Evan Bartlett ‘s blog

At the ACA conference this year in Atlanta, there was a renewed interest in blogging, so I thought I’d put together a list of resources for the investors looking to grow their readership.  As social media and personal branding reach a wider audience, I think its a great idea for investors to blog, tweet, and comment their way to a broader reach with entrepreneurs.

Commenting

I judge blogs by the quality of their comments (which doesn’t say much for this one!), and to keep up there are a couple tools that can make your life easier.

First, get rid of your blogs commenting engine and install a third party commenting system like disqus, intense debate, or even facebook connect.  I use disqus.  The benefit is that your readers won’t have to fill out their information each time they comment, and with system like discuss they’ll get notified via email each time a new comment comes in.  See Fred Wilson’s site AVC .  He has very active discussions and a great community, but the only way he could possibly keep up with the conversation is by replying to comments via email on his blackberry!

Next, you probably want to know everything thats happening in comment discussions across the blogosphere, and BackType can handle that for you easily.  You can subscribe to recieve alerts anytime a particular term is mentioned in the comments section of a blog, and you can even get email updates on comments you’ve made on other sites that might not use a commenting engine like the ones mentioned above.

Distribution

Building traffic by word of mouth and by google can be a slow proposition.  Lots of people use 3rd party tools to get further distribution.

Digg is probably the most popular, but Delicious has a very tech focused crowd that could also drive traffic.  With Delicious, you can just bookmark and tag your own post to make   Stumbleupon, Technorati (more of a blog directory), and Reddit may also help get your writing out to a larger audience, but you’ll have to research the various techniques for doing so, because each community is different.

Twitter

Its one of the fastest growing social networks, the conversations are real time, and the messages are quick.  All of these factors point to Twitter being an integral part of your blogging approach.  You can use it to tweet out each time you write a post, follow up with discussions, or to find new people that can feed you interesting ideas to write about.  I’ll follow up with a post about which people to follow on twitter.

Analytics

To track your traffic progress, the standard seems to be Google Analytics.  Sign up for an account, copy and pasted the javascript code, and you’re ready to go.  I also like adding MyBloglog to my site, to get a better visual representation of whos visiting.  MyBlogLog has some light analytics, but its really much better for seeing the pictures on the right hand side of your blog of all your visitors (see mine on the right)

Reading

If you’re still reading RSS feeds, then Google Reader is the way to go.  Its got amazing keyboard shortcuts, along with powerful sharing features.  Its definitely the best tool for processing mass amounts of information.  The only shortcoming I’ve found is that it can’t handle password protected RSS feeds, in which case you can just download NetNewsWire for those feeds.

After overdosing on information through Google reader you may come to a may organic process of discovering and reading articles.  Twitter is a great way to get news from a hand selected group of people that you find interesting, while Instapaper is a simple easy way to save those articles for later.  Instapaper’s bookmarklet “read later” lets you copy the article to your “instapaper”, so it can be read through their beatiful simple text reader, or their iphone app.

I grew up speaking french in my house, and after a trip abroad to spain I picked up spanish.  After spending the last two years in NYC and SF, I realized unused languages get rusty.  To keep up to speed, I imagine theres a lot of ways you can immerse yourself in the language in today’s hyper connected world, so I’m going to list out some of the ways I’ve found to keep up.

1) Comics (fnac.fr comics)

This is how I learned to read French, when I was a little kid.  Asterix and Obelix, TinTin, Corto Maltese…. Reading in a foreign language is slow, and the pictures can help keep you motivated and making forward progres!

2) Childrens Novels (fnac.fr, amazon)

I’ve read 3 Harry Potter books, but none of them in English.  When reading is second nature in English, it can be a big drag to switch to another language, so keep it simple, and spend more time enjoying the story than worrying about the words and meaning.

3) Books based on movies you’ve seen (amazon international)

When reading a foreign language book, you spend so much effort on the details, that sometimes you miss the over arching plot.  Knowing what happens allows you to have more fun.

4) Podcasts (iTunes)

In iTunes, scroll to the very bottom of the store, and you can change the country.  I know that its not very good for discovery, but you can listen to a ton of podcasts till you find somethat are interesting.

Notes in Spanish is a particularly noteable podcast dedicated to teach spanish.  I followed the advanced podcasts, and  friend of mine did the beginner podcasts along with the notes, and found it very useful.

5) Movies/TV shows (netflix, iTunes, amazon)

iTunes and Netflix both have foreign movies and shows.  Watch these with the subtitles in a foreign language so you can start picking up the rythm of the speech.  At first spanish just blened together, and I couldn’t even make out the individual words.  Over time watching shows like Un Paso Adelante and Aqui no hay quien Viva, words just started to pop out and make sense.

6) Magazines

Yet again, keeping things short an interesting is the key.  They’re like grown up comics!

7) Blogs

I know there’s a ton of blogs in other languages, but its really tough to find the good ones.  The tools that we use for content discovery in english (delicious.com, digg.com, popurls, twitter) are mostly in english.  Breaking into that foreign language world online is tough.  You’ve got your habits and follow certain norms on the net, those change in foreign languages, and I’d love any tips that people have found for discovering this content, I’m open to suggestions.

Here’s a high level map of the french blogosphere setup by Patrice Lamothe using Peartrees.

8 ) News

Check your local news stand, and you’ll find news papers in a variety of different languages.  They’re easier to find than magazines.

Up and coming entrepreneurs always want to know the silver bullet to success or funding.  There isn’t one, and if we really want to help entreprenuers at large, we’d stop acting like there was.  We’d tell them that its all about hard work and sales.

Alastair Mitchell from Huddle.net did just that a few weeks ago during the Web 2 Expo, by uncovering why sales is not a dirty word and why your company shouldn’t avoid sales people despite their pressed shirts, blackberries, and dell laptops.

The talk inspired me to kick off a series of posts about sales starting with some bullet points from Alastair on sales:

1) Distribution is Everything

Sales people can get you distribution in ways that marketing/PR cannot.  Even the best app in the world won’t generate revenue if no one knows about it.

2) Sales Is hard work

Yes its expensive, it requires people, its not scalable, and its repetitive.  But you need it, so get over it.  It is/was popular for VCs to say they won’t invest in companies that require sales people, but they’ll change their mind in this down turn as good technologies go un-noticed.

3) Its a numbers game

Talk to a real estate broker about #2 and #3.  When I was selling software to them, I saw a poster that said head lights to work in the morning and home in the evening.  Which meant get into the office early enough that you see headlights on the road, and leave the office late enough that you see them again.  Its 99% perspiration to fill the pipeline, and 1% inspiration.

4) Leave it to the professionals

Entreprenuers, developers, product managers are all great evangelists, and they might even generate some sales, but in the end they are terrible closers.  Bring in the sales pro to close bigger deals faster.  To get a good look at the pros talk to my buddy Mark at QuotaCrush, and if you’re lucky enough, go watch him close.  I promise you’ll see the difference.

5) Know which type of sales professional to hire

Hiring sales teams for a tech startup can be quite a chore.  At angelsoft, we looked at dozens of people before we found the right fit, and thats not an easy task when you don’t have an HR department.  You need to find the righ balance of sales “shark” and startup attitude, or the culture of your company could be at risk.   Managing huge technical accounts at Cisco is a very different job than entering a new market and selling something thats never been sold before, so understand the different types of sales people.

6) Choose your leader first

Your VP of Sales is an extremely important person to hire.  Once the right person’s on board, let them build the team that they can get the most out of.  They probably know sales best.  Yet again, see Mark over at Quota Crush, he’s the outsourced VP of Sales for a couple of companies right now, and he’s in high demand.

7)  Build a “bunker spirit”

Nothing helps people close faster than necessity.  If the sales guys and the rest of the company are isolated from market forces, they won’t have the right sense of urgency.  Also, the whole team should be in the bunker together in order to bond.  Sales guys need to better understand the tech team, and the tech team needs to understand how tough it can be to grow sales of a new product.

This also gives you a better idea of when the products not selling, or if the salesperson is just not capable.  If they’re “in the bunker” working hard, then you can use this as feedback that the products not quite right.

8 ) Forecasts, double the time, halve the value

This is tough work, see #2.  In a new market, with a new product, you’ll feeling like you’re going for a job in knee deep mud.  Its going to take longer than you expect and in the beggining you’ll bring in half of what you estimated.  Be patient, count on your talented VP of sales, but its going to move slow, and the numbers  will pick up.

9) A product that does everything a customer wants won’t sell itself

In the Software as a service (SaaS) world, you can’t just build the perfect product and give it away, you have to build in pain points so that the customer feels the strong desire to remove those pain points by paying.  A good sales person can me the customers see those pain points, and a better one can make them feel it.  The stronger the pain, the more willing they are to cut checks.

10) The emperor is not wearing new cloths.

This is my favorite, though my version is “We are not in Never Never Land”!  The tools of buisiness have changed drastically, but the rules are not that different, and you still have to grow up.  If you’re venture backed, this is not a vacation, you exist to generate value, and sales people are a very effective way to do that!

In the process of relaunching this blog, I realized I wanted to change my focus from just general technology to include entrepreneurship. The EVERYDAY battle to innovate and make things better is really why the technology I love is created, so I wanted to focus on the underlying motivation.   The economist does a great job defining an entreprenuer in its recent special report:

“somebody who offers an innovative solution to a (frequently unrecognised) problem. The defining characteristic of entrepreneurship, then, is not the size of the company but the act of innovation.”

I love it!  Everyone can be an entrepreneur, and many times the initial act comes from identifying a problem that the rest of the world doesn’t see clearly (yet).  So think again when you see startups solving seemingly unimportant issues.  Maybe they see something you don’t, and maybe a small innovation will lead to big changes.  The innovation is in the disruption that the entrepreneur causes!

Despite entrepreneurship being all the rage these days, there are still quite a few myths out there, and the Economist points out a few:

1) Entrepreneurs are loners

I think the economist was hinting at the idea that many people confuse entreprenuers with inventors.  The mad scientist stereo type is a long shot from todays business innovators, and many early stage investors make it a point to stay away from inventors.  Its possible to find a healthy balance of both, but the inventor without the entrepreneur would just create something that never reaches the masses

2) Entreprenuers are not all young

Yet again, the defining characteristic is the disruption, innovation, and the size of the problem they solve, nothing else.

3) Venture Capital does not drive entrepreneurship

Though I agree with the Economist on this one, I would say VCs drive a portion of the entreprenurial community that is disproportionate to their roll in the ecosystem.  In the end, VCs only fund a small part of the companies that are created each year, but because the concept of “early stage” investing is so interesting it attracts a lot of attention in the media and from entrepreneurs.  As a result every new entrepreneur thinks they need an angel or VC round before they actually do anything.

4) Entreprenuers need to build big world changing products

Its all about the pain point that you are solving.  The more pain you alleviate, the more money those people are willing to pay as your customers.  If you’re always shooting for the massive long term ideas you may miss the short term simple ones right in front of you.

5) Entreprenuership can only survive in small companies

I’m a big fan of this because I believe every aspect of daily life requires an “Entreprenuer in Residence”, a smart person willing to come up with disruptive new ways to do the same old things.

The list is a lot longer than five, so I’ll try to add more as i find them, but here’s the biggest one of all:

Entreprenuership cannot be learned.

I’m not saying that only a certain type of person can be an entreprenuer, in fact its the opposite, anyone can be, but its not something they needed to learn.  Spend some time in any “entrepreneurial community” (I’m in SF or NYC), and you’ll see lots of people looking to learn the secret to entrepreneurship or the secret to getting venture money.  There is no secret!  Entreprenuers do what comes naturally to them, and they just start executing.  Its something that innovators are compelled to do, and often can not prevent it.  Its a form of passion being unleashed.  The best you can do is meet with other entrepreneurs/potential mentors to help channel your efforts!