Every so often, venture capitalist Larry Cheng puts out a list of the top VC blogs. Previously, he ranked the blogs by how many subscribers they have on Google Reader. But now he’s changed his methodology and is ranking them by average monthly unique visitors, based on Compete data. He just came out with his new global ranking for the fourth quarter of 2009. Below are the top ten blogs from that list.
If you compare this list to the last one, Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures is now the top VC blogger, followed by Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures (who previously was No. 1). Now, the always-provocative Paul Graham of Y Combinator is No. 3, whereas he wasn’t even in the top ten on the old list. Other new entrants to the top 10 include Mark Suster of GRP Partners, Dave McClure of Founder’s Fund and soon to launch his own seed fund, and Bijan Sabet of Spark. Some VCs who dropped out of the top ten include Marc Andreessen and David Hornik of August Capital.
Four VC blogs in the top ten are new under the Cheng’s method, which better captures which ones are capturing attention since it is based on an average of the last quarter’s audience. Of course, this method does not capture people who read the blogs via RSS. So pick your poison. You can subscribe to the Top 10, Top 25, Top 50, or Top 100 on Google Reader, if that’s your thing (can someone create corresponding Twitter Lists for these VCs?).
Cheng is a managing partner at Volition Capital, which was Fidelity Ventures until it was spun off on Monday. His own blog, Thinking About Thinking, ranks No. 12.
Top 10 VC Blogs (Average Monthly Uniques, 4Q09)
- Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures, A VC (100,279)
- Guy Kawasaki, Garage Technology Ventures, How To Change The World (82,838)
- Paul Graham, YCombinator, Essays (71,924)
- Brad Feld, Foundry Group, Feld Thoughts (45,633)
- Mark Suster, GRP Partners, Both Sides of the Table (39,389)
- Bill Gurley, Benchmark Capital, Above The Crowd (23,084)
- Dave McClure, Founders Fund, Master of 500 Hats (21,462)
- Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital, Redeye VC (12,972)
- Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital, Bijan Sabet (12,451)
- Jeremy Liew, Lightspeed Ventures Partners, LSVP (12,097)
Companies: Fred Wilson began his career in venture capital in 1987. He has focused exclusively on information technology investments for the past 17 years…In 1996, Fred co-founded Flatiron Partners. While at Flatiron, Fred was responsible for 14 investments… Learn More
Website: guykawasaki.com Companies: Truemors, Visible Measures, SlideShare, Garage Technology Ventures, Simply Hired, BitPass, FilmLoop, NowPublic, TicketLeap, Nononina, Alltop, SocialToo, oneforty, Bootup Labs, TwitHawk, and more
Guy Kawasaki is CEO of early-stage venture capital firm Garage Technology Ventures and an active blogger. Guy was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, CEO of ACIUS and founder of Fog City Software. Guy has written eight… Learn More
Companies: Paul Graham is a partner at Y Combinator.
He is also the author of On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004). In 1995, he and Robert Morris started Viaweb,… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBase
The Top Ten VC Blogs (New And Improved)
Competitious – Competitive metrics and info.
This looks like an excellent tool for knowing your enemy or at least the guys that are playing in a similar space to your endeavor. I’ll be trying it out and post up feedback later.
Can You Bootstrap? – Harvard Business Review
During this economic downturn, many of us have faced similar circumstances. In trudging through a gloom-and-doom atmosphere, there have been things we wanted to get done, businesses we wanted to expand or start, but couldn’t. At least not the way we’d originally envisioned.
…
No doubt the best and brightest went after funding, but it wasn’t available. So they started anyway, knowing that it was do-or-don’t eat, and were thus highly incentivized to get the business model right. Right enough that 61% of the entrepreneurs turned a profit after only a year.
I agree with this, especially now that I’ve headed back into the hardcore bootstrap mode. I’ll be putting a post together to outline my recent experiences, and how they look to have come out for the best in reality. I think the major point in all of this, always look for the best alternative within a situation, especially when it doesn’t go as planned.
