I've posted about this topic before. I wrote down my thoughts about the Obama campaign trying to make an issue of Mitt Romney's departure from Bain. And I've written about trying to keep stuff private in the Internet era. Well this past week we saw those two themes come together in a single story.
Gawker obtained "more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested" and published them on the Internet this past week.
I will stay out of the issue of whether this was legal, moral, or right. What's done is done. And it is apparently not too damaging to Mitt Romney according to this reporter who went through most of the material.
But there's a lesson this for me and my partners. Everything we publish to our investors should be written as if it will someday be published in Gawker. And every action we take in structuring our business, our relationships with our investors, and our relationships with the entrepreneurs we back should be conducted as if it will someday be published in Gawker.
I think this policy will be good for us and others who choose to adopt it.
