Marc A Meyer

"A welcome post. I wrestle with the same issue all the time when companies pitch Persefon Ventures. As a start-up founder, I too hated pitching potential investors and getting back bland platitudes. Two observations on giving feedback: 1) On the negative side, giving such feedback is very expensive. It often results in the entrepreneur rehashing half their pitch indicating that I missed the point, or automatically answering with a canned set of beliefs. It can also result in someone asking me what my suggestion for a fix is, and then wanting to pitch me again when they make any progress in that direction (missing the point that I'm looking for that kind of innovation from them). Part of not being a dick means I don't think it is fair to have the last word and say "this is why I don't care for your idea and your time us up." 2) On the positive side: I learn a lot about entrepreneurs from the way they respond to such feedback. The very best, listen, probe, repeat back to me what they..." - Marc A Meyer

"Dan, I wish you the best with this.   We had precisely the same types of goals and enthusiasm when we built Stickis at Activeweave, and I hope you fare far far better than we did. I wonder perhaps at the philosophical mindset related to publishing "truth" or distinguishing between "good" and "bad" information.  It is enough of a challenge building a system to allow people to opine in place about anything on the web,  but getting a consensus on good and bad, that seems Sisyphusian. Are you contemplating social filtering similar to what we did to some extent.  This should be far easier in an era of Facebook.  We had the additional challenge of asking individuals to define the social group they wanted to hear from all over the web. Anyway, truly hope you hit this out of the park for all of us. Marc Meyer former CEO of Activeweave Stickis" - Marc A Meyer