I was going to edit my Getting A VC’s Attention post but I thought the point I was going to add was important enough to highlight it in a separate post. In the post I wrote:
The feature is not the magic. Listening to your customers (in the case a prominent VC blogger – who’s attention is in high demand) and reacting to requests quickly and publicly is.
What I meant to emphasize is that the magic is in "the doing." It’s not about talking. It’s not about commenting. It’s not about emailing. It’s about doing. Rapidly iterating your product – demonstrating that you know how to process feedback, prioritize (based on whatever your current goals are), and executing.
If your goal is getting a VC’s Attention (as I expect Bret Taylor had as one of his goals), this was a brilliant approach. I’m not suggesting that you should orient your development schedule and feature list around what a VC wants (yeah – that would be a generically bad idea), but if you are trying to get a specific VC’s attention that you think has something to add to the mix, this is a great way to do it.
All of this (and the early morning, thin mountain air) made me think of my favorite Star Wars quote. "Do, or do not. There is no try." … Yoda