VC bloggers meetup

Well, we did not have to rent a big room for this one !! All of us London-based VC bloggers met at the Nobu Bar on Berkeley Street to sample a few drinks and soak up the atmosphere.

We missed Max Beyleben who is having a kid (fingers crossed) but had Shantanu, Jason, Paul and Nic.

Paul "the Guvnor" said he had no time to blog because there were too many deals going on and of course we all laughed at him...  What, not blogging between 12 and 1 every night ? We all bowed to Jason who has been blogging in some form or other for 8 years.  Respect!  Shantanu had to run off early because Anne Glover was made CBE (that's a Commander of the British Empire to you and me ...).  I understand that's not a reflection of her management style :-)

Good discussion around market evolution, whether IPTV is completely overhyped, to what extent raising big funds links to strategy creep, how much Benchmark is managing these days, what Accel plans to do about it, succession issues at a bunch of the funds, and so on. Oh yes, we did compare our devices for about 45 minutes.  Oh yes, and Esprit got beaten to the post by Brad Feld in annoucing WAYN.

Some blogger takeaways were:

• Blogging is still a pain because the tools are not robust.  Can't be that hard, when is someone going to put out a really user friendly app ?  I have been through BlogJet, Performancing, online, Qumana ... and now just use the Flock editor with the FlickrAPI.
• We are all so lonely out there.  There are not enough entrepreneurs and VC's participating in this to create really sustained conversations.  So we all pledged to comment on each other more and to convert 75 of our closest friends into bloggers for next year.  I have my eye on Frederic Court.  He told me he would start with a family VOx blog.  So work in progress !
  

technorati tags:maxbeyleben, jasonball, shantanubagwat, nicbrisbourne, paulfisher

Comments

[Shefaly Yogendra]

Thanks, Paul. I am going to direct the Vox-user friend to read your comments here (since there is no email-this link.. see what I mean?).

Mickey - you make it sound like people don't have a right to have fun and write about it on their blogs, when their day's work already involves interacting with entrepreneurs.. A bit unfair, dont you think?

[Fred Destin]

Mickey
I think quite the opposite; we spend ALL our time going into universities and meeting entrepreneurs and it took us the best part of six months to find a free evening for a drink together ! As one example we organised an elevator pitch in a real elevator in Amsterdam or ran an "Entrepreneus only" drink in Paris this year. I think we are indeed hard to reach, no question, but trust me we spend all our energies talking to company builders, not to each other.

[Mickey]

Fred,

I really don't want to sound critical at all, but am just wondering whether you guys are too stuck in your own world.

Will I ever see a post here saying how you guys invited budding entrepreneurs for a drink and all shared ideas, gave tips to one another, provided guidance and mentoring.

Will I also see a post that you guys organised visits to universities in the UK and beyond to explain to students what a real VC does, what the process of raising money entails etc...

Or will I see another post that you guys went to hang out in an upmarket London establishment to agree that ,,blogging tools ain't robust..."

Am sure you guys could do much more for strenghtening the culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in Europe.

[Dimitar Vesselinov]

"Blogging is still a pain because the tools are not robust."

Have you tried Blogtronix?
http://www.blogtronix.com/

blogs + wiki + social networking + RSS reader = Blogtronix

[Paul J.]

Shefaly,

I chose VOX as it is the absolute easiest place to get up and running in terms of blogging. I'm also really taking it slow in terms of what I blog, i.e. it's not a marketing tool. I wanted to first play around a bit and get a feel for it without worrying much about advertising "my blog" or driving comments. If I like it, you're totally correct that it's not the place for a "professional grade" blog with all the respective benefits. I'll be at it for a while on VOX and then if I'm happy with the results, I'll most likely make the switch. For now, we'll just help Fred increase the comments on his site! ;-)

As far as enough entrepreneurs not blogging, this is changing by the day literally. I hardly find a new company anymore which hasn't integrated blogging into their strategy, usually with the founder/entrpreneur doing the brunt of the blogging. I'm finding plenty of material to read and trust me, it'll be far more in the near future. I'm atually worried about overload in this regard and relevance of the individual blog actually decreasing.

PJ

[Shefaly Yogendra]

Oh no. Somebody else is going to use VOX too (I say 'too' because a friend recently started his blog on VOX and for reasons below I do not comment on his blog..)

Vox is a relatively closed platform. One cannot mess with the template so tools such as MyBlogLog cannot be implemented which are vital for keeping morale in early days when it will appear one is talking to oneself and nobody else.. Further to post comments, one has to be a Vox user. I wrote about SSO (single sign on) way back in 2001 complete with technical possibilties but shame it has not been a reality so far.. I am not keen to have hundreds of accounts and passwords. Its key positive is to segregate content by family/ friends/ none of the above so you can manage access. The templates themselves appear prettier than any other free ones available. But in early days I should think the idea should be to get traction not dissuade people from participating..

As for not enough entrepreneurs or VCs blogging, I think not enough techies/business folk/ academics are blogging either. Which means most of us read blogs in the US..

[Shantanu]

Looks like you guys had more fun after I left!
Anyways, sorry to have to rush off when we had barely started..have taken a note of the resolutions!

[Paul]

Fred, don't forget the rest of us out there plugging away at the blog-world in non-UK Europe! :-)

[Frederic]

well Fred can I get an accelerated course in time management so that I can get to play as well?