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There has been some chatter on Twitter about the value of pitching to VC associates. Thought I’d lob in my 2 cents on the shuttle to NYC. Full disclosure - I am a senior associate at Spark Capital.

1. Roles have blurred between associates, principals, EIR’s, and VP’s. Regardless of title, different roles have different levels of influence within a partnership. Over the years, I think we’ve seen some title inflation at some firms. It comes down to whether a person can lead an investment. In some firms, senior associates can do this in certain cases (I am able to lead seed investments at Spark). Charlie O’Donnel is an EIR at First Round (and a pretty young guy), but just led their most recent investment in Backupify. But in many cases, associates can’t lead investments, and even principles or young partners will get unusually high scrutiny through the deal process.

2. High quality intros to GP’s > talking to associates > low quality intros. I generally agree with Keith Rabois that you want to get to a decision-maker. It’s common sense, even if it hurts. If I were an entrepreur, I’d try to talk to GP’s I know personally or can get a high quality intro into. But the emphasis is on high quality. A low quality intro is sometimes not much better than a cold call. Also, if you don’t have a quality connection to a firm, getting an associate excited about your company works. An associate pushing for a deal is almost as good as a high quality intro. If not, that VC firm is wasting it’s $ paying that associate. There are many examples of great companies that met their VC’s through associates.

3. Careers are long and Venture is a young person’s game. In many cases, the associates of today are the GP’s or corp Dev execs of tomorrow. It doesn’t hurt to meet them early in their career as you never know where things will go. There are many good GP’s and angel Investors that were former associates: David Cowen and Alex Ferrara at Bessemer, many of the Battery GP’s, Alex Finkelstein at Spark, Chris Dixon, Jeff Fagnan, Larry Cheng, etc (sorry for the east coast bias, but this is off the top of my head). I wouldn’t burn a lot of time with fruitless meetings, but I’d certainly be respectful and get to know the guys I like. Some of these folks will be decision-makers soon enough.

So, those are my thoughts on whether to talk to Associates. Here are two tips if you are talking to them.

1. Be mindful of associates at transition points. Usually, these guys have been associates for at least 1 year, more likely 2. They are either rising stars that will be tested by leading a few investments or guys just trying to survive. If they are the former, they can be great assets. These associates will hussle harder than other VC’s to prove themselves and usually have champions within the VC firm who will give them a lot of support. The latter are dangerous because you might spend a lot of cycles with them and get nowhere. Even worse, they may advocate for a decision, get you funded, but leave the firm in 6 months. Be mindful of the risk of becoming an orphan and make sure you establish a strong relationship with the partner on the deal early.

2. Favor associates with clear domain expertise or a strong thesis. This can be based on their operating experience, blog, or just clear evidence that they know what they are talking about. Meeting these associates can at least be helpful, and typically have a higher liklihood of culminating in serious consideration by partners. It also helps you figure out which firms “get it” in your sector or do not. Typically, I’d be more wary of associates that are clearly chasing momentum. These meetings are less likely to be valuable and could also mean that you are part of competitive due diligence for another deal.

Sorry for typos, this was written on my iPhone.

Larry Cheng at Volition Capital has put together some excellent lists of top VC bloggers and top VC websites by traffic.

Obviously, these measurement methods aren’t perfect (he uses a rolling 3 month average of unique visitors from Compete), but they are directionally correct.  What I found interesting is the correlation (or lack of correlation) between website traffic and aggregate blog traffic from all firm bloggers.  I took Larry’s two more recent lists and did this comparison.  The results are below ordered by website traffic:

Fund Name – (Website Traffic / Total Blog Traffic)

1. First Round Capital – (31,632 / 28,039)

2. Sequoia Capital – (22,441 / 0)

3. Bessemer Venture Partners – (14,825 / 8,262)

4. Highland Capital Partners – (12,704 / 0)

5. Garage Technology Ventures  - (12,375 / 82,838)

6. Draper Fisher Jurvetson – (11,823 / 12,010)

7. New Enterprise Associates – (11,762 / 0)

8. Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers – (10,924 / 0)

9. Polaris Venture Partners  - (10,217 / 16,991)

10. Benchmark Capital – (10,162 / 23,084)

11. Battery Ventures  - (10,034 / 1,744)

12. Founders Fund  - (9,654 / 21,462)

13. Accel Partners  - (9,604 / 0)

14. Greylock Partners  - (9,445 , 0)

15. Centennial Ventures – (9,224 / 0)

16. General Catalyst Partners  - (9,086 / 0)

17. Summit Partners - (8,270 / 0)

18. Norwest Venture Partners - (8,198 / 0)

19. Founder Collective - (8,189 / 42,937)

20. Spark Capital – (7,834 / 15,487)

21. Foundry Group – (7,787 / 71,547)

22. Technology Crossover Ventures  - (7,503 / 0)

23. Matrix Partners  - (7,309 / 0)

24. Lightspeed Venture Partners  - (6,475 / 15,199)

25. Union Square Ventures  - (6,333 / 132,936)

Some interesting observations:

1. There are a lot of zeros.  It was surprising to me to see how many top firms don’t appear to be blogging at any scale.  Again, Compete may fail to report the traffic of some of these folks, but that probably means that scale is minimal. That said, most of the excellent firms like Sequoia, Accel, Kleiner, etc have good reach with their websites regardless of whether or not their partners blog.  I also know that at least one zero will go away with the next version of the list since David Skok started what looks like will be an excellent blog.

2. Blogging puts firms on the radar.  It’s interesting to see some relatively new firms come on the scene in recent years and build very broad awareness.  For better or worse, brands do matter somewhat in venture, and it’s always a tricky thing for a new fund to figure out how to create awareness. I think expressing your thinking openly and engaging the tech community in a dialog is a great way to do that.  It’s impressive to see Founders Fund and Founder Collective gain mind share very quickly.  And part of it has to do with one or two very vocal individuals who put their thoughts out there.  As a side note, for those of you who do not read Chris Dixon’s blog or  Dave Mcclure’s blog you are totally missing out.

3. Social media creates unprecedented reach.  Event the best known firms only get 10-30K hits on their website.  It should be no mystery why that is - the content is rarely refreshed, and it serves mostly as information and marketing pages to entrepreneurs who are researching a particular firm.  But blogging (and social media in general) expands the voice of VC’s way beyond a bio and list of companies. It’s content that’s actually helpful and appeals to a much broader audience.  Union Square Ventures for example has over 100K uniques, 20x the uniques on their website.  And the richness of their content justifies it (for example, see Fred Wilson’s new series on MBA Mondays).

This last point makes me think more broadly about the reach of VC’s on the internet.  Stay tuned as I pull some additional data together.

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while.  Basically since the great NYT Piece came out on Shane Battier. I think Shane’s story is a remarkable one, and there are a lot of lessons that can be applied to startups and to careers in general.  It’s also interesting to juxtapose his experience with a lesser known Blue Devil - Chris Burgess.

Shane Battier and Chris Burgess were both in my class at Duke.  Both were very highly touted new recruits on an amazing freshman class that also included Elton Brand. Both were McDonald’s High School All Americans.  But they had very different careers in college:

Battier: (Year: PPG/RPG)

1998: 7.6/6.4, 1999: 9.1/4.9, 2000: 17.4/5.6, 2001: 19.9/7.3, 2002: NBA

Burgess: (Year: PPG/RPG)

1998: 4.3/3.4, 1999: 5.4/3.9, 2000: Transferred, 2001: 7.8/5.9, 2002: 13.2/7.2

Today, Shane is with the Houston Rockets and one of the most well regarded role players in the NBA.  Chris has bounced around the European league and is currently playing with a team in Dubai.

I think there are a couple generalizable lessons from these two careers.

1. Find product/market fit early, and be realistic when it isn’t there.

In this case, the player is the product and the team and the NCAA broadly is the market.  Unfortunately Burgess didn’t fit into the Duke system.  It was painfully obvious fairly early on.  Coach K typically has one dominant big man, and a bunch of wing players who shoot threes.  Brand emerged early as that dominant center, and Burgess was left without a role.  Unfortunately, he had to battle through it for two years before he transferred, and unfortunately, he also battled a string of injuries once he started playing for Utah.

Startup entrepreneurs search for product market fit from the very beginning.  I think the challenge in the early stages of a company is to find that fit as quickly and as painlessly as possible.  Until you get there, you want to avoid spending a lot of money on a team, marketing, or infrastructure.  The problem comes when a founder is too attached to his product concept, that he keeps plowing forward even when users are only lukewarm about the product.

Sean Ellis has a very simple way to measure whether PMF is achieved.  The basic idea is to get to a point where 40% of users say they would be very dissappointed if they could no longer use your product.  I think this is something all early stage companies should be measuring and trying to achieve.

In Burgess’ case, he did not achieve PM fit at Duke.  Unlike a web startup, basketball players can’t experiment anywhere near as nimbly with their product. So he had to make the painful decision to leave after two years, redshirt for one year, before continuing his career in Utah.

2. Do A Few Things So Well It Becomes a Thing of Beauty

Shane Battier fit well within the Duke system.  He was very versatile and was a great defender and rebounder.  But he started at Duke as an all-around smart player.  I think it was pretty clear early on that he wouldn’t be a dominant superstar.

What Shane did do was focus on a few things that he did very well, and perfected them.  Specifically, he became the best defender in the NCAA.  He also made an art out of taking charges (a stat that most people don’t pay any attention to). When players faced Shane 1-on-1 when driving the basket, you could actually see fear in their eyes as he got into position to take a charge.

It’s also interesting to see what Shane didn’t become.  He didn’t handle the ball very much, and actually looked quite awkward doing so.  His rebounding numbers didn’t go through the roof, and he didn’t really create scoring opportunities for himself.

A lot of startups have big aspirations of how the product will evolve.  Entrepreneurs are excited about solving huge problems and there are a lot of them out there to tackle.  But most game changing companies start out doing one thing extremely well.  In fact, they do that one thing so well that they uncover unique opportunities that weren’t obvious before.  As an early stage company, it’s important to figure out what it is you will do far better than anyone else.  The most dangerous startups are probably the one that do everything ok, because it’s not immediately obvious that things aren’t going to work out.

3. Know Where You Hope to Get To and What You Need to Get There

Great startups can’t be single product companies that do only one thing well forever.  They eventually have to mature and become real, meaningful businesses. In the same way, great college basketball players often struggle to make the leap into the NBA because their areas of strength are insufficient in a much more competitive league.

I don’t know how intentional this was, but Battier seemed to have a plan for what an NBA version of him would look like, and evolved him game to fit that vision.  During his junior year, he added a three point shot that made him a viable offensive threat.  In the NBA, he improved his quickness and evolved his defensive abilities to be able to handle quicker guards and forwards as opposed to the post players he had defended during most of his college career. His evolution was amazing to watch.  It seemed almost perfectly calculated, fit his god given talents, and matched the needs of the NBA perfectly.

Often, I meet with entrepreneurs who don’t have a great core product that I think could achieve PMF.  But even the ones that do need to have a clear idea of where they are going and the steps necessary to achieve those goals.  Things obviously change over time, but it’s comforting for an investor to know that the entrepreneur has a reasonable roadmap to becoming a big successful company.  Good entrepreneurs know this is more than just imprecise jargon.  It usually involves deep appreciation for the market they compete in, intimate understanding of competitors, and knowledge of the 2 or 3 things that need to go right for their company to win big.

Shane and Chris are both pretty young guys so it’s still early in their careers.  I was a huge Burgess fan, and do hope that he can make it into the NBA one day and have a few solid seasons.  For Battier, it will be interesting to see if he is able to squeeze out even more output from his talents and become a real All-Star.  I wouldn’t bet against him - he’s done a phenomenal job so far.

Fall is upon us (although it feels like winter) and for Boston, that means a new wave of folks who are arriving here for studies or new career opportunities.

When I moved to Boston from Silicon Valley in 2005, I had a pretty sparse network of friends in the tech and entrepreneurship scene.   I also found the tech community here a little disorganized and opaque, although I think that has been changing quite a bit in recent years.

Four years later, I think I have a much better idea of what’s going on, and I’m excited about it.  But it took a while to figure out.  So I thought I’d post a little to-do list for folks who want to get integrated into the local tech community and benefit from all it has to offer.

1. Follow this list of entrepreneurs, VC’s, and academics

• David Cancel (blog , @Dcancel)
• Dharmesh Shah (blog, @dharmesh)
• Brian Shin (blog, @brianshin)
• Don Dodge (blog, @dondodge)
• Nabeel Hyatt (blog, @nabeel)
• Furqan Nazeeri (blog, @altgate)
• Andy Payne (blog, @payne92)
• Bijan Sabet (blog, @bijan)
• Jeff Bussgang (blog, @bussgang)
• Lee Hower (blog, @leehower)
• Larry Cheng (blog, @larryvc)
• Tom Eisenmann (@teisenmann)
• Andrew Mcafee (blog, @amcafee)
• Me :) (blog, @robgo)

2. Follow a few journalists and news aggregators

• Scott Kirsner
• XConomy
• VentureFizz
• MarksGuide

3. Go to the follow meetups at least once

• WebInno
• Mobile Monday
• OpenCoffee Meetup
• Dart Boston

4. Hang out where you are likely to have chance encounters (ok, this isn’t really that practical, but it’s interesting to know where VC’s and entrepreneurs tend to go)

• Deisel Cafe in Davis Square
• Andala Cafe in Central Square
• Paramount Restaurant in Beacon Hill
• Henrietta’s Table in Harvard Square
• Naked Fish in Waltham
• The Marriott in Newton
• The Westin in Waltham
• Preschool OpenHouses in Wellesley, Weston, Cambridge, Lexington,  BeaconHill, etc.  (I’m obviously joking here, but this just happened to me, so I couldn’t resist.  We went to an open house at the Cambridge Ellis School, and among the group of parents, I saw 2 VC’s, an entrepreneur friend, and an HBS professor before deciding the school was way out of my price range)

5. Try to meet folks affiliated with the following organizations and companies (the reasoning being that people at interesting companies and organizations tend to congregate)

• PopSignal
• HubSpot
• Betahouse
• DogPatchLabs
• TechStars Boston
• Cambridge Innovation Center

Hopefully this is a helpful start.  Should take a few months to work through all of these.  I know I’m missing a few (I think I’m obviously missing out events and people affiliated with MIT, among others).  Feel free to add additional thoughts in a comment.