"Dave McCLure…pls try not to blog about this and cause silicon valley more embarrassment with your unprofessional classless writings" OUCH
The same way, I fail to realize how people don't understand that he writes in that style not because he lacks a few extra minutes but because that is a style and persona he's built over time.
It may personify douchebag to you and 82,482 other irrelevant strangers on the internet. More important, though, is what it personifies to the entrepreneurs looking to raise money. What you see as douche, many see as no-bs straightalking angel investor(whether accurate or not is irrelavant).
At the end of the day, his blog is a sales pitch to entrepreneurs. And from all that I can see, he has done pretty well. ie. he's scored many deals where the entrepreneurs see him as the no-bs guy; I'm not aware of any where an entrepreneur blatantly turned him down due to his writing style. Most that claim they would never raise money from him have never raised money and never will.
Conclusion: it's his style, it works for him and his goals, so he continues.
http://www.snoopdogg.com/news/ http://www.trapmuzik.com/news/ http://www.outkast.com/news
Dave McClure is free to write with the tone of a jerk all he wants. I don't know anything about him other than the post in question, but regardless of whether that's just his "style", I certainly wouldn't want to do business of any serious kind with him if it could possibly be avoided.
I'm not defending Dave's actions at this meeting, merely his writing style. I'm glad the Valley has room for the likes of Dave's writing style. The day the Valley values professionalism over actual value give is the day I leave, since I can go to Wall Street for that. Suits and the Whole Nine Yards.
The second time I'll invoke Tara: "The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act." - Tara Ploughman
Everyone starts writing to please other people through resumes, cover letters, thank-you cards, and apologies. But once you have enough money like Mcclure, you can say "Fuck you" when you want to and not worry about losing your job.
And that's exactly what he did.
Thanks, Ron, for calling a spade a spade. I watched an interview with Ron about a year ago, and I found him to be very forthright, insightful, sincere, and professional - and clearly one who wants to try to help entrepreneurs out as much as he can. He seems to be a good role model for entrepreneurs. Thanks too to Mike Arrington for breaking the story and to Mike and his team for their follow up reports.
I think that is the essence of his persona. The whole justification for it-- I'm smart and I have money so I don't have to show anyone respect. Deal with it or leave.
It reminds me of my concept of ancient Rome for some reason. A place where power ruled, rather than the concept of egalitarianism.
He's acting like the kids in junior high who thought they were being rebellious by shopping at Hot Topic and dressing punk. He's just replaced one style for another. He's not text messaging his rant, he published it online. If he's so rich and too busy, then pay an assistant to edit it. Everything you do is a representation of yourself.
But my whole point is that there's more people like him that don't feel like writing perfectly. As you just admitted, it takes extra effort to write for your audience instead of writing for yourself. And why would he bother to hire an assistant to edit it? That also takes effort.
Warren Buffet obviously has the choice to behave in the same manner. He also has the choice to be reckless like Larry Ellison and fly jet fighters, or be like the Koch brother's and spend millions on libertarian think-tanks to anger a large democratic populace. Or conversely, why does Buffet choose to anger countless libertarians by saying he and other billionaires should pay a higher tax rate than his secretary? If he was a truly wise businessman, he would refrain from political statements like that.
My point is that wealth makes people more confident in revealing their idiosyncrasies. Whether or not you like their true personality is another story. Amusingly and relatedly I've lost over 20 karma points for telling what people don't want to hear even though I do not support Dave McClure's behavior.
I seriously don't understand how people were defending his writing style.
I explained that his writing style is defensible because he doesn't care about the general audience. And if there were more people as rich as him, you'd see more people not bending over backwards with perfect grammar and an apologetic tone.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean he isn't justified in sounding off if it makes him feel better.
So it's more selfishness than self-righteousness that leads me to criticize his particular style.