In the increasingly competitive world of venture capital, it pays to be helpful—literally. To get in on the best deals, VCs need to be seen as smart, insightful and supportive. And since VCs are all about scale, what better way to do that than a blog?
This is good news for entrepreneurs, because despite the bad rep that the venture industry gets (these guys are technically in finance after all) VCs occasionally know what they’re talking about. Whether you're looking for recruiting strategies, pricing models, a glimpse into an industry's future or tips for pitching, odds are that a VC has a post for it.
The picks here are based on a very unscientific method—my own judgment of bloggers’ frequency and content quality. (Posts that lack any evergreen value whatsoever, like those celebrating the funding of a portfolio company, do not count in either case.) For this reason I left off some more popular names, like Dave McClure and David Hornik, in favor of lesser-known VCs who have posted better content more regularly. The list here is weighted in favor of smart analysis or directly applicable advice rather than anecdotes and assertions.
For those of you who follow the space closely, many of the names in the full list below will likely be familiar. But here are a couple that might be new:
Tomasz Tunguz – ex post facto
Tunguz, a principal at Redpoint Ventures, relies on short, punchy posts to get his point across. His penchant for expressing ideas in terms of frameworks (see: “The Three Phases of Startup Sales” or “The Five Characteristic of an Ideal SaaS Company”) makes for effective, easily digestible pieces.
Standout Post: The Compounding Returns of Content Marketing
David Skok – For Entrepreneurs
Matrix Partners’ David Skok only blogs a couple of times a year, but the resources available in that small pool of posts make for a virtual textbook of financial models and startup strategies. If you prefer Excel over anecdotes, Skok’s blog is a treasure trove of charts, graphs and equations. In terms of directly applicable MBA-level insights, For Entrepreneurs is unmatched.
Standout Post: SaaS Metrics 2.0
Chris Dixon – Cdixon.org
A New York entrepreneur and seed investor turned Silicon Valley VC, Dixon likes to take the macro view. Many of his posts consider industry-wide trends, then examine the consequences of those trends for entrepreneurs. Some noteworthy insights: app stores have trained consumers to expect cheap software, while startups going after popular incumbents (like Craigslist) are better off focusing on niche products.
Standout Post: Some Thoughts on Mobile
First Round Capital – The Review
The Review is a bit of an outlier on this list. A compilation of startup-centric content rather than the musings of an individual VC, the Review is First Round Capital’s attempt at creating “a Harvard Business Review for startups.” (It’s also the most comprehensive attempt at content marketing in the industry.) The Review’s preferred mode of instruction: case studies on the experiences of individual entrepreneurs and companies.
Standout Post: The management framework that propelled LinkedIn to a $20 billion company
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