothing got done if I was busy with a test.  I never figured out how to build a machine that ran on its own power.  When I graduated, it died, not because there wasn't anyone around willing or capable of picking it up, but because I never made the personal and psychological sacrifices necessary to ensure it would last well beyond my time at Fordham.  I never imagined The CBA Business Journal without me.  That was a problem.  The question is how do you do that?  This is one of the most fascinating aspects of the creation of a business from my perspective.

I think it would be interesting to hear from entrepreneurs how they psychologically, especially in their first venture, start letting go of the reins for the greater good of the business and start imagining the business without themselves.  When you do you realize you need a CEO?  When do you decide to leave a business?  This, I imagine,  is especially hard for people whose personalities are intertwined with the business and the community around that business.  So, if anyone has run a startup and accomplished the passing of the torch effectively or otherwise, I'd love to hear from you via comments and trackbacks.

When I first started at Union Square Ventures, I made a concerted effort to make sure all my various only profiles matched up.  I was rewriting my bio, resume, etc. and so I figured I'd update everything at once, especially if I was going to be a useful networker at a venture firm.  That included getting up to speed on LinkedIn.

I've written before about how I didn't see the value of social networking sites, other than for dating.  (I will admit to going on a Friendster date....although, at DTUT, I think every couple there is on an internet date.)  Anyway, the problem is that there isn't anything to do on these sites, except maintain your network.  You basically only logon to accept invites and invite more people.

Well, I've had a change of heart in the last few weeks.  In the last few weeks, using LinkedIn, I've helped a company that Fred invested in find a top tier job candidate and also pulled an "off the list" reference on an entrepreneur we're currently evaluating.  For an analyst who, at this point in his career, relies heavily on the extended networks of others, its incredibly valuable.  Its a great way to find knowledgeable people and people who can be spoken for by people you trust.  I've even got Fred to buy off on the value of this interconnected network of professionals.  (I'm sure he'll probably blog about it soon. UPDATE:  He did... but he doesn't ever trackback, so just go here.)

Here are some observations about my experience with it so far:

1)  The permissions system is great.  You can choose to only be contacted through others on the site by referrals from people you know.  So, if Bob Smith knows Sam Jones and I'm friends with Sam, then Bob needs to ask Sam for an introduction to me.  Even then, I can choose to respond or not before Bob gets my e-mail address.

2) Much of my network is made up of onesies and twosies.  In other words, for many of these people, I'm their only contact.  I think LinkedIn needs to find a way to make a convincing argument for those people to share more.  A lot of people accepted my invites just because they know me and didn't mind being connected to me, but that's as far as the sale went.  Well, thanks folks, but I already know you.  This gets really interesting when we both know other people that are mutually beneficial to each of us...the power of shared networks. 

3) The ease of implementation needs to be experienced.  Signing up is very quick, and the Outlook integration really makes this a no-brainer.  At minimum, if you're on the site, download the Outlook toolbar and open it up.  Basically, what it does is that it looks at everyone you've e-mailed and tells you right away whether or not those people are already on the system.  So, right away, you know who in your real network of people has already bought off on this concept and is probably likely to accept you into the fold.  Voila!  Instant network.  Next, it gives you the list of all your contacts and asks you who you'd actually like to invite to join the network.  Basically, I think I actually connected to six people on my own, but the Outlook plugin took care of the other 80 or so.  Plus, its all opt-in.  If they don't want to be connected to me or join, that's fine.

What makes this really interesting is that groups of people can connect to each other by just advocating its use.  For example, Fordham has a problem whereby it has this huge database of 100,000+ alumni.  Integrating all of those people into a web database, dealing with all the privacy issues, etc. won't be easy.  However, all they really need to do is push LinkedIn as the goto place for Fordham alumni.  They don't even need to sign up for the "LinkedIn for Groups" service.  Just tell everyone to join in and put that they went to Fordham in their profile.  All of the sudden, your opt-in/privacy issues are solved and you've got thousands of people on the service able to contact other Fordham alumni within three degrees of each other.  Cost to Fordham?  Zero.  Benefit to individual Fordham alumni?  Huge.  Benefit to the school?  Well, now they can search and see what all the alumni is up to and the network becomes a real resource.

Anyway, that's my experience with the service.  If you actually know me, feel free to invite me.  I might ignore or turn down invites from complete strangers, but that's to be expected. 

This, of course, is the tricky thing about video.  Since the world hasn't found a single format that it likes (like Mpeg 3 for audio), we're all forced to see our video through a patchwork of Quicktime, Windows Media, etc.   Some people have been telling me that the Pimp My Web (see the tab above)  screencasts, which can be accessed by clicking on the Lesson One, Lesson Two, and Lesson Three screencasts, don't work.  Well, they work for me, work for Fred, and seem to work for a number of other people.  Do they work for you?  If they don't, can you let me know and tell me something about your system?  I'd like to fix the problem. 

If they don't load (and give them a few seconds, Ourmedia isn't the fastest), can you comment here and let me know what operating system you have, browser, and whether or not you have Windows Media as well as the version.  Thanks!

These would be the kind of deal we love at Union Square Ventures, except for one thing, someone has already ripped off one of the little phone number tear-offs, so we can't say its proprietary deal flow.  Brad and his keen eye for deals snatched this off a bus stop on Broadway.  (I saw it on my way in this morning, but thought that maybe $5,000 would be  a bit under our radar.)  In keeping with the team approach to all of our deals, the best spot for this is posted on Fred's door.  (So Fred would notice it right away.)

The best part about the deal is that, as it says right on the piece of paper, that "this is not a sales pitch or a gimmick, but a real investment opportunity."  That's great, because I believe our PPM explicitly stats that we can only invest in gimmicks with the expressed consent of our advisory board, and that's always a sticky situation.

Just got this from Flickr...    Now you can all grovel for my two free accounts.  :)

*******************************************************

Hi ceonyc!

You may have heard on the grapevine that we planned to
reward our dear Flickr members who bought a Pro Account in
the early days. Well, it's true! And since you're one of
those lovely people, here's a little something to say YOU
ROCK!

1. Double what you paid for!
   Your original 1 year pro account has been doubled to
   2 years, and your new expiry date is Mar 30, 2007.

2. More capacity!
   Now you can upload 2 GB per month.

3. 2 free Pro Accounts to give away to your friends!
   This won't be activated for a day or two, but when it
   is, you'll see a note on your home page telling you
   what to do.

Thank you so much for putting your money where your mouth
is and supporting us, even while we're in beta. Your
generosity and cold, hard cash helped us get where we are
today.

Kind regards,
The Flickreenies.

Link: SearchViews: Jeremy Jaynes Convicted, Google Ad Hilarity Ensues.

Too good to pass up...

Brad definitely needs to start blogging.  I’ve learned a lot from him in the short time I’ve been at Union Square and I think he needs to be propagating that wisdom throughout the Blogosphere.  He’s very direct and he has a very no nonsense way of cutting right to the heart of an issue, while at the same time being very thoughtful and curious.

So, last week I had a call with someone from a major IT services company.  I was doing some research on a space, trying to understand the market and look for interesting new technologies.  The call was very productive and this person pointed me in the direction of a relatively new startup company on the west coast.  Now, we’re primarily east coast focused and probably wouldn’t lead a west coast deal, but I still wanted to talk to this company, if nothing else than for informational purposes and to discuss the market. 

When I was at GM, I had my intro/setup to any call or meeting down pat.  I had clear definitions of exactly what we wanted out of any interaction, and for the most part, it was kind of easy, because we did pretty much everything.  No matter who I was talking to, they pretty much wanted to talk to us, because there was always the possibility that we could invest.  Now I have a much narrower mandate and need to realize that I can’t just flash a deep pocket around to get people to share information.  In fact, there are lots more complicating factors for me now.  For one thing, this east coast/west coast deal made me unsure of exactly how I was going to position our conversation with this company, since we couldn't exactly be that agressive in pursuing them.  On top of that, we had looked at another deal in the space, and while it got funded by someone else, I wasn’t sure exactly how much I could say about the other company, since it hadn’t launched its product yet.  But that all together, and add in the fact that Brad sat down with me on the call to listen in, making me really conscious about what I was saying and how I was positioning USV, and I totally flubbed the intro and found myself scrambling to explain why the heck we wanted to be on the call in the first place. 

Brad later referred to my intro as “World Class Sucky”.  He was totally right, but we had a great discussion about it today.  He said that he never surprised himself how smart he was.  In other words, when he was doing an informational call, the idea that he was going to play it close to the vest and not share info, but yet expect to get info from the other person, or to say something the other person didn’t know, just never played out that way.  We may have seen a competitor, but in all likelihood, the entrepreneurs that we speak to have already seen their competition.  It just doesn’t work to try and be too clever.  He basically said to just lay out what I knew and acknowledge the limits of our awareness of the market.  “Here’s what we know.”  That’s all you can say, and either the person you’re talking to is going to share or he’s not.

Plus, that’s not the way we believe information creates value.  We’re not fans of closed systems of information.  We believe that information sharing in a mutually beneficial way is the best way to create value.  I should know this.  Not only that, I should be listening to myself when I tell students not to try and fake what they know on an interview.  Either you know finance or you don’t, and if you don’t you’re never going to pull one over on your Citibank recruiter.  Brad said, and I agree, that it’s better to come off like someone aware of their limitations, and yet still intellectually curious.  Very rarely are you going to say something the other person doesn’t already know, and even rarer will be the case that you say something you shouldn’t for ethical reasons.  The thing you do want to make sure you do is that, whatever you say, you give the other person the impression that it would be ok for you to speak about them in the same manner.  In other words, don’t violate the trust of Person A when you speak to Person B to make Person B feel like they’re “in the loop.”  All that does is make Person B feel like you’re the type of person that can’t be trusted, and if it ever does get back to Person A, then you’re really screwed.  Of course, that wasn’t the issue here, because it wasn’t that I said too much… it was that I couldn’t figure out what the heck to say.  It was a rare occurrence for me and I appreciate that my boy Burnham had my back.   

Link: Sparring with VCs & Associates to sharpen your skills. - The Jason Calacanis Weblog - calacanis.weblogsinc.com _.

Jason's a...  hmm... is it 5th or 6th degree blackbelt in Tae Kwan Do, so he's very knowledgeable about sparring.  His exchange with a VC associate is a must-read.  Every day that I hear stuff like this, it makes me question whether or not grad school should even be a consideration for me.