Take me in, dammit! - a gripe & a request

For the lack of any better term, I christen myself an inafluxer, to mean a nouveau Linkedin author who’s dying to be an influencer but loathe to admit it! (or not..)

Right from the day I have been given the privilege of publishing on LI (no email, just stumbled upon it..) & I grabbed it greedily, I’ve been trying to make sense of what exactly it takes to get the inafluxer articles ‘featured’ on relevant channels.

While I couldn't identify any rationale yet, I observed a probable trend wherein LI;

• Identifies profiles that could be potential churners of reasonable quality posts on largely generic/ popular issues & ones that could beget a loyal following
• Invites them to publish on LI with a personalized email; ensure their initial posts get huge viewership, build a quick following & thus compel the new writers to get regular with posts – a clever no-cost approach to develop quality content by utilizing the inherent need of smart, opinionated & communicative individuals to be heard and importantly, to be recognized.
• Essentially, this appears to me as an "Influencer Seeding Program", assuming that a lot of the current stock of Influencers will soon encounter a writer’s block if not a cramp.

I could be dead-wrong in my hypothesis, but a chap who writes on pharma venture capital, while not even being a VC, doesn't fit the bill perhaps.

bummer...

PS: yelling apart, I am all willing to be used free & fair - Try me LI, I don't tire easy :-)

Disclaimer: The inafluxer logo is of course fake & has been put together with a harmless & sole intention of enabling this funny (hopefully) rejoinder grab some eyeballs

Read this article (& comments) also on Linkedin

The next Facebook may not be found online after all

It’s not very often one comes across an article, a cover story at that, in Newsweek on the start-up scene & VCs – So there was no which way I could have let-up an opportunity to read through, read in between the lines, postulate, extrapolate and generally make my own merry conclusions on stuff the article never intended to dwell on - Call me extreme, that’s okay – like the partners at Greylock, I don’t back down easily either :-)

It isn’t perhaps about trying to find/ fund the next Facebook at Greylock

While the title has enough oomph to grab eye-balls, it could be fundamentally misleading. A quick look at the recent investments (mentioned within the article) of Greylock partners shows it is bullish on startups that are waltzing back into the realm of real-life albeit through cyber gateways – i.e. ones that have built revenue models on O2O commerce platforms;  think Airbnb; Coupons; OneKingsLane; Shopkick (all Reid Hoffman investments..); Sprig; (Simon Rothman) – Though it’s just one subset of investments primarily by one partner, the sheer millions pumped in indicate there’s a lot of enthusiasm at Greylock on O2O commerce.

Just may be David Sze should display a real apple (besides Apple Newton & Apple iPhone) in his timeline collection of technologies – a sweet reminder that any technology’s ultimate potential lies offline

Incubate a potential acquisition? – Sounds like a nice strategy or is it?

It is perhaps a strategy/ wish to utilize the (insider) knowledge of a current investee companies that are avid deal-hunters themselves by way of incubating a few custom designed startups & facilitating (evetually) their acquisitions by the aforesaid companies – Consider the investments in Nextdoor, Path, Jelly, Medium, Pandora (all David Sze investments..) & the likelihood of these companies getting acquired by either Facebook or Linkedin at some point of time.

Startup scene in USA is raining Asoks* – and they’ve been raking in some moolah, finally

The article starts with Gagan Biyani (Sprig), dwells on Aneel Bhusri (Greylock) and mentions the likes of Nirav Tolia (Nextdoor) – not an inconsequential acknowledgement of the increasing presence of Indians in the American entrepreneurial scene.  

*’Asok’ is used in the context of any techie of Indian origin rather than just the IITians.

A final dig I can’t help – The article by Katrina Brooker is far superior to anything related I’ve come across in HBR magazine till date.