Twitter trending topics had become a good way to play celebrity deadpool--only now every legitimate celebrity death is followed up by a fake one.  After Michael Jackson died, we had fake rumors of Jeff Goldblum, Rick Astley, and Billy Mays. 

(Wait...  Billy Mays is actually dead?  Jeez.  How's anyone supposed to confirm anything these days?  Does Twitter need Verified Death tweets?)

Now, almost every day, I see trends starting from people who are clearly gaming the system or that just aren't interesting at all to most people.

Aircraft Loadmaster anyone?   WTF is this?

If you're going to make Twitter trends relevant again, you need to start focusing on who's creating the tweet (influencer versus some job posting bot vs a bot that just picks out trend names to get in the flow) and what their reputation is.  

Trends have become a mess--inviting spam, gaming, marketing and combinations of the three.  Kill it for now and come back when it's fixed and it's not so easy to glom onto it.

Reid Hoffman believes the classified job-posting model to be “a little absurd.” Around the industry it is known as “post and pray”.

Here's the problem:

What are the chances that the right candidate with the right talent, right expertise, right demeanor, at the right time for the candidate, will happen to come along and see this job post while the company has an opening?

Answer: Not likely.

Plus, by definition, if they're looking at job ads, are they unemployed, or stuck in dead end jobs--potentially not the upwardly mobile rising stars you really want applying.

Even if you did get the right person, they'll come in a flood of resume spam, so you're likely to miss them.

It's the same thing for most broadcast advertising--which is why advertisers are abandoning broadcast messages for search in droves.  Instead of mass messaging a potentially irrelevant audience, companies would rather target people that they know are more relevant. 

At the same time, more and more people--particularly the most innovative candidates--are exposing data about themselves on the web via their social network profiles, Twitter, blogging, del.icio.us, etc.  The best candidates are abandoning job boards and instead saying, "Come to you?  Why?  How about you come to my place?" 

It makes a lot more sense to imagine a world where everyone is searchable and open to hearing a relevant opportunity and that there are tools to find them--tools that understand the nuances of each network and application.

So when I can ask a search service to find me the top salesperson with 5 years experience that is into sustainability, and I triangulate on the combo of a public LinkedIn profile, an blog on sales that has a high level of authority, and "greentech" and "sustainability" as some of their top tags in del.icio.us, then why would I ever pay to post a job?

Certainly, we're already seeing companies bolt at the idea of paying hundreds of dollars for a job posting when you can just pay Craigslist $25.  Even then, Craigslist really just charges to keep the site spam-free.  I'd bet that if you could somehow prove your reputation as a legitimate employer, Craigslist would lower the cost.  That's why they started charging in real estate--because a free rental board attracts the worst of apartment scammers. 

Indeed.com will aggregate, for free, your company's job board if you submit it--assuming they haven't found it already. 

So what are you actually paying for?  Volume?  Is it impossible to fill 200 nursing positions anywhere else?  How long does that last?  Seems to me that being "big" isn't a really sustainable competitive advantage on the web unless you have some kind of network effect--something that Monster and the big job boards definitely do not have.

Sponsorship is different.  Sponsorship means you're getting to the top, getting front and center in front of the right candidates, but also paying on a per click basis.  It's a web model with a clear ROI and it charges for what you really want, traffic, not the commodity, publishing.  The incremental publishing/hosting cost on the web for a job should be near zero, so it seems silly that it's being charged for.

Is there anyone that you can't find via search that will come to you via a job post that is any good?  Does that remain the case in five years?

Recently, there have been some predictions that printed newspapers will die in the next ten years.

Anyone want to make a bet that the paid job post dies before that?  If not, when is the last paid post?

Consider this theoretical exercise...

I met a company the other day with a live social networking product that could be easily whitelabeled for brands and publishers.  They were also looking to raise between 500k and 1m. 

My suggestion to them was to go out and charge some brands to whitelabel their product at 50k a pop--generate revenue instead of raising capital. 

Here's the thinking:

If you're telling me that gathering your audience or doing whatever it is that you do solves someone's problem, than selling it is really the only proof.  What happens when a big company has a problem that costs them 200k a year?  They budget out 50k of either internal or contract resources to fix it if there's no good solution on the market.  In other words, they pay money to a team of people who haven't built product yet to fix their problem. 

On top of that, interactive advertising shops get paid tens of thousands of dollars all the time to build microsites and apps for brands and publishers.

Therefore, the idea that you can't get *somebody* to pay for a future solution to be delivered in a few months seems like a flimsy argument, given the right terms.  Sure, they won't pay a fifty dollar a month subscription for a product that doesn't exist, but they routinely pay 50k for custom built solutions.

Here's the problem with that, and what you need to convince companies out of.  Custom solutions are always a nightmare to maintain.  Domain expertise on what companies build internally is nearly non-existent, so you'll always be overpaying to retain employees to maintain it.  There's no direct incentive and certainly no budget to continually improve and iterate on the product, so it's bound to get stale and become obsolete.  The problem is so bad that you have to imagine that companies might be better off seeding lots of little ISVs to build efficient, flexible software that other companies could use rather than attempt to homegrow anything.

And that's your pitch:  Pay us to do this--we'll be focused on it, iterate on it, incorporate the good feedback from other customers, and in the long run, we'll be cheaper to maintain.  Perhaps with that comes some warrants, options, or even some equity. 

If you scour the market and one out of the top 100 companies isn't willing to pay you for your solution or to attach their brand to you, then I have to wonder one of the following things:

Is this just not enough of a pain point for these customers or their audience? 

Does this other company not see your tool as a compelling enough way to monetize their audience--which is also your audience--one that they know, conceivably just as well if not better than you?  If it was, you'd have to believe that some kind of revenue share or equity agreement would make sense to them.  If you're doing something amazing for the auto market, and Car & Driver doesn't want to be a part of it, you have to wonder how amazing what you're doing is.

In this or any economy, you need champions--and your best champions are your paying customers.  Angels and VCs don't mind being second in line behind someone actually paying to use the product that will ultimately drive your success.

Are there exceptions to this?  Sure.  There are certainly pain in the ass situations where you're doing so much custom development all day for other people that you're no longer actually selling you're product--you're a development shop.  Still, the exercise of talking to customers and seeing what they would pay for is sure to be an informative one.

Has anyone noticed the increased interest that Boston VCs are taking in NYC these days?   It's not just Bijan from Spark anymore--Beantown investors are flocking to NYC in a big way, and being very public about it.

In addition to deals like .406's investment in EnergyHub, Boston firms have recently shown a penchant for participating in NYC community events and support--perhaps even more than NY firms have.

General Catalyst sponsored Alley Insider's Startup 2009.  More recently, a bunch of investors and entrepreneurs have gotten together to great a venture education and mentoring program called First Growth Venture Network right here in NYC, not Boston. 

Check out the Sawx-lovin' VC firms on the executive committee:

Flybridge Capital Partners

Polaris Venture Partners

North Bridge Venture Partners

Charles River Ventures

Battery Ventures

Highland Capital Partners

On top of that, there are a number of firms putting feet on the ground here.  Mo Koyfman of Spark is based out of NYC.  General Catalyst give Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes the nod to hangout in NYC and drum up some deals.  MIT MBA candidate Amanda Peyton is in NYC for the summer on behalf of New Atlantic Ventures--a recent backer of Brooklyn-based Pontiflex to go with their investment in NY's ContextWeb.

Claire Cain Miller asked whether or not Boston was dying as a VC hotbed, but positioned that it was being abandoned in favor of the valley after Greylock went out west.  It seems more logical to me that any Boston exodus would naturally lead down I-95 first before it jumped across the country.

Unfortunately, and typically, the continuing buzz (which is what... three years old now?) around NYC's surging startup economy seems to have escaped the WSJ's Scott Denne, who covered the First Growth story by leading with the following: 

"...start-up founders in New York City are a relatively solitary lot. With fewer firms and no particular geographic nexus, entrepreneurs rarely have the kinds of chance encounters that can jump-start a start-up."

Dear anyone who can't find the NYC tech scene or still doesn't know it exists...   You are cordially invited to join nextNY, the NY Tech Meetup, show up at a Digital Dumbo, the Entrepreneurs Roundtable, or follow @shakeshack.

You've spent lots of time and effort cultivating a fanbase of thousands--on Twitter, Facebook, even on your own applications.  Yet, when you need new employees, how much of your efforts are directed towards people across the web that don't know you or who aren't nearly as passionate as your existing employees are.  You might even need to pay a recruiter to help make your salespitch.

Meanwhile, among your biggest fans and most passionate users are developers, marketers, accountants, public relations professionals--people from every industry imaginable who would probably jump at the chance to come work for you.  The only thing is, you don't know who these people are, short of their tiny little Twitter profiles which you can't search at scale anyway. 

You could try tweeting all youropenings, but not all of them are going to be relevent to your whole audience, which will degrad the quality of your livestream.

Christa Foley from Zappos agrees, “It wouldn’t fit within our culture to be salesy/pushy... we’re not blasting on Twitter every job opening... To me, that feels like spamming, which I think goes against what Twitter was meant to be used for.”

Just publishing your openings in social networks is a very 1.0 broadcast way of approaching a very 2.0 environment.  The problem is that all of the recruiting tools and social spaces are silos.  You can't search the resumes of your Twitter followers, and you can't search LinkedIn and filter by who follows who on Twitter. 

Having people put links to their resume in their Twitter account might be a start, but that wouldn't be easily searchable by structured search--plus it might look a little odd to their bosses. 

Coming at it from the other way, from Reid Hoffman's keynote at the Social Recruiting Summit, it seems pretty certain that LinkedIn is more worried about keeping the "noise" from other networks out than the free flow of data.  He didn't seem too pleased about Plaxo's attempts at syncing and he's always referred to behavior on Facebook with some disdain--associating it with zombie bites and electronic hamburgers.  This misses the opportunity to capture a lot of useful data on candidates, like their interests, affinities, and what companies they follow.

Path 101 is working on this problem now, and in about a month or so, will give you the tap for the keg of human capital that use your social media fanbase.

If you're interested in recruiting your followers, comment below or reach me at charlie@path101.com.

The fingers around this subway pole have chipped purple nail polish--seemingly quite a few days old.  I wonder if you could plot that out consistantly.  Like, 35% coverage means six days.   It matches her yellow eye shadow--that is, if she were a Lakers fan.  I doubt it.  She's reading a comic book--graphic novel rather.  Mice with sunglasses are in the one flopped over panel that I can see.  The man next to her is trying to man a call as we cross the Manhattan bridge.  It doesn't seem to be working.  He is reading an article in the paper about some kid hit with a stray bullet that just got out of the hospital.  I wish someone would adopt all these stray bullets--or at least spay or neuter them to help control the bullet population.  Airwalks.  That's what she's wearing.  Bronx mother admits to fatally bashing tot.  Poor tot.  Never had a chance.  Canal St.  Asians get off, hipsters get on.  Sudden turn...  I nearly fell over but I grabbed he pole just in time.  It was good aim because there were five hands on the pole already.  Comic girl is sleeping standing up.  For some reason I think everyone knows I'm writing about this subway car.  I'll stop now.  The jig is up.

I got a note this morning (complete with its own press release attached) from Stephanie Agresta telling me that she had moved to a fulltime gig at Porter Novelli.

She writes, "My move to Porter Novelli is symbolic of the fact that the agency gets it: PR has changed forever."

It reminds me of Tara Hunt's announcement that she was moving to Intuit.  She was super excited about getting "a little schoolin’ on corporate America".

PR has changed?  Corporate America exciting?  What kind of social media bizarro world did we enter?

I think if you read between the lines, you'll realize that when two such prominent personalities in the social media world jump to the corporate side, it's a market signal: 

There just isn't enough money in social media to be a fulltime consultant. 

This is also what I heard recently from a very prominent social media expert who told me that actual dollars paid to her for her expertise were tough to come by.  Sure, there are going to be a few exceptions, but when some of the top folks are moving to big firms, if you don't believe this is a market top, then I've got a bridge to sell you.

And hey, I don't blame them.  They landed great jobs!  It's a tough economy and seeking shelter in the stability of a big firm is a smart move--just don't expect me to believe how psyched you are to leave independence for the joys and challenges of the Cube World.  

More people should get out while they can, because, in this economy, if you're not showing companies how all this stuff can directly contribute to the bottom line in real dollars, you're seriously screwed. 

Advertising and PR is becoming much more integrated.  Messaging is going cross medium.  You can't really survive at the strategy level if you don't understand all of the aspects of both traditional and interactive advertising--direct marketing, SEO/SEM, sponsorships, event marketing, etc.  That raises the bar for what it takes to be an advertising expert of any kind--let alone just in social media.  And thank God for that... seriously.  There are too many people going around with social media on their business cards where you say, "I don't get what that person does for a living--what do they actually do again?" 

So if you're smart and you see people like Tara and Steph--successful consultants who had real clients and a track record of success--going corporate, maybe it's time to hangup your "Social Media Expert" hat.

I've clearly been blogging less these days...but when I do, the overall quality (or at least effonrt) is up at a pretty high level.  I'm a writer--I still love writing essay length posts and always will. 

But since I started using Twitter and more recently since I started using Tumblr for real, not only has my publishing splintered across mediums, but I realize engagement with my community of readers is up.   Before Twitter, I would write the occasional micropost, but I'd feel like it went into a void.  It would be a quick passing thought and it would take too long for my daily RSS reading blog audience to receive it for the kind of quick response it might garner.

At the same time, I'd occasionally post ridiculous things--things few people found as funny as I did.  It seemed a little out of place to blog a College Humor video after a serious piece about entrepreneurship.  I didn't really want to use Tumblr, though.  Mainly, I was actually being  somewhat hypocritical because I was focused on having my blog as the central place to find and consume the published me on the web but I constantly criticize Friendfeed for killing the context and nouance that comes with each individual platform.  Additionally, I firmly believed that different people wanted different slices of me--and to force them to all consume the same sausagelike feed was borderline abusive.   That's why I don't usually friend my professional contacts.  I may find your professional presence in my life worthwhile, but please don't make me look at your kids photos.

I started using Tumblr for real a few weeks ago.  I say for real because I used to just publish a feed from my blog to it.  It got very few clickthroughs and hardly any followers--no reblogs.  Certainly no one was going to pass along around my content if it wasn't tailored towards the audience.  Like a dying marriage, it's as if that audience knew I wasn't putting in the effort so why should they? 

Now, I pass the music I listen to through Tumblr as well as the occasional drunk Kung Fu Panda.  I clip the quotes from my blog I think will appeal to that audience.  Now, I not only get more followers, but I get more engagement as well. 

Media outlets need to realize that.  If you're CNN, you can't just blast a link to the CNN homepage everywhere.  You need to maintain a unique, curated presence everywhere your audience is and engage them in a unique way. 

When I worked in private equity, I learned about the buyout of Gaylan's sports.  The concept there was to build a big box retail space for sports, but to make sure that each individual section of the store was as good or better than the speciality store equivilent.  Therefore, the golf section of Gaylan's had to be as good as your local golf shop.    This was very different from places like Modell's, which are decent options if you want to buy a generic set of golf balls, but you're not going to find any premium items or anyone who knows anyone at golf.

If you're a big media outlet and you're going to be publishing into social spaces, then your Twitter account needs to be as engaging as the alternative individual that I would subscribe to.  There's no sense being @ComedyCentral if you're not going to be as funny as @dickc.  If you're going to have a CNN Tumblr, then you need to be as good at curating content as Soup.  Esquire, if you're going to be on Tumblr, you need to be as smart, sexy, and funny as Meaghano. 

Don't throw this "social media stuff" off to your youngest social media intern.  Go to these communities.  Go meet with Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, MySpace, all of 'em and ask, "Who gets it?  Bring us to them so we can learn."

How many people did the following search for Obama's speech this morning?

Ariana got all the traffic and the rest of the big boys had nothing to show me.

Amanda hits this one right on the head:

"THE NOT-SO-GOOD - Where are the Developers?

There are few events that involve actually learning how to code and/or build stuff (exceptions here and here). From what I can tell, the best way to lock down job security if you work in print media/traditional advertising is to beef up your knowledge of the digital side. If you’re a content ninja, wouldn’t having a working knowledge of rails, php, python or even wordpress provide a huge advantage?"

It seems like the powers that be are making a bet... that the future of innovation around the web in NYC will be powered by advertising supported content--an economy run on digital pennies.  So much for NYC building the next Google.

There are exactly three entrepreneurs on the 45 person Internet Week Executive Council with companies whose current or future business models are not depending on ad supported content: Caterina Fake from Hunch (I imagine that's going to be a data biz of some kind, Scott from Meetup (subscription), and myself (Path 101 is working on candidate search and self promotion tools.)  In fact, the whole thing is co-sponsored by the Mayor's Office of "Film, Theatre and Broadcasting".  

Is this really where innovation is going to happen--by moving all the broadcast content to the web?   I agree with Amanda--we need more people building, and less people broadcasting.

I dated someone once who tried getting to know me better by going back and reading every single one of my blog posts from day one--back in February 2004.  Whenever she would confuse the events of the present time with something that she read about years ago, I'd say, "No, that was Paralell Charlie."  To her, the near-daily account of my thoughts was backstory--years of context to compliment her realtime experience of me.  Facebook photos work the same way--visual evidence of the rest of the life of this stranger you just shared dinner with.  What's more is that it's all content not curated to impress--at least less so than date banter.  It's the animal in its natural digital habitat--to the extent that their digital self represents their true nature. 

It's certainly better than nothing.  In fact, it's so much better than nothing that sometimes I wonder how anyone ever gets to know anyone who is basically off the grid.   It feels so forced and unnatural.   You have to ask someone about their day and what was on their mind--manually!--instead of just commenting on it directly.  To make plans to hangout, you have to call them.  How obnoxiously disruptive! 

Ever think about introducing yourself on the subway?  Ask them to unplug from their iPod to talk to a stranger in mid-sardine can transport with no ability to Ignore or Block?   Yeah, right.  How would they know who I was if they couldn't Google me?  BTW, exactly what day was it that it became creepier *not* to have a web presence?

The web is so much more casual.  It's timeless and asynchronous.  A real life first date can feel like a race against the clock.   Will you score enough points before to time runs out to stay alive or will you fail to reach the next round?  Maybe you didn't find that shared interest as you were blindly feeling around in the dark of uninformed, non-prestalked meatspace conversation. 

The idea of being judged based on dinner, drinks, or a single pithy pickup line feels almost unfair.  I have a whole body of work--over five years of blogging, two plus years of Tweeting and thousands of Flickr photos.  I'm a person, dammit... look at all these ones and zeros--I have proof!  See, published character depth! 

"How did you meet?"

Nowadays, it goes something like this, "Well, I found her after searching a keyword that I'm interested on Twitter.  I clicked around to her Facebook, saw that she was attractive, seemed to have a nice *normal* group of friends, no upside down keg photos.  I started following her blog and her Twitter.  Then, I waited until I had something genuinely useful and relevent to say--something I wanted to say not something I felt I had to say in the pressure of the moment.  That began a short, but interesting, online conversation and then we decided to take it into the real world.  We had real conversation, over a delicious meal, based on things we already knew about each other.  "

How did we ever meet anyone before the internet?

I had a fascinating conversation with an early/seed stage investor yesterday who basically described the market as follows...

He said that, over the course of all of their deals (over 50), they've done a very good job figuring out what a team will need to do to raise venture capital.  Their investments are basically meant to supply a team with about 9 months of capital to go out and build something and "jump 9 feet", because that's the milestone they see for VC--whatever 9 feet is for that particular comapny.

That had been going pretty well up until deals that were done in the first half of last year--right around the time that Path101.com got it's first angel financing.  Now their companies are coming back into the market, as planned, for financing.  They're reporting that instead of the 9 feet they were training for, they're now being asked to jump 15 feet by the VCs.  Somehow, companies are supposed to get straight from product to revenue--without iteration or even traction in between.

If you're an investor and you can get a Series B company--one with revenue traction--for Series A prices, why would you ever do a Series A?  It's not unfair--it's just good business.

Welcome to raising capital in 2009.  Go straight to Series B or do not pass go.

This investor was basically doubling the size of the rounds he was doing--splitting them with a partner fund--in order to give companies longer runways to actually make it to sustainability.  He described your angel/seed funding like a rocket ship.  You need to decide how big of a fuel tank you need to take you into orbit, because, these days, if you run out before you get there, there's no refueling mid-flight. 

We'll be talking to our board tomorrow and the theme of the conversation is more or less "If financing happens, great, but we're not going to wait around for it."  We're still in conversations with investors, but our product plan has prioritized immediately monetizable features.  We're shooting for 45 days, give or take a few bug fixes here and there, to launch both recruiter and candidate services we can sell.  We've cut our burn pretty low and we're working on some in person job search seminars to help extend the runway.  We're not going to disappear tomorrow, that's for sure--but we want to still be here six months from now and beyond.  That takes a solid plan and some rolled up sleeves.

What am I telling startups now?  Forget raising 250-500k.  If you can raise a million, do it--because the chances of you creating a break-even business on 250k-500k is pretty low.  If you can't raise a million, then only focus on building something that a customer is willing to pay for TODAY.  (That should focus your product roadmap just a bit.)  Anything in between will be a bridge to nowhere. 

UPDATE: Fred wrote this post yesterday about becoming the default behavior for your market--ahead of figuring out how to monetize it.  I think the problem with that thinking is that it basically only gives you one shot.  You're playing startup Russion Roulette when your goal is to become the default activity and you have no Plan B.  At least of you monetize in some way, if it takes you two or three tries to become the default, you have the runway to iterate.  We're all aiming to become the default activity for our consumer base and the service we provide--but it's not always clear how to do that.  Lots of people wanted to be the Google of events--it never happened, but not for lack of trying.  In new markets, it's not always clear what model wins out, and often times the last one standing wins.  It's hard to be the last one standing if you're not making money.  The key is to make money in a way that doesn't hinder your growth. 

In hindsight, I wonder if perhaps we at Union Square Ventures did the world a disservice back in 2005 when we started blogging as a fund--opening the kimono on the world of venture capital and making it seem like it was within arms reach.  Maybe the world was better off when businessplans@venturefund.com was the black hole where your ideas went.

We have a new black hole where all the ideas go today--but this time we call it the economy.

Before all the transparancy, those who really wanted to pursue their ideas, out of necessity, went and got paying customers for their business day one.  If you built a great business, the VCs would find you, but short of that, you didn't have all of these conferences, bootcamps, etc. making you feel like you're just an investor away from the next big thing.

People would tell me, "Oh, you're lucky that you used to work for a venture fund, because you understand what they want."  In hindsight, I don't know about that.  I might have been better off not knowing that venture capital existed, aiming for profits from the beginning--and then just being nicely surprised if some dude shows up at my door with a few million in cash asking to buy a minority stake in my business.

Venture capital is like winning the lottery.  Somebody wins, but statistically, it's not you.  Don't wait for an investor to go build the business.  We're not--not anymore, anyway.

"Facebook has almost finished raising $150 million in capital, in an extraordinary move by the company to buy out shares of hundreds of regular employees. Hundreds of the Palo Alto, Calif.s employees have now toiled at the company for more than two years, and many have worked three to five years. Increasingly, some have become restless, and would like to cash in on the huge value they've created."

Facebook raises $150 million more to cash out employees » VentureBeat

For more than TWO YEARS?!  TWO YEARS?!  TOILED? 

Restless?

Cry me a fucking river!  

Tell that to some family who ran their local Chevy dealer for the last 20 years who just got news this week that they're getting the ax. 

They're the ones who deserve to be a little restless.

I'm sorry, but this is exactly what's wrong with this country and why we got here in this economic mess--people looking for a handout before actually creating any real value.  Facebook has not made a single penny of actual profit.  It has no exit in sight.  They've capitalized themselves and grown to the point where no one is going to acquire them, and they can't go public without some actual cashflow. 

And yet, after just a few years, their employees need to cash out?  Really?

Did they not notice that not only is no one else hiring, but equity payouts are few and far between?  Sure, a few companies got picked up along the way in the Web 2.0 M&A window, but it's not like everyone else in the Valley got fat payouts and they're the only ones without a Porsche in the drive. 

And PS... Most startups don't even have an exit.  Equity is UPSIDE.  It's a risk you take, because you don't know if, when, and how much--and if you wanna see the payout, you stick around and see the company through to an exit.

This is like tips--where instead of tipping for good service, now you're just expected to lop 20% on top of your bill all the time and it's expected. 

It's not like these people have been working for peanuts this whole time either.  I'm sure Facebook is paying their people market rates, so the idea that they need to see their upside already--in this economy, and after just a few years--is astounding. 

Right now, I'm working hard to make sure our company, Path 101, survives past the summer.  My expectation is that it takes at least five if not seven or eight years to build a company.  If anything good happens before that, it's gravy, but I'm in this for the long haul.  If I can work at something I love doing for the next five or six years, I'd consider myself very lucky. 

Trust me, I won't be looking for a cashout after two, especially if we're not making any profit yet. 

And what does that investment memo look like?   I'd like to hear that partnership discussion at the VC firm...

"We're going to need $150 million more in Facebook?"

"For what?  To grow internationally?  To scale?  For bandwidth costs?"

"No... to keep these twentysomethings working for *two years straight* from whining."

And who are these Asian investors and where do I send my Powerpoint?

Recently, Alex and I had one of the best conversations about Path 101 that we've had with an investor so far.  We talked about what we've learned, the space, our approach, etc.  They were extremely thoughtful in terms of where the market is going and how to best take advantage of the opportunity.  We riffed for nearly two hours.

A day or two later, I was talking with a successful startup guy who was going to make a key introduction for us.  I had been nearly tripping over myself in terms of all the potential for value creation we had and the opportunities missed by others.  (I get pretty passionate about this stuff.)  I then asked him about how "pitchy" I should be when talking to this potential new investor.

"The last ten minutes of our conversation--that's what you need to have with him," he said.

That's when I realized how inauthentic and contrived the whole pitch process was.  You'd never find your soulmate, make a friend, or hire someone based on a Powerpoint--so why find someone to invest in your company that way?  Either show your product or just talk to the person--with the latter probably being much more effective in presenting a vision and as a way to get to know you as a person. 

The other thing about a "pitch" is that the tone of the conversation is negative.  Investors are looking for holes--reasons not to invest, because the default is a no.  Conversations don't have a default answer that you have to hurdle over, they're just an exchange.

I don't think enough entrepreneurs get out from behind their desks to talk to the market--to business development partners, to investors, to prospective employees...  to anyone who could give useful product feedback.  I can't tell you how many times I've talked to startups and said, "Oh, you know so and so, right?"  They rarely do... even when it's a no-brainer that they should be talking to a completely obvious partner or investor. 

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

Penelope Trunk is supposed to be some kind of expert on generations and the workplace, but I don't think she could get the following more wrong:

"Do you know who is using social media? Gen X. The average Twitter user is in their 30s. The median age of LinkedIn is 40. The majority of people who are joining Facebook right now are over 35. This is because Gen X wants to meet new people online and reconnect with all the friends they lost along the way. Gen X is using social media to network. "

Actually, the average age of internet users--and the US population in general, is around the mid 30's.  To say that Gen X is doing more networking, and disproportionately so, is just misleading--it's just flat out wrong.  Social networkers pretty much reflect the makeup of the US internet user audience.  Gen X isn't any more networking savvy than any other group.

"Gen Y doesn’t need to. They never lost their connections because they’ve been online since they were ten. They do not need to meet more people online to expand their network because they are native networkers – they have had the tools and the predisposition to use them since before Gen X even knew what Facebook was."

This is just utterly ridiculous.  Gen Y doesn't need to meet more people online to expand their network because they've been online since they were 10?  I don't know about you, but nobody I know basically made all the career connections they ever needed to make between the ages of 10 and 21.  If anything, Gen Y needs the most networking help because they grew up with "Stranger Danger."  They got taught that people they don't know are likely to try to hurt them, so they tend to connect online to people they already know.  Facebook reflects that and it's the reason why Gen Y is so much less likely to use LinkedIn.  On Facebook you connect to your friends, and on LinkedIn you build your professional network, often reaching out to new people.  Getting Gen Y to use LinkedIn is like pulling teeth.  Perhaps Penelope should teach a class of college students over a full semester like I do to get a better sense of how Gen Y really networks online.

"So while Gen X is busy using Twitter to let people know what they are up to and promote the hell out of whatever they are doing, Gen Y is using Twitter for tweetups – meetups set up via Twitter. Which is a way of making genuine friends offline."

So Gen Y does tweetups more than Gen X?  Most tweetups are tied around some kind of professional group--not likely to be attended by a majority of Gen Yers.  Disagree?  Flip through who is actually Tweeting Up right this minute.  On top of that, most people on Twitter aren't really promoting anything.  Sure, the "gurus" and social media mavens are, but by number, most people on Twitter just follow a handful of people they know and just Tweet about their life.

Sherry Mason from Bowdoin College wrote "College kids I work with need coaching on tone & style" and she's absolutely right.  Just because a Gen Yer may have 1000 Facebook friends doesn't make them an expert at networking any more than following 10,000+ people on Twitter does so they follow you back.  (I always thought networking involved listening... I'm sorry, but you can't listen to 10,000+ people at once, even if you're using Tweetdeck.)

Networking involves the following basics, none of which I've found Gen Y to be particularly good at:

• Self awareness: How are people perceiving you?  Gen Yers, because of their lack of experience, don't have a great sense of professionalism and professional appearence.
• Storytelling: How can you package up your experiences, interests, goals into something memorable that others take with them and remember.
• Listening: I don't think any generation is good at this, Gen Y included.
• Outreach: Reaching out to the right people to build relationships--this is where Gen Y majorly falls down because those kids aren't any good at going outside the comfort zone of their own network--unless their mom schedules a playdate for them. 

Gen Y sucks at networking.  Don't let their Facebook friend list fool you.

Someone sent a note to the nextNY list about how he was unemployed and looking to work for a startup--how it was really hard to find something.  He sent a link to a piece he wrote on a site about being unemployed.

This was my response:

"So the one link you send us is on a site about being unemployed?

Why on earth would you market yourself as an unemployed guy?  In your first instance of participation in this group, you cast yourself as laid off and desperate.  Who wants to hire an unemployed person?

No one.

If I showed up to a date and the girl introduces herself by saying, "I've just been going on nothing but first dates and they never work out...   I'm so desperate to find someone" I'd be looking for the door in a heartbeat.

We all want to hire someone who kicks ass at something.  If you do not kick ass at anything, you should at least be in the process of learning how to kick ass at something.  Startups, or frankly any company for that matter, cannot afford to hire a non-asskicking generalist.

Think of it this way...  If you know the media, perhaps you could have spent the last five months doing free PR and marketing for a handful of startups.  You weren't working anyway.  The goal would be to be so good at it that one of those companies can't help but hire you--or some other company would hire you because they noticed how good you were at it--or worst case you'd suck at it but you'd really learn something.

Forget pursuing.  Spend 110% of your time honing some kind of value proposition that you'd be a no-brainer hire for.

Forget the "I'm unemployed" shtick and work on the being awesome without advertising the fact that you are awesome to everyone.  If you do not know what awesomeness is, try and figure out who the top 30 most awesome people in the NY tech scene are and interview them.  Publish the interviews on your blog.  Make a list and publish it.  Here are my suggestions:  David Karp, Anthony Volodkin, Chris Hughes...

And God help you if I see your blog and it's yourname.blogspot.com.  To be awesome, you must splurge for the $13 domain name."

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us: