Chris Thoughts

From Blogging to Evangelizing (1)

Posted on 07. Jan, 2009 by Chris in VC/Start-Up

Evangelizing, a word pretty well used nowadays in regard of marketing that in essence brings profound impact to people’s attention. From the classical marketing book, we have classified “Sales” and “Marketing” while “evanelizing” has not gained its position yet, at least not in the marketing book I read.

In a broader sense, “blogging” gives a perfect meaning of it.

Western Best Practice

In field of Venture Capital, blogging has eroded to be a core way of delivering firm investment methodology, criteria and preferred way of communication since its inception. Most western VC websites have Incorporated with a featured partner or affiliated blog, evangelizing their business prospects and depth of experience. This practices has not yet well adapted by our Chinese VC firms, which harms business.

The Chinese Way

Adapting the Western concept, we Chinese are no bad player on adapting this.

In China, there are just as many breakthrough ideas as it is in the western world, and the effect of the booming economy cannot be ignored. The conservative culture of Chinese curbs most fleshy idea from being known, not to mention pitching it to a real and potential Venture Capitalist. It’s true that a good deal will not lack pursuers, but ONLY when it becomes publicly known and possibly bring out a revenue model.

The norm (best practice) of Westerm way is to be adapted and make its way into Chinese Entrepreneur-Venture Capitalist community, so that they could learn, exchange and improve idea right within a tribe (aka blog) or under a syndicated system. This accelerates the speed of execution and lead the right people to the right place.

Feature Chinese VC Evangelists

There are STILL a handful of Venture Capitalists in China that blog and this group generally share one point – either being educated or have lived in a Western world. This massively helps them to win business, even when their business just started in China. It does not matter.

i A new comer: DragonVest Partners

I first saw DragonVest Partners, who has just started direct investment business in China, in Chinese Venture (a Chinese Venture Capital journal), which has featured the co-partner Jesse Parker’s insights of tech deals in China. This brings okay publicity as a whole.

But this would not be enough regarding the limited readership of the hard copy magazine. To illustrate, another featured blogger I am here to mention is the firm’s co-founder Cha Li, who have recently been featured as a core bloggers in the VC community. And he skillfully wrote interesting topics (with eye-catching titles of course) that amaze lots of people in all ranges of business, including me. So we wish the firm is gaining lots of momentum with the efforts of communicating with the entrepreneurs and business community. By word-of-mouth, the business community would surely collaborate with entrepreneurs and hence enhance the quality of deal flow.

More will be found on the next post From Blogging to Evangelizing (2)

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