I had dinner with my daughter Jessica last night. We got to talking about creativity. She's a photographer. I asked her how she thinks Pieter Hugo comes up with his ideas for photos. She said "I bet he reads a lot about the topics he is interested in and then writes his own thoughts down and from that comes the ideas for the work".
That led to a long discussion about the value of reading and writing, with a particular emphasis on writing. I told her that I toiled in the VC business for close to twenty years before I hit my stride and the reason I found my stride was my adoption of blogging.
As all of you know, I write every day. It is my discpline, my practice, my thing. It forces me to think, articulate, and question. And I get feedback from it. When I hit publish, I get a rush. Every time. Just like the first time. It is incredibly powerful.
And it is permanent. There is a long and winding record of my thinking out there on the public Internet. Google "mobile app deep linking" and you find my post first. At the top. That's because I have been thinking about mobile app deep linking and I wrote my thoughts down.
A journalist is doing a profile of me. I told him that I don't like profiles of VCs. I suggested that he should focus on the entrepreneurs who are doing the real work in startupland. But that didn't get him to back off. He replied
I understand your reticence, though think it would be instructive to hear how you’ve come to some decisions. (What struck you about Twitter, for instance? Many people would have shaken their heads.)
What struck me about Twitter? That's here. I wrote it down.
