Adeo Ressi’s HBS presentation that claimed that the VC model is broken has been discussed over and over in the last few days. Here is the slideshow of his presentation and while I agree that all his arguments are not acceptable, there is definitely merit to the question he raises about the current VC model. GigaOm disagrees wtih:
Have there been too many funds created, too much money poured into finding the next Facebook, Twitter or YouTube? Undoubtedly. But the VC industry is subject to the same economic forces and laws of supply and demand as any other industry — in other words, if some funds are making money, others will emerge and try to duplicate that success, even if they know the odds are against them. The same dynamic can be seen in plenty of other businesses, including the mining industry: When gold is hot, everyone wants to be (or invest in) a gold miner, even though they all secretly know that too many miners means less gold for everyone.
Like everything else there are always two sides to a coin, but the recent years have seen very little in terms of VCs making big and bold bets to truly spur innovation. In fact the entire web 2.0 space has been filled with highly funded me-too plays and others that are products and features (not companies) that do not need or merit VC. But considering the fact that we are where we are, I think there is a severe need for someone or some model to come up that puts a bet or allows entrepreneurs to bet on pie-in-the-sky ideas that stand a chance to bring about a disruptive change. We are taking a tiny step in that direction and so are YCombinator, betaworks, Techstars and others. There may be other models that might evolve too, but there is no doubt that traditional VC must evolve from where it stands today.
I have started to put together a lot of my email deliverability findings over the last few months and will be posting them on this blog starting today. Here is one that is really important and we ourselves did it not to long ago. Infact it is probably the most common thing I find on a lot of email subscriptions I get.
Do not use “No reply” or “Do not reply” as the From: Return address on your outgoing emails. Anne Mitchell from ISIPP explains it in detail on her blog:
But there are some email addresses – used as “From:” addresses – that even if you create them on your system – even if they really do exist – you should just never use.
“NoReply” and “DontReply” are two such addresses.
This is because even if email would actually get delivered if someone did hit reply, most spam filters now recognize that “noreply@” and “dontreply@” usually don’t go anywhere. And so your email risks getting dinged and going to the junk folder.
Beyond that, if an email address on your list bounces, you’ll never know because it has no real address to which to bounce back – or it bounces to an address that you’re not really monitoring. And if you keep mailing to the same bouncing email address, you’re going to get..you got it..junk foldered. Maybe even blocked.
And really, best practices require that if you are sending email “from” somewhere, then, it should be a real somewhere which can receive replies – and that someone is monitoring.
Yes, there are big companies who do this. Guess what, these big companies actually have deliverability problems.
A much better solution is to figure out a way to monitor the email address from which you are sending that email – even if it goes to a unique folder on your end that you monitor less frequently than your regular mail queue (although even that is less than ideal – if you want your company to have a stellar reputation, you should be handling all non-spam email that comes in to you).
And then, use a “From:” address that’s much friendlier and welcoming than “noreply”.
