When I first met Dick Costolo – the CEO of FeedBurner (well before I had invested in FeedBurner), he had a blog called SomethingICantRemember that had a hysterical “what would I do if I was CEO of Disney” post. Over the last three years we’ve become really good friends and business partners. I’ve learned a huge amount from Dick and his partners – and not just about feeds.
Relatively early on in our relationship, Dick stopped blogging. He’s a classic always working entrepreneur and blogging quickly fell to the bottom of the pile as FeedBurner started its incredibly rapid growth curve. Amy and I have had a few nice dinners with Dick’s wife (who I’ve nicknamed Tiffany – hi Tiffany) and I can only imagine her rolling her eyes whenever Dick says something (at 2am) like “I really should start blogging again.”
Apparently the effort that Jason and I have put into Ask the VC has motivated Dick to start a blog named Ask the Wizard. If you know Dick, you get the sarcasm here and – if you don’t know him he gives you a hint with in his Welcome to Ask the Wizard post where he says “and it also brings to mind the Wizard of Oz, in which unsuspecting Dorothy only realizes too late that the Wizard is just another jackass with stage lights.”
If you are an entrepreneur (at any stage – including an aspiring one), wander over to Ask the Wizard and subscribe. At the minimum Dick will have you chuckling whenever he posts and says something like absolutely correct like “If you find yourself reading this and thinking “There’s no way I can pitch everything about my product in only 8 slides”, I assure you that you are wrong. Nobody wants to sit in a room and read data-packed powerpoint slides with pull quotes from Gartner Analysts that describe your market as being a 9 bazillion dollar industry in 2012. Get a short pitch deck together that tells a story.”