We post links to the very best startup advice on Twitter at @venturehacks. We read Hacker News, the best blogs, Quora, and everything else startup-related. Then we tweet about the best content we find.
But maybe you don’t use Twitter. Or you don’t want to follow us there. Or you hate us.
Well then, you can subscribe to a daily digest of the links we post on Twitter via email or RSS. Here’s a pic of the email version:
The Venture Hacks Newsletter is back baby. It’s a daily digest of our tweets — subscribe via email or RSS. The email version looks pretty sweet:
(The newsletter was broken for a few months and we’ve finally gotten around to fixing it.)
We read all the startup advice on the Web and link to the best stuff on Twitter. If you don’t want to miss a tweet, sign up for the daily digest. Fred Wilson and 2000 other folks have given us permission to invade their inboxes, so it can’t be too bad.
Subscribe via email or RSS — if you hate it, you can unsubscribe with a single click.
“Hacking the VC business one web service at a time.”
It’s interesting how investors are turning into media properties and using those properties to promote startups.
1000+ people subscribed to our daily email newsletter when Fred Wilson wrote about it recently. That’s not 1000 visitors — that’s 1000 new people who have given us permission to invade their inbox every day. Fred also sent us a stack of new Twitter followers:
Venture Hacks also sends a good amount of traffic (and signups) when we write about a startup. Here’s a screenshot of [Startup Digest]‘s traffic from a post on TechCrunch vs. a post on Venture Hacks:
If you’re a VC, I don’t think you get much out of writing a single blog post announcing your investment. “Why I invested” posts won’t cut the mustard if they simply amount to “good team, good market, good traction.”
You might have to write about the company before you make an investment. You might have to piss some people off. And you will have to take risks with what you disclose. If you feel a little uncomfortable about the post, that’s probably a good sign. Look at Fred’s posts on Twitter, Disqus, and Foursquare for a model.
“There was certainly a few times during this transaction when I regretted how public we were with our interest in Foursquare.”
I think Y Combinator has the smartest approach to the “investor = media property” problem. I read YC’s Hacker News every day because it serves up one or two gems every day.
What’s in it for YC? Among other things, every YC startup with a significant post will be sure to get on the front page of Hacker News. And every single one of Paul Graham‘s posts will rise to the top.
If you’re a media property and you don’t run an aggregator, you’re simply ceding your audience’s attention to someone else’s aggregator.
“This is probably the first methodology that’s been crowdsourced. Big idea. Unlike previous methodologies where there was an author, textbook and take-it-or-leave-it, this is an iterative process and I think we’re all collectively getting smarter at a very scary rate.”
Where can you find the best startup advice? Short answer: We collect it in this daily email, daily RSS, or real-time Twitter. Here’s a pic of the email version:
When we started Venture Hacks in 2007 (April 1st to be exact), there wasn’t a lot of great startup advice on the Web. Of course, we weren’t the only game in town and guys like Paul Graham and Fred Wilson were rocking well before us (I’m sure I’m ignoring many other examples).
Since then, the quantity of good and bad startup advice on the Web has exploded. I listed 20 startup blogs I read religiously in The Startup MBA. Many good startup blogs have popped up since — Chris Dixon‘s and Mark Suster‘s blogs come to mind (I’m sure I’m ignoring many other examples again).
We do. We read every post on dozens of startup blogs and Hacker News. Then we link to the good stuff with Twitter. And if you don’t want to miss a link in your Twitter stream, sign up for the daily email or daily RSS too.
Please tweet good startup advice to @venturehacks — that’s much better than email. We’ll try to credit you if we link to your suggestion.
Steve Blank is right — we’re all collectively getting smarter at a very scary rate.
According to Google Reader, we write 2 blog posts a week. And according to TweetStats we write 73 tweets a week.
If you only read our blog, you’re missing the great links we post on Twitter. We take the same care with our tweets that we do with our blog posts and we try to keep the quality stratospheric.
You can follow us on Twitter but maybe you’re already following too many people. So we’ve created a daily digest of our tweets that you can get via email or RSS. 600 people have already subscribed to the digest and it looks like this:
But wait there’s more! First, we’re working on a redesign of the digest with a designer who can only be described as a badass — subscribe and you’ll see it first. Second, we usually preview new projects like StartupList and AngelList on Twitter for many weeks before we publish them here — again, subscribe and you’ll see them first. Third, we’re working on a sweet new project that we’ll preview on Twitter soon — its code name is “Talk”.
So give tweet a chance: Twitter, Email Digest, RSS Digest.
“nicely done as always. i can count on one hand the number of daily emails worth signing up for.”
Startup News is two weeks old today. I want to share some stats and thoughts about the product.
If you haven’t seen it yet, Startup News is a daily digest of our tweets, with links to the best startup advice on the Web. You can subscribe via email or RSS. It looks like this:
300 folks have subscribed in two weeks. Almost half of them subscribe via email, the other half subscribe via RSS. Every time I mention Startup News on this blog, we get more subscribers.
In the past, we could never get more than 50 people to subscribe to an RSS feed of our tweets (that’s the flat part on the left side of the graph). Re-positioning the same content as a daily digest made the difference.
If you like the advice on this blog, you’ll like the advice in our tweets. But lots of people don’t use Twitter. And those who do don’t catch all our links. I’ve been searching for a way to get our tweets into your hands and I think this daily digest is a great solution.
If you’ve got interesting tweets, there’s demand for a daily digest. Put one together and tell your subscribers/followers about it. It’s easy to do with FeedBurner (to handle the email and RSS subscriptions) and Twitter Digest (to create a daily digest of your tweets).
If you haven’t checked out Startup News, try it for a week and see if you like it: subscribe via email or RSS.
If you want us to consider including one of your posts in Startup News, submit it to Hacker News — we read it every day. Or tweet it and include: “Tip @venturehacks”.
