What’s Behind the Curtain?

I owe my journey into the world of blogging to the Dick, Steve, Eric, Brent, Rick and Eric and the rest of the Feedburner team. After two years watching the company take the Web 2.0 world by storm, I thought I would grudgingly embrace the future and launch a blog of my own (and run the feed through Feedburner of course). I hope that I can make up with insight what I lack in agility and speed. This is a big step for me since I barely mastered my mother tongue in college, hiding behind the comfort of numbers, formulas and computers. So, I apologize in advance for grammatical errors, misspelled words, missing verbs and blatantly erroneous facts.

Dick suggested that I call this blog “Behind the Curtain” which I thought was a brilliant title. Unfortunately, my immediate family thought I was going to pen about unsavory topics, so I pushed this to the sub-title. I often hear entrepreneurs comment about how little they understand about the “wizard” behind the curtain. I have seen how beneficial and valuable well-written blogs (like those from Fred Wilson (http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/) and Brad Feld (http://www.feld.com/blog/)) can be in shedding light on the “dark side”.  I think the Midwest tech community needs more dialogue, debate and interaction between its various members and constituencies.

What to write about? In general, I’d like to take my cue from what  members of the entrepreneurial and technology community find of interest or need. Initially, I think this content will fall into five areas:

1) Venture 101: topics about venture capitalists including examples of how we think about different investment issues, as well as things entrepreneurs should know about when dealing with VC’s.
2) Go to the Light: various observations and musings about the entrepreneurial community including things that seem to work and those that don’t.
3) Glory Road: profiles and success stories  about interesting entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
4) Next Gen: comments about various trends, technologies and developments in the industry.
5) Say What? random topics that don’t fit into the other areas like great philanthropic stories, humour or inspiring tales about knitting or beading.

I will try to keep things relevant, timely and ego-free. In return, I hope that readers engage, respond and even consider launching efforts of their own. Here goes…