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June 26, 2005

Allen Morgan's Blog in Time Magazine's 50 Coolest Websites

Time Magazine published a list of 50 Coolest Websites for 2005. Recognizing the growing importance of blogs, they broke out blogs as a separate segment within that list (50 Coolest Websites 2005: Blogs).

My Mayfield colleague Allen Morgan's Blog was listed as the coolest blog/website for entrepreneurs:

Allen Morgan, managing director at Mayfield—a venture capital firm in Menlo Park, California—backer of Beatnik, PlanetOut, Tribe and Pluck —guides entrepreneurs on how to pitch ideas and get financing. The recent "10 Commandments" series on how to handle those critical meetings with VCs is a must-read.

I agree with Time's endorsement -- Allen's 10 commandments series is great. I also agree with Dave Panos, CEO of Pluck, who commented to Allen, "I am particularly impressed that you pulled off such a feat with a mean-time-between posts of five weeks." It shows that focus and quality can matter more than freshness even in the blogosphere; at least this true for media critics.

Allen was actually an inspiration for me to start blogging, right around the time he convinced me to join Mayfield. I imagined that I would have lots of content about insights from an Entrepreneur in Residence, kind of like an entrepreneurial undercover agent sharing how things really happen on the other side of the funding table. When I later brainstormed with Allen about how to achieve both substance and discretion in such a blog, Allen summarized along the following lines: "As long as you don't specifically identify any of the companies, entrepreneurs, or Mayfield partners, and you only say good things about Mayfield, you should feel free to blog about anything you like!"

Posted by barney at June 26, 2005 8:49 PM

This entry was posted in the following categories: Venture Capital , Weblogs

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