I read the book about Ron they mention, Godfather of Silicon Valley. It is not a good book, but it is interesting in that it captures the fervor of the dot com era.<p>The really funny thing is that the timing worked out so that the dot com bubble exploded just before the book was finished. Rivlin therefore spends the entire book building Conway up as the world's biggest jerk. The book is a character assassination. Conway lets Rivlin into his life, and Rivlin is unmerciful. Conway is depicted as the personification of the excesses of that era. The book comes out after the market crashes and it had to hurt.<p>Then... Google hits. Conway was an early investor. He's back. His methods are validated, his fund returns profit, he starts new funds. They prosper. And now Conway is the king of the world again, and Rivlin is the douche.<p>Oh the ironing.
If anyone has read The Tipping Point, Ron Conway is an amazing example of a 'connector'.<p>In this example, he made a single connection that Tipped Tellme towards success.<p>Would be interesting to put together a list of angel investors that similarly stand out as connectors.
This link works for me: <a href="http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/07/ron-conway-explained/" rel="nofollow">http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/07/ron-conway-explained/</a><p>Could sharpn/a moderator replace it, please?
I love this quote from the post: "If Ron’s awake, he’s working. He can be at a party, in his pajamas, or at the Super Bowl. Ron is always on the job and the network is always on." That's the world I come from. You have to work your balls off to succeed (as I discuss in tip #6 here: <a href="http://bit.ly/5Gccio" rel="nofollow">http://bit.ly/5Gccio</a>). Fuck this part-time shit that Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (at 37signals) are pitching. Ask Larry Bird or Michael Jordan if they worked part-time on their basketball skills?
LOVED the last ditch email haha...."we may be going down":<p>"So sometime after 11pm, I wrote Ron and essentially said: “hello, you don’t know me, I’m an executive at a company you’re an investor in, and we need a meeting—in person—with the CEO himself of this Fortune 50 company—this week—and if you can’t make this happen, hey that’s ok, but we may be going down—sorry.” Ron wrote back in literally 2 minutes and said, in what I have learned is Ron’s distinctive email style (immediate, short, all caps), “AM ON IT.”"
I sincerely hope I have the honor of working with Ron one day. The values described here are hard to come by and the same ones that I was taught to value growing up. The values of honor, loyalty, and timeliness transcend "money".
The Game song, referenced: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkJZhKT7W6g" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkJZhKT7W6g</a><p>P.S. HipHopGoblin is now open source, a few of us from HN are working on bringing it back to life. We are implementing it now with DirectedEdge. Email me if interested.