Thinking About Thinking. Union Square’s blogging VC backs blogging tool Zemanta | Venture. What Does It Take To Cultivate A Vibrant, Friendly, Engaged Web. I dread having to make new virtual friends… I’m not anti social, It’s just that I would rather spend my time playing around with a new services features rather than its characters. Not only do you have to friend the first couple of crazies you come across, but you have to pretend to instantly like them. That’s why I was surprised when a web community, Simler, welcomed me with a certain haste and openness not found on most social networking sites. The Simler community made me one of their own in a relatively short period of time and because of that I’ve inadvertently become one of their evangelists.
This got me thinking: What does it take to cultivate a vibrant, friendly, engaged web community? Do the first beta testers have an impact on a sites zeitgeist? Should one take into considering the aesthetics of a site? Ryan Goodwin of Simler.com, a social network based on similar interests: Zach Garbow of Qwisk.com, a Social Web Browser: Good Question! The Eight Best Questions We Got While Raising Ven. Editor’s note: Guest writer Glenn Kelman is the CEO of Redfin, an online real estate broker that seeks to give consumers the information and tools once limited to real estate agents.
Previously, he was a co-founder of Plumtree Software, which had a public offering in 2002 but is now part of Oracle. Below he shares the best questions from investors during a recent fund raising. For startups, Christmas comes in November. Partners come back from vacation in September and deals start closing a few months later; since the credit crisis deferred fund-raising for most of the past year, November 2009 will probably end up being especially busy. Redfin is one of the companies that just closed a round.
VCs are good at asking questions. Here are the questions VCs asked Redfin that changed how we think about our business. 1. 2. Good question. 3. We knew our margin before, but hadn’t broken the numbers down into their most easily handled form. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Way.