Brad Feld

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Why I Don’t Have To Follow VC Blogs Anymore

Dec 21, 2015

Two words: Mattermark Daily

When I started blogging in 2004 I think I was the third VC blogger after David Hornik* and Fred Wilson (if you were, or know, of another pre-2004 VC blogger, please tell me so I can update my historical recollection.)

I remember lots of people asking me why I was doing it. I heard plenty of trash talk from other VCs, especially second hand, such as “He doesn’t have enough to do”, “He’s not spending his time doing his job”, or “What a waste of time.” I didn’t care, as I was doing it – like Fred often said – to help me think out loud in public, learn about different things, and get a conversation going around topics I was interested in. In retrospect, it was also helping me “practice writing” and without all the practice, it’s unlikely I would have ever gotten in the rhythm of writing a book a year.

Today, hundreds of VCs blog. Some are focused on using content marketing strategies to build their brand and reach. Some seem to have a full time person on the team generating content for them. Some do it under their name; other’s do it on their firm’s web site. Even more have tried and never got past a dozen posts.

Regardless of one’s success, it’s become extremely hard to track all the new content coming out and sort the good from the bad. My somewhat up-to-date VC People Feedly collection has 139 feeds in it. But I stopped being rigorous about adding new people about a year ago and rarely added feeds that were directly on firm websites, so I expect there are probably closer to 500 active VC bloggers now. And, this doesn’t include the guest articles that regularly show up on various sites like TechCrunch, VentureBeat, and Business Insider.

Rather than struggle to keep up, I’m just defaulted to relying on Mattermark Daily to tell me what to read each day. And, I always remember what I tell entrepreneurs: “It’s just data – and it’s often wrong.” Read a lot, but always apply your own critical thinking.

*Update: Naval Ravikant told me that he, Kevin Laws, and Andrew Anker were also part of VentureBlog (dating back to 3/2003). It now appears to be Hornik’s blog.