The Exchanges

Q Now, you've enjoyed an immense career, but can you start from the beginning and tell us where it all began and how you made your transition into technology and then venture?

A Yeah, absolutely. So I guess it starts, uh, in school, in college, I wanted to be a sports journalist, so I kind of tilted everything I did around that field. Uh, won a scholarship for it, wrote for student papers, you know, wrote for, uh, during the summers, wrote for print papers, if you can believe it or not, in our tech-driven world. Um, entered at ESPN, had a really cool experience there, and then when I graduated, I actually didn't have a job lined up, so I did what the usual, uh, English literature major does, and looked at journalism, looked at Communications departments. And on a whim, I just applied through an online form to Google to be a digital media strategist. It was a nebulous sounding role. And I thought, you know, I'm never going to hear back. And through, I think I used up all my luck in my career with my very first job because Google called me back. Um, and so I was at the Boston office for three years, basically advising brands and agencies on how to use AdWords. So search, display, YouTube, mobile, and then eventually social with Google plus. Um, for their brands. And so that was like my gateway into tech. And then from there I stayed in the Boston tech scene. So when I realized I wanted to be at a smaller company and kind of build from scratch, I jumped to a series, a startup in town, um, and then worked at HubSpot as their head of content marketing for a…

AI assessment note: “finally landed at next few where I'm VP of platform.”

Q Fantastic. And then talking of emerging trends and changing structures of VC firms, we've seen, uh, A-sixteen Z obviously have a huge hiring process and really build out their team to offer numerous services. Do you think that will be the next trend, more than just VP of platform offering extensive legal teams, extensive finance departments to their startups? Do you think that will be the next trend?

A It might be, although I think it's tough to say what the, the output would be. I think, so I, you know, coming from the marketing world, a lot of marketers chase the tech, or the tactic, or the shiny new trend, and I think the danger is for a firm to just look across the aisle and say, you know, A-sixteen Z offers services, or NextView offers a platform of lots of content, so let's just mimic that, because we're getting questions from LPs or from entrepreneurs. There's a real danger in that, because it becomes Noisier for both the entrepreneur and, and, and for the, uh, the firm. So I think rather than say, we're going to all head towards services or towards content or whatever, it's more important for a firm to identify themselves uniquely. So what's the mission of that one firm? You know, how does that firm position itself differently than other firms? You know, for next few, when we, when we launched before I arrived back in, it was about seed stage investments on an institutional level, not existing in Boston and us being the first player in. You know, now it's really getting in the weeds and being low volume, high touch, you know, high conviction investments still focused on seed. And so it's finding the white space that's important first, and then trying to pair a platform offering with that. So for us, it doesn't really make sense for us to do a lot of, you know, sales c…

AI assessment note: “It might be, although I think it's tough to say what the, the output”

Q Now let's talk a little about your role as VP of platform. Can you tell us a little about what that entails?

A Yes, so platform means a million different things to a million different people, and unfortunately that was the phrase that this new trend in VC kind of took on. Basically what it boils down to for me is, ah, scalable or, ah, horizontal type projects that support an entire portfolio, or more publicly, an entire startup ecosystem. So for example, we'll create at NextView, you know, we're seed investors, we're very dedicated to just investing in the seed round, And then maybe do follow-ons to later stages with our portfolio. But the first time in for us is during that seed stage, and we're really, really focused on it. So as a result, the platform that we're creating is this menu of content and resources and templates and workshops and, you know, to a lesser degree, deals for things, access to experts and top talent, that kind of stuff, all in support of getting a company off to the best possible start.

AI assessment note: “platform that we're creating is this menu of content and resources and templates”

Q So you at NextView provide great recruiting support for your start-ups?

A We do, and we try to do it scalably. So we have this great network, um, around NextView, and then our networks network, and then there's probably individuals outside of even a circle that wide that, that we don't know that would be great fits for our startup, um, or our startups, rather. And so we kind of looked at that problem, and we, we also talked to lots of founders who told us that, you know, hiring operators is really difficult in particular, because their networks tilt more senior. And we just found ways to start Putting process around referrals and eventually creating an actual program that, that our founders can use as part of our platform. It's, it's not public right now, but it's actually just built for the portfolio.

AI assessment note: “We do, and we try to do it scalably.”

Q And why do you think it has become this emerging trend that, that is today?

A Yeah. So I use this analogy. I wrote, I wrote this article for tech crunch where I use this analogy. Um, if you're on, if you're all on the same street and you all sell plain bagels, there's only so many ways you can make a plain bagel sound different than your competitor's plain bagel. And I think with the rise of lots of micro firms or early stage firms or seed funds or whatever you want to call it, and the rise of crowdsource capital, um, and angel lists and things like that, all of a sudden venture is becoming a lot more crowded and you have more options for capital and As an entrepreneur. And so as a result, differentiation is more key than has ever been. Um, and the best way to differentiate, I think if you look across at software industry is content marketing or value add opportunities and projects and things like that. So all of a sudden you have these firms that are vying for the best entrepreneurs or just mindshare generally to improve deal flow. And they can't just say we're a fund. We offer this type of capital. They have to actually elevate themselves a little bit more to say, here's why we exist, and here's why you should work with us. And a large part of, you know, making the plain bagel sound a little bit better is you can sell something different than a plain bagel, right? You can sell a platform of resources. You can sell the partner's reputations. You can sel…

AI assessment note: “venture is becoming a lot more crowded and you have more options for capital”

Q Now let's talk a little about your role as VP of platform. Can you tell us a little about what that entails?

A Yes, so platform means a million different things to a million different people, and unfortunately that was the phrase that this new trend in VC kind of took on. Basically what it boils down to for me is, ah, scalable or, ah, horizontal type projects that support an entire portfolio, or more publicly, an entire startup ecosystem. So for example, we'll create at NextView, you know, we're seed investors, we're very dedicated to just investing in the seed round, And then maybe do follow-ons to later stages with our portfolio. But the first time in for us is during that seed stage, and we're really, really focused on it. So as a result, the platform that we're creating is this menu of content and resources and templates and workshops and, you know, to a lesser degree, deals for things, access to experts and top talent, that kind of stuff, all in support of getting a company off to the best possible start.

AI assessment note: “Basically what it boils down to for me is, ah, scalable or, ah, horizontal type projects”

Q And why do you think it has become this emerging trend that, that is today?

A Yeah. So I use this analogy. I wrote, I wrote this article for tech crunch where I use this analogy. Um, if you're on, if you're all on the same street and you all sell plain bagels, there's only so many ways you can make a plain bagel sound different than your competitor's plain bagel. And I think with the rise of lots of micro firms or early stage firms or seed funds or whatever you want to call it, and the rise of crowdsource capital, um, and angel lists and things like that, all of a sudden venture is becoming a lot more crowded and you have more options for capital and As an entrepreneur. And so as a result, differentiation is more key than has ever been. Um, and the best way to differentiate, I think if you look across at software industry is content marketing or value add opportunities and projects and things like that. So all of a sudden you have these firms that are vying for the best entrepreneurs or just mindshare generally to improve deal flow. And they can't just say we're a fund. We offer this type of capital. They have to actually elevate themselves a little bit more to say, here's why we exist, and here's why you should work with us. And a large part of, you know, making the plain bagel sound a little bit better is you can sell something different than a plain bagel, right? You can sell a platform of resources. You can sell the partner's reputations. You can sel…

AI assessment note: “venture is becoming a lot more crowded and you have more options for capital”

Q And is it simply enough to, to buy a domain off GoDaddy and set up a WordPress blog? Is that, is it that simple, or should you make it look very creative and artistic and design it yourself?

A Uh, the, the bells and whistles are great. The design can be great. A lot of the founders I work with talk about like parallax scrolling and they want to look like Pinterest and all these other things, but all of that is just noise or it could incrementally help your blog eventually if it is up and running. The thing I start with is, especially as an entrepreneur, you know, what problem are you trying to solve in the market? And, and a lot of big companies that I used to work with struggled with this because they've been around for so long, but founders have a really easy time saying, This is the problem. And this is the product that we're using to solve that problem or eventually will. And then all you do is match the content you put out with that same idea. So the, so content marketing is really buzzy right now. And the problem is it gets really hard to decide how to execute. So rather than go run out of the gate, create some custom, beautiful blog, better is just use out of the box tools, you know, WordPress, Squarespace, whatever, and just really focus on what you're putting out the door. And for a, for a company, it should be matching, basically solving the same problem with your content that you do with your product. You know, you solve it less well with content, and that's great, because you can drive towards the product. And you also might have a little bit of, like, a …

AI assessment note: “better is just use out of the box tools, you know, WordPress, Squarespace”

Q And I think a lot of starting bloggers get quite disincentivized when not many visitors go to their site. What would you say to them, and how would you encourage them to find more visitors?

A Yeah, it's tricky. So, uh, very rarely should you look, especially in the early stages, at the results of your blog posts today, or even this week. And so one example is, when I started at NextView, all the partners had individual blogs, but we didn't have a NextView branded blog. So I launched it in July of 2014. Um, if you look at the report from last month, so we're recording this in May, so if you look at April of 2015, of the top 10 most highly trafficked blog posts, About six or seven of them. I think it was seven of them were published last year. Um, meaning if I had looked at those posts when they went out last year and they didn't go quote unquote viral or get tons of views, I would have deemed them a failure. But now they're actually buoying the entire blog. They're driving traffic every single day. You know, they're helpful, tactical things that people are searching for or bookmarking and coming back to, you know, or that we can share on a recurring basis through social because it's evergreen content. And that kind of stuff is the foundation that you can do other really big hit things on the top of. So to someone listening to this, who's looking at a blog post and saying, it's not really getting a lot of traffic. It's just trickling it in. That's fine. That's great. If it's evergreen content that addresses a problem facing your market, because you can use that over t…

AI assessment note: “stop focusing on the shiny object and kind of like near-term immediate results”

Q And Twitter's obviously a huge platform, but how effective do you really feel it is for content marketing? And do you notice any platform to produce better returns?

A Yeah, so, uh, Twitter's great. I mean, I use it all the time personally. It helped me in my network, and I think it's, for me, I use it in two ways. So one is, I'm building a following with NextView's handle, uh, at NextViewVC, and so people can discover content there and share it, but the action I really want, in addition to positive brand sentiment, is for people to click through and actually read our content, subscribe to our email list, etc. And that email list is really the biggest, uh, Kind of asset that I could grow for the firm. And I think that extends to product driven companies as well, not just VCs. Um, so it's one, one, it's really good for traffic. If you can kind of tilt it that way. The other thing I'm using it for is, and this might be more my personal handle, but actual offline relationships, or even just like taking it over to email from social and building relationships with influential people in our industry that could help amplify our message. So that could be, You know, I met somebody on Twitter by thanking them for sharing a post and asking them a question about it or whatever. Um, but I'm using Twitter as like the handshake moment, and then I can actually follow up with content and requests for sharing that content or feedback or speaking at an event we throw, et cetera. So it's really good for influencer building.

AI assessment note: “Twitter's great. I mean, I use it all the time personally.”

Q Fantastic. And then talking of emerging trends and changing structures of VC firms, we've seen, uh, A-sixteen Z obviously have a huge hiring process and really build out their team to offer numerous services. Do you think that will be the next trend, more than just VP of platform offering extensive legal teams, extensive finance departments to their startups? Do you think that will be the next trend?

A It might be, although I think it's tough to say what the, the output would be. I think, so I, you know, coming from the marketing world, a lot of marketers chase the tech, or the tactic, or the shiny new trend, and I think the danger is for a firm to just look across the aisle and say, you know, A-sixteen Z offers services, or NextView offers a platform of lots of content, so let's just mimic that, because we're getting questions from LPs or from entrepreneurs. There's a real danger in that, because it becomes Noisier for both the entrepreneur and, and, and for the, uh, the firm. So I think rather than say, we're going to all head towards services or towards content or whatever, it's more important for a firm to identify themselves uniquely. So what's the mission of that one firm? You know, how does that firm position itself differently than other firms? You know, for next few, when we, when we launched before I arrived back in, it was about seed stage investments on an institutional level, not existing in Boston and us being the first player in. You know, now it's really getting in the weeds and being low volume, high touch, you know, high conviction investments still focused on seed. And so it's finding the white space that's important first, and then trying to pair a platform offering with that. So for us, it doesn't really make sense for us to do a lot of, you know, sales c…

AI assessment note: “It might be, although I think it's tough to say what the, the output would be.”

Q And then getting back into the bare roots of the marketing side, for potential business owners and individuals and even startups contemplating whether to start a blog, what would you suggest? Are there any people or sects of society that it's great for and some it's not so good for?

A Yeah. So, I mean, I'm sure there's something out there that exists that, uh, I just can't think up right now that it doesn't make sense to blog for, you know, if you're reaching an offline audience, maybe a digital blog isn't the best approach. Maybe if you're, if you're betting on content as your marketing horse, then maybe you, you do write, but publish it in print and mail it to them, right? There's always going to be exceptions. And I think no one should get wedded to the tactic. It should be about serving your audience, uh, and really knowing how they consume content. But, um, Um, in terms of getting started, a lot of times I'll work with our startups. When I do consult one-to-one, even though most of my work is supposed to be scalable, my power alley is really content marketing, so I'm able to spend time one-to-one with a lot of these startups that, that are adopting that as their, their marketing strategy. And what I tell them is, you know, it's really, really easy to just sprint out of the gate and create stuff, but the problem with that is you're spending precious time and energy and resources creating things that don't ever drive any results for the business. Um, so one of the things that we did on our blog For NextView, I wrote this essay using data from HubSpot to show the right approach to business blogging, and it's really about solving some kind of need or proble…

AI assessment note: “if you're reaching an offline audience, maybe a digital blog isn't the best approach”

Q And then getting back into the bare roots of the marketing side, for potential business owners and individuals and even startups contemplating whether to start a blog, what would you suggest? Are there any people or sects of society that it's great for and some it's not so good for?

A Yeah. So, I mean, I'm sure there's something out there that exists that, uh, I just can't think up right now that it doesn't make sense to blog for, you know, if you're reaching an offline audience, maybe a digital blog isn't the best approach. Maybe if you're, if you're betting on content as your marketing horse, then maybe you, you do write, but publish it in print and mail it to them, right? There's always going to be exceptions. And I think no one should get wedded to the tactic. It should be about serving your audience, uh, and really knowing how they consume content. But, um, Um, in terms of getting started, a lot of times I'll work with our startups. When I do consult one-to-one, even though most of my work is supposed to be scalable, my power alley is really content marketing, so I'm able to spend time one-to-one with a lot of these startups that, that are adopting that as their, their marketing strategy. And what I tell them is, you know, it's really, really easy to just sprint out of the gate and create stuff, but the problem with that is you're spending precious time and energy and resources creating things that don't ever drive any results for the business. Um, so one of the things that we did on our blog For NextView, I wrote this essay using data from HubSpot to show the right approach to business blogging, and it's really about solving some kind of need or proble…

AI assessment note: “if you're reaching an offline audience, maybe a digital blog isn't the best approach.”

Q And is it simply enough to, to buy a domain off GoDaddy and set up a WordPress blog? Is that, is it that simple, or should you make it look very creative and artistic and design it yourself?

A Uh, the, the bells and whistles are great. The design can be great. A lot of the founders I work with talk about like parallax scrolling and they want to look like Pinterest and all these other things, but all of that is just noise or it could incrementally help your blog eventually if it is up and running. The thing I start with is, especially as an entrepreneur, you know, what problem are you trying to solve in the market? And, and a lot of big companies that I used to work with struggled with this because they've been around for so long, but founders have a really easy time saying, This is the problem. And this is the product that we're using to solve that problem or eventually will. And then all you do is match the content you put out with that same idea. So the, so content marketing is really buzzy right now. And the problem is it gets really hard to decide how to execute. So rather than go run out of the gate, create some custom, beautiful blog, better is just use out of the box tools, you know, WordPress, Squarespace, whatever, and just really focus on what you're putting out the door. And for a, for a company, it should be matching, basically solving the same problem with your content that you do with your product. You know, you solve it less well with content, and that's great, because you can drive towards the product. And you also might have a little bit of, like, a …

AI assessment note: “better is just use out of the box tools, you know, WordPress, Squarespace”