A Look Back, A Look Forward … and a Request

Thank you to everyone who has played a role in building the dialogue within this blog over the last 14 months! I’ve really enjoyed reading your observations and experiences regarding the most critical issues and choices faced by founders and those who work with them.

A Look Back

Since its launch in mid-September 2005, the blog has had almost 29,000 unique visitors, who have been responsible for more than 43,000 page views. Taking a step back to reflect on the past year-plus, here are a few quick snapshots of where the blog has been and currently stands.

The first “snapshot” includes 3 maps, each taken a week apart, of the locations of the two dozen most recent blog visitors at the time.




In addition to the readers who come directly to the blog, the number of people who subscribe to the RSS feed has also increased steadily, as shown by the chart below. (Raw data is care of FeedBurner, whose founder-CEO, Dick Costolo, was kind enough to post a comment on his founding experiences a few months ago.)

 

# of RSS Subscribers


Within our blog-dialogue, the post that attracted the most blog-comments from readers was “Founding with Friends,” with 37 comments (to date).

The three most popular issues in the blog (measured by the frequency with which people pull up those specific pages) have been:

  1. Splitting the Pie (post, post, post, case)
  2. Rich vs. King (post, post, paper)
  3. Founder-CEO Succession (post, post, post, paper, case)

For more on each of these issues — and on other co-founder, compensation, equity, hiring, board, and investor issues — see the latest “Topics Covered in This Blog (So Far)” post below.

A Look Forward, and a Request

In the immediate future (beginning later today), my next posts will include a lot more regarding #1 on the list above, “Splitting the Pie.” Specifically, I’ll be posting details on the initial quantitative results from the equity-split part of the 2006 IT survey, to get everyone’s input on the patterns that emerged.

My one regret with the blog is related to my major motivation for doing it: sparking a dialogue about the most critical issues faced by founders, to see where my research can help fill holes in our knowledge of the challenges you have faced or are facing during the early stages of company building. Even though we started off with a healthy dialogue a year ago, as the number of readers and RSS subscribers has increased recently, we unfortunately have had a significant drop in how active the dialogue has been within the blog.

Thus, my one request to subscribers and readers of the blog: I would really appreciate it if, at least once every couple of months, each of you would take a couple of minutes to contribute your thoughts or experiences (e.g., adding a new element that hasn’t been covered yet, or highlighting a limitation/inaccuracy in something I posted) to at least one post or comment. Right now, I would particularly welcome more input on such early-stage projects as “Golden Handcuffs” (summary, early results, initial interpretations), “After the Firing” (about the impact of the founder’s staying around vs. leaving after being replaced as CEO), and the “Splitting the Pie” posts I’ll be kicking off later today.

If there’s anything we learn in our case-discussion classrooms, it’s that every single person has something to teach everyone else in the room, and that is no less true of this virtual discussion!

11 Comments
  1. :-) Sure Sir!

  2. Hi Noam-I just was a guest on the “Marketing Voices” podcast program about using blogs and podcasts as business tools, and I expressed the same dispappointment that you did in reflecting on your blog- not enough dialogue or interaction- too few comments, and certainly fewer than I expected over the past two years since I started pascalsview. You can access that posdcast at the http://www.vc-io.com VC-InsideOut site, where I have set up a link. So everyone, please make more comments- especially thoughful ones. I will say that one inhibitor to comments is the annoying identity tag below the comments and the Word Verification requirement. you will lose a lot of comments because people don’t like to deal with these gates. I know I don’t.Best,Pascal

  3. Thanks for fighting your way through the two “gates,” Pascal … and for participating in (and trying to spark) the dialogue. :-> I originally activated Word Verification because of spam-comment problems during the first month of the blog, but will go ahead and turn it off, both to test its “gating” effect (i.e., does turning it off actually increase dialogue?) and to see if the spam problem recurs. Not sure if Blogger also allows me to turn off the Identity part (I don’t see an option to do so), but if I find one, I’m open to experimenting with it, too!

  4. Wow — within 10 minutes of my turning off Word Verification, the new Equity Split post got a spam-comment (“<>WARNING: A new immensely powerful viral marketing system has been released… Learn more about it here: … FREE to join.<>” etc.). Sorry, Pascal, but I think I’m going to have to turn it back on….

  5. Are you really a “professor”, or an “assistant professor”? It seems you think the difference is irrelevant and the substance of the blog is the material bit. But is it?

  6. Is that a bad joke, “Anonymous,” or just a badly-asked question? (The REST of us are sure here for “the substance”!!)

  7. It must feel good to know you are getting all of those views! We really do want to hear what you have to say :)< HREF="http://www.freddysimp.info/mainsitemap.php" REL="nofollow">Matt<>

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