Mark Fletcher on startups. How to get in to see a VC

Mark Fletcher’s recent talk on his startup experiences (he started ONEList and Bloglines) is full of great stories and opinions. I really like Mark and think his advice is excellent.

I particularly liked this story:

I can tell you the story about how I actually talked to my first VC because actually getting in the door can be difficult. These guys get hundreds of presentations all the time, so how do you get yourself noticed? When I started ONElist I was just an engineer with no contacts, I didn’t know anybody. It was around the time Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft, in early ’98. I knew the guys who had funded Hotmail as Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, because I could draw parallels between ONElist and Hotmail. Kind of the same thing, only different.

I figured that Steve would be a good guy to talk to, but I had no idea how to get a hold of him. So, I found his email address and I emailed him every day and I emailed him one thing every day, a stat about the company. How we were growing or our users growth for the last day or the number of lists created in the last day. So I did this for eight or nine days and he finally responded to me and said, "Enough. Come on in." The first thing he said when I met him was, "Don’t tell anyone how you got in here." Whoops!

Full Story: http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/05/mark_fletcher_on_startups.html