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Few successful entrepreneurs blog

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Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#91

Post by FailMore »

unreal37 wrote: post #13
pg wrote: post #2

Keith's comment surprised me. I found at least one counterexample among companies we've funded: Jason Freedman of 42Floors. But there are certainly not many.

What about you, pg? Arguably you are the co-founder of a successful company which takes up most of your time, and you blog. I'm not sure what's the point of this statement. Few successful CEO's blog. Few politicians blog. Few celebrities blog. Few people blog. So what?

PG's blogging is different. It does not inform the competition (much), but is INCREDIBLE outreach.

PG's essays are THE essays to read if you are an excellent entrepreneur - and if you are - and you make the decision to go to an accelerator - which one do you think you want to go to?

Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#92

Post by kkwok »

laCour wrote: post #28
amplification wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the challenge is to "think of successful entrepreneurs or CEOs who blog", I can think of a bunch off the top of my head: Leo W. at Buffer - http://blog.bufferapp.com/author/leo Ryan Carson at Treehouse - http://ryancarson.com/ Jason Fried & DHH - http://37signals.com/svn Matt Mullenweg - http://ma.tt/ Patio11 - http://www.kalzumeus.com/

Tobi Lütke of Spotify - http://tobi.lutke.com/ Dalton Caldwell of App.net - http://daltoncaldwell.com/ Suhail Doshi of Mixpanel - http://sufficientlyadvanced.net/ Jack Groetzinger of SeatGeek - http://jackg.org/ Eric Koester of Zaarly - http://ekoester.com/

minor edit. Tobi is the founder of Shopify, not Spotify.

Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#93

Post by ibudiallo »

You know, when you make an interesting statement like this one, you have to keep quiet and let it sink. Let others debate on it and such. Go on with your day. But if you keep arguing and arguing, it loses all its value.

He should have gone to sleep after that.

Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#94

Post by ericabiz »

pg wrote: post #2

Keith's comment surprised me. I found at least one counterexample among companies we've funded: Jason Freedman of 42Floors. But there are certainly not many.

I do.

(I can't believe the one night I decided to go out with friends, this is the thread that shows up on Twitter--my wheelhouse!)

I built and bootstrapped a tech company from the ground up in the Valley. Sold it in 2007 for 7 figures. Then took my personal blog and grew it into one of the top entrepreneurship blogs online. Now running a funded startup and just completed Techstars Austin.

Now that I think about it, my blogger friends and my tech CEO/CTO friends do run in different crowds. Most of the blogger types end up writing books (Tim Ferriss is an example I think HN'ers would be familiar with.) I turned down a book deal to go back and do another tech company because that's what I love to do.

There is a trend amongst bloggers to start software companies. Clay Collins' LeadPages is a good example; he's a crossover blogger/Internet marketer turned software company CEO. He just closed $5M in funding for LeadPages led by Foundry Group.

There are a few more up-and-comers in the blog world who are crossing over into software, but so far very few have made the leap--I think because the skillset is so different.

Weird to think that I'm rare, but it's an interesting viewpoint to hear from the tech community.

Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#95

Post by paulrademacher »

abalone wrote: post #62

Typical Rabois shock-truthiness but he's really just playing with definitions. In the resulting argument thread, he just labels as "corporate blog posts" any example of a successful entrepreneur who actually does blog. What he's probably right about is that when they blog it's mainly about their business. But that's a very different, much more limited and not as shocking claim than "nobody successful blogs".

I understood his point to be that successful CEOs don't have time to blog about how to kick ass, or lessons learned running a company, or the usual self-promoting topics we see so much of here.

Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#96

Post by ryanjshaw »

FailMore wrote: post #91
unreal37 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about you, pg? Arguably you are the co-founder of a successful company which takes up most of your time, and you blog. I'm not sure what's the point of this statement. Few successful CEO's blog. Few politicians blog. Few celebrities blog. Few people blog. So what?

PG's blogging is different. It does not inform the competition (much), but is INCREDIBLE outreach. PG's essays are THE essays to read if you are an excellent entrepreneur - and if you are - and you make the decision to go to an accelerator - which one do you think you want to go to?

More importantly, pg's essays are marketing for YC. Without knowing the man, I would guess this is probably more a happy side-effect than a goal of his writing, but nevertheless the economics are clearly in favour of him writing.

Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#97

Post by auctiontheory »

Writers tend to be high-ideaphoria people. This should be pretty obvious.

In my experience, many successful businesspeople are not high-ideaphoria people. They may be very smart, talented, etc., but their tendency is toward singular focus, rather than an exploration of the interplay of ideas. So it seems natural they would tend not to write/blog. (And yes, I realize there are many exceptions, James Altucher being my favorite.)

Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#98

Post by vdaniuk »

vdaniuk wrote: post #22
enra wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people really like writing, or blogging, so they do it anyway, whether is useful or not. I think the point Keith is making that successful people don't have time to blog, or the blog really doesn't help that much. They prioritize their time to do things that actually matter for their business, rather than being on top of HN or being tweeted 1000 times. It's not the whole truth. When you have actually "made it",…

Being tweeted 1000 times actually matters for a business if they have their own marketing machine ready to squire, convert and activated visitors.

Did I really write ready to squire? Correction: ready to acquire, convert and activate visitors.

Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#99

Post by kops »

rl12345 wrote: post #39
philwelch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg blogs? Or are you thinking of his essays?

Since pg can't always talk directly with each and every YC funded startup founder, I believe he writes his essays so all of them has a chance to get his message. Those texts are deeply related to his core duties at YC and no, I wouldn't call that "regularly blogging" - not even close.

His essays are way older than YC.

Re: Few successful entrepreneurs blog

#100

Post by davemel37 »

Those who don't engage at the top of the funnel won't be able to afford advertising to the bottom of the funnel.

I Can't think of a single founder who blogged high quality original content consistently for more than two years that didn't turn his audience and readership into a successful company.

There is a massive misconception about blogging and content marketing in general that gets ignored by people. Creating content that can't be found anywhere else, content that represents the true voice of the CEO or founder and their vision is top of the funnel marketing that makes advertising and regular marketing MUCH MUCH More effective.

Content is the long game, and builds on itself one reader at a time. Eventually it breaks through and than every piece of content you produce gets massive exposure. Exposure at a much more affordable price than any other strategy that exists in the universe today.

Tomorrows leading companies will be the ones that realize they must become the media company for their niche. They must be the go to place for the best information in their industry.

Startup CEO's that don't blog are missing out on the big picture and should really learn to prioritize the value they can create.

Just look at Moz.com and Hubspot. Two great companies poised for massive growth that built their audience by blogging, one reader at a time.

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