Melcion, Chassagne & Company

Top 150 blogs for Entrepreneurs

This is a copy of an original post located here

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I am using eCairn to track what is happening in the blogosphere around Entrepreneurship/ Social Entrepreneurship / High Tech/ Venture Capital, and I use eCairn's influence ranking on these blogs to prioritize my reading and commenting (see here how they do this - this is NOT about traffic but rather who links to what).
Here is the list of the top 150 blogs that I find relevant for entrepreneurs in general, with a bias for high tech and social entrepreneurship and a special interest on the funding side.

Something that you may find useful for yourself...

Top 150 blogs for Entrepreneur (based on the influence ranking byeCairn:

1 http://www.techcrunch.com
2 http://www.venturebeat.com
3 http://blog.guykawasaki.com
4 http://www.gigaom.com
5 http://www.alleyinsider.com
6 http://www.readwriteweb.com
7 http://www.avc.com/a_vc
8 http://www.pehub.com
9 http://paul.kedrosky.com
10 http://www.entrepreneur.com
11 http://www.valleywag.com
12 http://www.scobleizer.com
13 http://www.thefunded.com
14 http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com
15 http://redeye.firstround.com
16 http://www.buzzmachine.com
17 http://www.smallbiztrends.com
18 http://www.venturehacks.com
19 http://www.socialedge.org
20 http://upandrunning.entrepreneur.com
21 http://blogs.openforum.com
22 http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content
23 http://www.informationarbitrage.com
24 http://blog.entrepreneur.com
25 http://www.instigatorblog.com
26 http://networking.entrepreneur.com
27 http://vestpocketconsultant.entrepreneur.com
28 http://www.gapingvoid.com
29 http://lsvp.wordpress.com
30 http://www.howardlindzon.com
31 http://inspired.entrepreneur.com
32 http://weekend.entrepreneur.com
33 http://www.vcconfidential.com
34 http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting
35 http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing
36 http://www.texasstartupblog.com
37 http://fiveyearstoolate.wordpress.com
38 http://www.coloradostartups.com
39 http://www.markpeterdavis.com/getventure
40 http://www.startupnorth.ca
41 http://www.business-opportunities.biz
42 http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com
43 http://socialentrepreneurship.change.org
44 http://campusentrepreneurship.wordpress.com
45 http://www.billionswithzeroknowledge.com
46 http://www.getentrepreneurial.com
47 http://www.nextbillion.net
48 http://philanthropy.blogspot.com
49 http://www.tacticalphilanthropy.com
50 http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet
51 http://www.newhampshirestartups.com
52 http://www.kentuckystartups.com
53 http://www.techflash.com
54 http://www.davidcrow.ca
55 http://www.bootstrapme.com
56 http://www.northcarolinastartups.com
57 http://vcmike.wordpress.com
58 http://joi.ito.com
59 http://www.ocvcblog.com
60 http://www.startupprincess.com/wordpress
61 http://blog.acumenfund.org
62 http://startup.partnerup.com
63 http://www.startupmeme.com
64 http://blog.timberry.com
65 http://www.thefrankpetersshow.com
66 http://www.growthology.org/growthology
67 http://www.montrealtechwatch.com
68 http://www.innoeco.com
69 http://founderresearch.blogspot.com
70 http://canentrepreneur.blogspot.com
71 http://bizcoach.blogspot.com
72 http://ben.casnocha.com
73 http://www.gifthub.org
74 http://www.askthevc.com/blog
75 http://www.startupcfo.ca
76 http://blog.ecairn.com
77 http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs
78 http://blog.socaltech.com
79 http://www.mvmpartners.com/blog
80 http://www.nivi.com/blog
81 http://www.allantyoung.com
82 http://coheda.typepad.com/israel
83 http://www.christine.net
84 http://www.vcrants.com
85 http://www.tjacobi.com
86 http://blogs.forrester.com/colony
87 http://www.adeoressi.com
88 http://commonangels.wordpress.com
89 http://vcinjerusalem.typepad.com/vcinjerusalem
90 http://wallen.typepad.com/wallen
91 http://thoughtsprevail.blogspot.com
92 http://www.infochachkie.com
93 http://www.afpr.com
94 http://www.epicchange.org/blog
95 http://blog.bootuplabs.com
96 http://www.skollonline.com/blog
97 http://www.dorm-room-biz.com
98 http://www.vccafe.com
99 http://marktomarket.typepad.com/marktomarket
100 http://blog.marsdd.com
101 http://www.altgate.com/blog
102 http://www.jasonmendelson.com/blog
103 http://www.wellingtonfund.com/blog
104 http://english.martinvarsavsky.net
105 http://www.socialmediaclub.org
106 http://www.toiletpaperentrepreneur.com/blog
107 http://www.delbourg-delphis.com
108 http://vcratings.thedealblogs.com
109 http://www.unleashingideas.org/blog
110 http://www.energybyte.com/blog
111 http://www.venturedig.com
112 http://www.microcapital.org
113 http://www.theequitykicker.com
114 http://www.theclosetentrepreneur.com
115 http://presspass.entrepreneur.com
116 http://shiftingcareers.blogs.nytimes.com
117 http://www.change.gov/newsroom/blog
118 http://www.startuptweet.com
119 http://altos.typepad.com/vc
120 http://blog.bplans.com
121 http://www.churbuck.com/wordpress
122 http://www.onthecommons.org
123 http://www.zviband.com
124 http://www.businessblogwire.com
125 http://yallaguy.wordpress.com
126 http://laurent.pierssens.com
127 http://babblingvc.typepad.com/pjozefak
128 http://www.unstructuredventures.com/uv
129 http://www.floridaventureblog.com
130 http://www.leveragingideas.com
131 http://www.allthingscahill.com
132 http://www.stetoscope-blog.com
133 http://www.johngannonblog.com
134 http://everythingstartup.blogspot.com
135 http://www.thepomoblog.com
136 http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com
137 http://www.austinstartup.com
138 http://bluepointmktg.blogspot.com
139 http://www.abovethecrowd.com
140 http://schumpeterscentury.blogspot.com
141 http://vcwhisperer.blogspot.com
142 http://www.techflash.com/venture
143 http://www.appfrica.net/blog
144 http://onhollywood.goingon.com
145 http://www.ariwriter.com
146 http://www.insidevtknowledgeworks.com
147 http://www.socialcapitalmarkets.net/blog
148 http://thebostonentrepreneur.wordpress.com
149 http://www.startupweekend.com
150 http://microfranchising.blogspot.com

Support the Entrepreneur Commons concept on Change.org

Top Twitter Social Entrepreneurs

Marc Dangeard, Melcion's partner in San Francisco, made it into the Top Twitter Social Entrepreneurs list by Nathaniel Whittemore Here is Nathaniel's list:

Name - Erik Hersman Twitter - @whiteafrican Why You Should Follow - Founder of Ushahidi, blogger at AfriGadget and WhiteAfrican, all around smart guy and great tracker of the African technology and innovation Name - Guy Kawasaki Twitter - @guykawasaki Why You Should Follow - Founder of Alltop, social media evangelist and best selling author on entrepreneurship, tweets regularly with practical advice for traditional and social entrepreneurs Name - Vanessa Mason Twitter - @vanessamason Why You Should Follow - Blogger and tracker about all things global health, international development, and creative solutions to poverty and inequality Name - Marc Dangeard Twitter - @mdangear Why You Should Follow - Founder of Entrepreneur Commons and general advisor to social entrepreneurs Name - Joe Solomon Twitter - @engagejoe Why You Should Follow - Social media consultant working with Social Actions, Joe's Twitter stream is a hub for all online social innovation Name - VCTips Twitter - @vctips Why You Should Follow - An aggregator of great tips for those entrepreneurs who are pitching or looking to pitch to venture firms and angel investors Name - Jon Gosier / Appfrica Twitter - @appfrica Why You Should Follow - Jon's Appfrica project does a phenomenal job keeping track of social technology innovations with ramifications for the developing world Name - Social Entrepreneurship at Change.org / Nathaniel Whittemore Twitter - @socialentrprnr Why You Should Follow - Our official Socialentrepreneurship.change.org Twitter account - get updated about new posts and interesting projects

Global Entrepreneurship week challenge: change the world in one minute - get your Vindex

This week is Global Entrepreneur week, and I submitted a challenge:

Entrepreneurs are the ones who will change the world. The issues that we have to resolve in the world (poverty, diseases, environmental and financial crisis, wars, etc...) are too big that they can be resolved by government or philanthropy. Everybody needs to get on board if we want to make a difference.

To move towards a better world, we need to stop focusing on maximizing profit, to instead focus on generating profits while bringing benefits to the ecosystem one way or another. It does not have to be anything big, just a little something that will make a difference in the end.

One tool that can help us do this is the Vindex: The Vindex is a simple number, but it helps turn the vague concept of reputation into a number that you (and others) can see, that you can compare to others and watch evolve over time.

So the simple number becomes the first step towards thinking differently about business and impact. When you start paying attention to this simple number, you have become a social entrepreneur, and the sky is the limit.

Getting a Vindex is a first step towards doing the right thing.
I got mine: http://mdangear.venyo.org
I hope that if you reading this you will get yours too: https://www.venyo.org/signup/
And then spread the word...

Entrepreneur Commons in Les Echos

Les Echos (French equivalent of Financial Times) just published an article on Entrepreneur Commons, an effort sponsored by Melcion through our San Francisco team member Marc Dangeard.
You can read it here (in French)

How Brands and their evangelists should manage blogs

Just like with the internet websites of web1.0, companies are slowly getting into social media and web2.0: many companies today have blogs, and try to establish a presence in the blogosphere through them, with the help of evangelists who monitor what is going on and mix with the crowd to spread messages. As a sign of this, Inc Magazine reports that "31% of the CEOs of their Inc500 companies maintain a blog or social network and for the most part they love them."

Having a blog is a great step forward.

Having evangelists is even better.

The next thing is to try to manage this social media effort and retain within the enterprise the IP that is being created by the evangelists working for the company.

Because the thing with Social Media is that many people/companies have blogs, many people comment of other's people blog, and evangelists tend to have their own blogs in addition to blogging on the company website. Even regular employees (non-evangelists) have blogs, and they may also do great work for the company there. So the reality is that conversations are happening all over the place, and there is no real central place where the company can measure what is going on, and analyze the results of the work being done over time. And there is no point is trying to bring the conversations back into a central place, because it is not going to happen. People want to do what they do where they are, not where you tell them to.

So the next option is to at least gather in a central place references to all these conversations, thus allowing readers on the company website to travel from one discussion to another other easily. And because references to these conversations are kept in a central place, you can also measure what is happening: how many posts, how many comments in how many blogs, and how many visitors on these blogs. Data which accumulates over time to also show you the trends of your influence and your impact on the blogosphere.

Think about it as something like Delicious, except designed for blogs because bookmarks are not enough, what you want with blogs are the RSS feeds that keep the flow of posts going.

A service I use to do all this for my Entrepreneur Commons project is eCairn (www.ecairn.com - and as a disclaimer you should know that yes I am connected to this company).

Within eCairn, I started building a list of blogs that talk about entrepreneurs, VCs and funding in general. And I monitor this list on a regular basis, sometimes commenting on the blogs when it is relevant. When I do, I can tag that post, as a way to keep track of the fact that I did comment on this blog in case I want to go back.

(the RSS feed for these posts where I commented is http://conversation.ecairn.com/post/feed?key=Qf4X4Cxiw392Ri6oWewwulHfA4H6E9Nn&title=Get+the+filter%27s+RSS+feed&with_filter=49, and it is also exposed in a widget on this blog)

Doing this, I started participating in conversations happening here and there. I sometime receive replies to my comments, and I also reply to other people's comments. Everytime I do this, I add the person's blog to my list, because if they said something that was relevant to me here, they may do it again.

Over time my selection of blogs has grown from something that was based on the declared intent of the blog (blogs about entrepreneurship, VCs or funding) to a selection of blogs that includes more of the same, plus blogs from knowledgeable people who do not always blog about these specific subject, but have shown interest and some level of expertise on the subject at one point or another.

And this evolution can be tracked: I know how many blogs I started from, where I am today and how I got there; I know how many posts I found relevant through my browsing, how many I commented on, and how many new bloggers I got involved with (through their blog) from these conversations.

I can do this by myself, and I already get more than a regular RSS reader would give me, and I can include other people to do it with me: we are now several partners working on the Entrepreneur Commons project from within the eCairn service.

For any company I believe that it should be the next step forward, as a way to track what is happening on a given product, or what is happening with the brand in general. The value you get from being able to manage this process is huge, I see it as the real promise of Social Media delivered: the eCairn tool allows monitoring and engagement, the perfect backoffice tool for a marketing team.

Imagine for example that you launch a campaign:

- you can immediately measure the effect of that campaign in the blogosphere, you can reinforce the message by commenting as appropriate on blogs (or do damage control if not all goes as expected). And you can correlate the campaign to a measure of the buzz generated.

- you can do all this as a coordinated effort, with a complete team of people involved, so that you can handle as much as you want. And when people move on to another job, the info from what they have done stays with the company. They may control their own blog, and the audience around it, but you keep track of the relevant posts that were made, the bloggers that were engaged, etc...

Outside of specific campaign, you can also do on-going work of maintaining a presence in the blogosphere, and build up the audience through engagement with bloggers. You can measure how many blogs you engaged on, which is another great indicator of the work being done by the marketing team (who they talk to, who they know, and how influential these people are - from the traffic of their blog, which gives me a feel for my addressable audience).

As I commented recently on a post from Open Forum, in addition to what the author calls the Web triumvirate (website - blog - support discussion board or forums), companies should seriously consider now adding a fourth pillar: proactive Customer Service in the form of blog monitoring and bloggers engagement - call it Blogosphere Relationship Management

$20B crumbs

You think $20B is a lot of money. Think again.

$20B is the amount that VCs invest every year.

But where does the money come from?
The reality is that VC funds get their money from Limited Partners, for whom VC investment is considered "alternative investment". This means that it represents a very small fraction of their own portfolio. Something that they do not spend as much of their attention on.

And where does this lead us?
More and more people (including partners in VC funds) agree that something is broken with the VC model. But nobody is doing anything about it:
- The Limited Partners are happy with the people they work with, they have invested their money but even more important they have invested their trust in them. So if anything can be done, they trust that these partners will work on the issue to fix.
- And then the VCs do their best, they apply their expertise, they keep feeding the system with startups that they think will make a difference, and their view of fixing anything is to do more of same except better. Maybe they will widen the scope of their investment, or maybe get into other types of investments so that they can follow the startups throughout their lifecycle. But the one thing they will not do is question too far the system that feeds them, specially when it works good enough that they can make a good living out of it (who would do any different really?).

So in the end, the VC model, however broken people will agree it is, is here to stay for some time, and until somebody decides to deal with the crumbs.

What is interesting is that $20B is also the amount that Angels invest every year of smaller size deal. And again, where does the money come from?
Angel money is the "mad money", the spare change angels invest in startups so that they stay involve with innovation and entrepreneurship (the passion, the energy) while not having to do the hard work. A very precious help for entrepreneurs, but is it money well spent the way it is done today? I have discussed this in a previous post, and entrepreneurs are not getting as much help as they could hope from there either.

This is the challenge for the Entrepreneur Commons (tm), trying to find the Limited Partner or the Foundation that will decide to deal with these $20B crumbs...
If you are or know one of these, please contact me.

More info on VC funds - and it gets worse...

I have shared my own observations of the VC investment world and the Angel investment world in previous posts on this blog, leading to the Entrepreneur Commons project.
And I have now also found (thanks to my Melcion partners) a very interesting study that shows that in addition to not being a good answer for entrepreneurs, VC investment is also not a good solution for investors (the Limited Partners - LPs - in VC funds). A must-read for anybody interested in VC investment:

The Performance of Private Equity Funds, by Ludovic Phalippou and Oliver Gottschalg - April 2007.

The first striking information from this study  of 1328 VCs worldwide is on the returns that can be expected from VC investment:

• S&P500 +3% before fees
• S&P500 -3% after the management fees (typically 1% or 2% plus carried interest)

So investors investing in VC funds will make less than market, their investment underperforming the market by 3% on average.

But it gests worse:
The original assumption in the study is that performance of VC funds is related to Size of the fund, Experience of the management team and Past Performance. However a closer study shows that when past performance is included in the equation all the other characteristics lose their significance: Past Performance appears to be the unique explanatory variable for fund performance.
More specifically, it seems that the fund performance after the first 3 to 4 years is the main indicator of the performance that can be expected from this fund at maturity (typically 9 years). Not experience, and not size. If you compare recently raised funds to what more mature funds were doing at the similar early stage, then the conclusion of the study is that new funds have similar expected performance as the mature funds in the study. Again, there is no concept of size and/or experience being a parameter.

What it means is that it does not matter whether the management team has experience from a previous fund, the only parameter that prevails is what they do in the first 3 to 4 years of a given fund, which will be the real indicator of what can be expected in the end.
So while the concept of track record is comforting psychologically, the science does not sustain the idea that it will make a difference.
In the end Limited Partners are playing the lottery when they invest in a new fund, whether it is with a newly formed team or an experienced team.

In summary:

• Each new fund is a new fund, with only what will happen in the first few years to determine what kind of results can be expected
• And in the end what can be expected is less than market by 3% on average

One question remains: why are LPs paying all these fees (the 6% that take their average returns from SP500+3% down to SP500-3%)?
If this is to play the lottery and get a chance to finance the next Google, be my guest. But if this is to finance innovation, maybe there are other options.

If anything, this is one more justification for trying other cheaper ways of financing entrepreneurs: back to the Entrepreneur Commons, it seems that while it originally came out of issues identified with Angel Investment as a way for Angel Investors to try something that may give them a better return on their investment, it is also a good answer for Limited Partners currently investing in VC funds, who could be also interested in the potential of better return on their investment while still staying involved in the financing of innovation.

If you are a LP, I would love to talk to you...

The Entrepreneur Commons

After looking at VCs, and after managing the European American Angel Club for 2 years now (in addition to my work as part of the Melcion Chassagne team), I have come to the conclusion that entrepreneurs are not really being served properly when it comes to seed funding. And I would like therefore to propose the concept of an Entrepreneur Commons to help with the issue.

Here is the story:

I have seen are roughly 3 types of angels:

• The super-angel, who has enough money to be a one-man show VC playing with his own money (and maybe money from a few friends). Either he is known by the VC community, and he is treated well by them because he can source good deals for the later-stage rounds, or he has enough money within his ecosystem that he can help entrepreneurs all the way through.
• The social type, who has money and like toying with the idea that he could invest and may do so one day. He likes attending meetings and talking about it, but the reality is that he never really invests in anything.
• And then you have everybody else in between these 2 types.

These last group of angels is facing a lot of issues with the model as it is today:

• Angels their put money down and they have no clue when it will come back (if ever). Typical time before a cash event is 7 to 9 years if you believe angels who have done it for a while
• When investing in early stage, they have no real data to figure out a valuation, so any equity deal is based on arbitrary valuations where somebody is getting a bad deal on one side (angel) or the other (entrepreneur)
• If the business requires additional funding, Angels are being squeezed of the deals by VCs, who impose liquidation-preference clause
• And finally because you are just an Angel after all and not a fund, you are limited in your resources and cannot really spread yourself into a number of deals that is statistically relevant.

So in the end, they are playing the lottery, and they know it. And because they are playing the lottery, they want the reward to be as big as possible if they win, so they tend to shoot for companies with a potential for return of at least 10x the investment.

From the entrepreneur side, this leaves out of the system a whole lot of very good startups with very promising businesses but not "hot" enough. This is even more critical these days when you see an emergence of "social entrepreneurs" who are interested in making money, but whose focus (and measure of success) is also to help the community one way or another. They are not really non-profit, so most of the time they do not qualify for grants, but they are not the 10x type either. Meanwhile they clearly deserve help.

The way I see out of this situation is the Entrepreneur Commons:
A not-for-profit social network of entrepreneurs providing financing for early stage company through debt guaranteed by a mutual guarantee fund. The financial risk is mitigated by the mutual guarantee fund. The risk on the "management" side is mitigated by the social network: loans are by invitation only, so you will have to be approved by your peers to get in. And the typical scalability issue faced by general partners in a VC fund (which causes the famous "funding gap") is also resolved by the social network: the size of loans and the number of entrepreneurs involved is no longer a problem, and if anything it helps stabilize the results of the group as a whole.

The project is starting to get some traction, and we have been getting a lot of positive feedback - the recent post from my friend Jessica is a good example of the reactions I get.
The goal is now to confirm the blueprint for this model, so that it can be replicated anywhere. We have started looking for funds so that we can make loans soon. Stay tuned...

Future of small business forecast report released

Just released: the 3rd edition of the Future of Small Business report. It is called The New Artisan Economy. This was a joint effort by IFTF, Intuit and Emergent Research. The report and related materials are at: http://www.intuit.com/futureofsmallbusiness.