Venture Geek

So, I think Union Square Venture’s attempt to find a new employee by doing the job search on their blog is fascinating. I’m surprised by the lack of the meta-discussion about the implications of it. There have been a couple posts, mostly about the risks associated with posting your name on a public forum where you current boss could see it. But, I suppose that’s part of the point for them — if you aren’t someone who feels like they can let it all hang out on webland, you aren’t the kind of person they are looking for.

But, there’s another angle to me posting about that — and forgive me now for doing a bit of blogging about blogging, as I know that lots of people out there hate that (and if you do, this is a good time to stop reading this post). When I started this blog I did so mostly just because I believe in the power of peer publishing, but having such a “public” face certainly has implications for one’s career and reputation. Blogs, of course, tend to cluster — that is, most blogs you read tend to be part of a community of blogs — or a number of different communities of blogs in some cases. One obvious manifestation of that is the blogroll — something I haven’t bothered to have, as I’m not sure the world needs another random list of blogs (I have found other people, though, who think it’s actually rude to not have a blogroll!). Another manifestation are the people who comment and link to your blog — even on blogs about purely personal topics I tend to find the same small group of people doing the bulk of the commenting and that forms a de facto community of sorts. In professional cirlces I tend to find a few blogs at the “center” with many others on the “branches” — you know it’s the center based on how many people are reading/commenting/linking. This blog is not the center of anything by that criteria.

Given the title of the blog and the subject matter thus far, I suppose I’m making a statement about being part of the VC/entrepreneurship community — and, indeed, that is where my professional interests have been and will continue to be. In that light, it’s almost silly to post about the Union Square Ventures ploy to find a new employee because everyone in that community probably already knows about that — Union Square Ventures is firmly in the “center” of their blog community based on the readers/links/comments they get. But, given how new this blog is most of people reading it are still just people who happen to know me, and many of you have little interest, or at least little exposure, to that world.

I’d be curious, though — how many of you already knew about what Union Square Ventures was doing?