I regularly get asked "how do you get a VC’s attention?" Fred Wilson at Union Square Ventures just demonstrated – on his blog – how this works.
Last week while Working On Vacation, Fred was screwing around with FriendFeed. He wrote a post titled Ten Things I’d Like FriendFeed To Do. Bret Taylor from FriendFeed immediately commented on the post "Thanks for the thoughtful comments. Wanted to let you know we all read them here at FriendFeed, and I agree with you on almost every single request." A few days later FriendFeed implemented the ability to post an @reply to twitter from FriendFeed.
Result: Fred posts I Just Fell In Love With FriendFeed. For those of you that don’t know, Twitter is one of Fred’s investments. So – the fact that FriendFeed rapidly integrated with his investment is the clincher.
Now – the "post an @reply to Twitter" feature is no big deal. SocialThing – one of the TechStars companies – that does something similar but different to FriendFeed – has had this feature for a while. 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.
I’ve had similar experiences over the years with great entrepreneurs. The first one was within a month after I started blogging when I got connected with Dick Costolo at FeedBurner. If you go way back in my blog archives to June 4, 2004 (eek) you’ll see Feedburner signals improved feed stats coming soon. I wasn’t yet an investor, nor did I realize that "Feedburner" was really spelled "FeedBurner" but Costolo was all over me (and Fred) and we both fell in love with him (and FeedBurner.)
Speaking of Dick Costolo, yesterday he had an insightful tweet about M&A and Sex which Paul Kedrosky picked up. What a deliciously self referential world I live in. I wonder how good his 14 year old is at Rock Band? I guess we’ll find out tonight.