Ron's specialty is emergencies. He spoke at YC on tuesday, and about 80% of his stories involved a startup running into some horrible problem that he managed to fix working behind the scenes. He wasn't bragging; that's just what Ron's life is like. Then on thursday Jack Dorsey came to speak, and told everyone about a point early in Square's history when they ran up against what appeared to be a brick wall. Then he paused, during which everyone wondered what ingenious solution he had come up with, and continued "so I called up Ron Conway," and the whole room burst into laughter.

I advise every startup that wants to make it really big to get Ron as an investor. Having Ron in your cap table is like having a fire extinguisher onboard.