Ron Conway Explained
bhorowitz.com
bhorowitz.com
The really funny thing is that the timing worked out so that the dot com bubble exploded just before the book was finished. Rivlin therefore spends the entire book building Conway up as the world's biggest jerk. The book is a character assassination. Conway lets Rivlin into his life, and Rivlin is unmerciful. Conway is depicted as the personification of the excesses of that era. The book comes out after the market crashes and it had to hurt.
Then... Google hits. Conway was an early investor. He's back. His methods are validated, his fund returns profit, he starts new funds. They prosper. And now Conway is the king of the world again, and Rivlin is the douche.
Oh the ironing.
I really enjoyed reading through this article.
When I need advice, Ron is where I go.
In this example, he made a single connection that Tipped Tellme towards success.
Would be interesting to put together a list of angel investors that similarly stand out as connectors.
Could sharpn/a moderator replace it, please?
"We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're talking about practice. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about practice. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game like it's my last, but we're talking about practice, man! How silly is that?"
I'm not sure why SWalker is being downvoted (unless it's just for his tone). We really need to clarify criteria/comparisons here. Iverson should not be compared to MJ or Bird (IMO), as 37signals should not be compared to Google.
Jerry Rice is probably the best counterexample to Iverson types. He's known for working harder than anyone. No one could keep up with him, and he was the best. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_records_held_by_Jer...
If you want to be the next MJ, Bird, Rice, or Google, you better be working hard... I don't understand why it's trendy to believe otherwise (assuming SWalker is being downvoted in disagreement).
A counterpoint to your Michael Jordan example: Michael Jordan, the minor-league baseball player.
As they say, it's 99% perspiration.
As far as DHH and JF pitching a part-time work ethic, I think you missed the point. DHH frequently talks about his building of Basecamp, and he said that you don't NEED to be working 90 hours a week to make a successful product. Since DHH only had 10 hours a week that he could use to work on Basecamp, he advocated for making every single minute count.
For a connections business like Ron's, he's got to be in more places at once, and as available as possible. This gives him a direct advantage.
For a creative business like DHH's, you simply can't work 90 hours a week sustained.
"So sometime after 11pm, I wrote Ron and essentially said: “hello, you don’t know me, I’m an executive at a company you’re an investor in, and we need a meeting—in person—with the CEO himself of this Fortune 50 company—this week—and if you can’t make this happen, hey that’s ok, but we may be going down—sorry.” Ron wrote back in literally 2 minutes and said, in what I have learned is Ron’s distinctive email style (immediate, short, all caps), “AM ON IT.”"
It appears to require you to have your mouse over the link for a little while (like a tenth of a second), so if you always move your mouse fast and never considered clicking a link, you wouldn't have seen it.
It's really annoying.
P.S. HipHopGoblin is now open source, a few of us from HN are working on bringing it back to life. We are implementing it now with DirectedEdge. Email me if interested.