Some people ask me how I’ve ended up posting so much on this blog and elsewhere (Entrepreneur.com, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, PE Hub, Institutional Investor, Techcrunch, VentureBeat, etc.). I have 5 motivations:
1) Education. I think that my core responsibility as a manager and investor is to learn, document, improve, implement, and teach best practices in the areas where I have responsibility. If I can’t articulate and document a process, I don’t think I’ve really mastered it.
2) Building in public raises the bar. It forces me to be very thorough and hopefully accurate. Also, I typically share drafts of my research with other domain experts, who take the time to contribute because they know their contribution will be public.
3) Efficiency. Effectively, my writings are my “outboard brain”. It allows me to more efficiently work with my portfolio CEOs and other investors, because I can point people to well-organized best practices I’ve already documented.
4) Searchability, and consequent lower origination costs. I get 2-5 companies per day approaching me about investing, plus a wide range of other inquiries from limited partners, co-investors, corporates and others. They are coming to me because they can see my strong interest in certain domains.
5) High ROI. Much of the content on my blog started as conference presentations, meeting notes, or emails. I then sanitized and published. The cost of publication is low, but the benefit high.
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