
Ron Conway is a Silicon Valley startup's best friend - pg
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/02/10/ron-conway-sv-angel/
======
pg
Ron's specialty is emergencies. He spoke at YC on tuesday, and about 80% of
his stories involved a startup running into some horrible problem that he
managed to fix working behind the scenes. He wasn't bragging; that's just what
Ron's life is like. Then on thursday Jack Dorsey came to speak, and told
everyone about a point early in Square's history when they ran up against what
appeared to be a brick wall. Then he paused, during which everyone wondered
what ingenious solution he had come up with, and continued "so I called up Ron
Conway," and the whole room burst into laughter.

I advise every startup that wants to make it really big to get Ron as an
investor. Having Ron in your cap table is like having a fire extinguisher
onboard.

~~~
dchmiel
He only looks at companies from trusted sources so finding those sources and
having their ears leads to grabbing his attention. How does someone get on
Ron's radar when they aren't in the valley? Is it a stretch to assume he has
sources coming from outside the valley as well?

~~~
pg
The best way to get the attention of any investor is through other people
they've funded. Fortunately in Ronco's case that means you have lots of
options.

------
dethstarr
I thought Ron was a total bully. Doesn't he threaten shareholders and makes
them bend to his will all the time? I don't know a lot about him, but I heard
he's tough to deal with.

Can anyone share any more Conway stories?

~~~
rdl
The most common Ron Conway/SV Angel story is that as a portfolio company, you
email one of the partners (most of the time NOT Ron himself; he's for
emergencies), ask for an intro to a company, or advice, and you get their best
effort (which is always successful, and usually successful beyond what you
expected -- when you want a Director, you end up with an intro to a VP or
C-level). This is boring, but day in/day out, it's probably the most common
story.

The only people I've ever heard about him bullying are his own shareholders,
or people who are doing bad things to tech companies -- shareholders know what
they're signing up for (and if he makes them a lot of money, in exchange for a
couple phone calls to fix problems in the future, they don't mind at all).

~~~
pmarca
Ron doesn't have shareholders, so I'm not sure what you mean.

~~~
rdl
I meant "LPs in the fund", sorry.

(I guess I've also heard about him going to bat very aggressively for his
portfolio companies with later-round investors, too.)

------
mirceagoia
The power of being a power user on HN: I posted this article 9 hours ago, only
2 votes. This was posted 2 hours ago by PG and it took off :)...

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roncritical
Can we entertain Ron Conway's constant hawking and lobbying with Mayor Ed Lee?

My opinion is that it's a bad thing. He's getting deeply in bed with
government and virtually buying his seat in local government and I'm
uncomfortable with that. We're doing just fine, thank you. (I don't appreciate
that he often speaks for the broader tech community on matters of policy,
either. We're a diverse lot.)

Not to mention, that music video that he paid for made an utter mockery of the
local political process. Frankly, it's disgusting.

Any other opinions? I'd really like to have an educated debate on this.

~~~
rdl
I suspect he's supporting Ed Lee because Ed Lee was very likely to be mayor,
and has both pro-startup leanings himself, and, with Ron's guidance, could be
more pro business.

Getting the mayor, whoever it is, to understand and support startups is a
great goal -- the mid-market redevelopment, fixing the payroll tax (especially
on options), etc. I'm sure Ron saw that a lot of his portfolio wanted to be in
SF, and when they mentioned issues to him, he got involved. I don't really
follow SF politics that much, but I think the payroll tax fixes and creating
more commercial real estate are both supported by the vast majority of SF
startups; the most debatable thing is probably sit-lie, but personally having
lived around 6th/Market in the past, I strongly support a solution to
aggressive panhandling, homelessness, etc. (mainly, better mental health and
addiction programs)

His other personal charity/political interests seem to be totally benign --
UCSF Medical, various children's charities, etc., so I'm more likely to think
his involvement in SF politics is for his portfolio (and the wider startup and
business community), vs. much personal interest in politics.

Although Ron Conway for Mayor or CA Governor would be awesome.

------
mathattack
Selfishly, I couldn't imagine an angel funding strategy that didn't involve
begging him to be an early investor.

------
AlexBucataru
What is truly amazing is that his approach makes so much sense, you'd think
there were a lot more angels like him out there. On the other hand, it does
take a lot of passion and effort, so I guess that explains it.

------
mhartl
I love the pic with Ashton Kutcher. Most people would say, "Wow, Ron Conway
knows Ashton Kutcher?" Whereas anyone plugged into startup culture would say,
"Wow, Ashton Kutcher knows Ron Conway?"

------
zyfo
_At those critical moments in a startup's life Conway responds quickly -- and
so do those in his network. There was the time when a top executive at Tellme
Networks, a telecommunications startup, e-mailed Conway in desperation at 11
p.m., as a business deal with Verizon (VZ) was falling apart. Two minutes
later, Conway's reply came, in all caps: "AM ON IT." By the next morning
Conway had arranged a meeting with the Verizon president, which led to a nine-
figure contract with Tellme. Microsoft eventually bought Tellme for $800
million._

That's pretty badass.

------
publicus
It's not what you know, but who you know.

------
tatsuke95
> _"Conway has invested in Groupon (GRPN), Twitter, Square, Dropbox, and
> Airbnb -- and those are just the companies whose valuations top $1 billion
> apiece."_

This is sort of like another guy I know, who has also invested in multiple
billion dollar companies. That person is me, by owning shares in companies
like Walmart, Coca-Cola and IBM.

Conway is a huge SV insider, thus many of these investments require nothing
more than being in the right circumstances. There are lots of people who would
have loved to throw some money at some of these tech darlings in their early
days. But most people aren't able to.

Of course, I don't want to diminish the man's success too much; after all, we
create our own circumstances.

~~~
rewind
If you're comparing buying shares on the public market for companies that are
already worth billions of dollars to investing millions of dollars in
companies that are worth a few tens of millions of dollars, then you should
probably elaborate, because the comparison on its own is apples and oranges.

~~~
tatsuke95
Here's the elaboration:

Groupon: not making money. Twitter: Not making money. AirBnb: Not making
money. Linked in is, kind of, but may be overvalued. So what is so remarkable
about making a claim of, "look at all the billion dollar companies this guy
invested in"!. _Anyone_ can invest in billion dollar companies. There is
nothing amazing about it. The fact that Conway's are tech sweethearts and he
got in "early" is a product of him being a SV insider.

Sorry, but I'm not entirely impressed with what may turn out to be a second
tech bubble and the people who get rich pumping then flipping the shares.

Edit: From Wikipedia: _"Some Valley observers, notably VentureBeat, have been
critical of Ron Conway for his investments during the Internet boom, believing
them to be "symbolic of the era’s hubris."[6] Conway developed a reputation
for throwing lavish cocktail parties and raising cash from a diverse group of
celebrities, sportspeople, and political figures such as Henry Kissinger,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tiger Woods, and Shaquille O'Neal, which he then
ploughed into start-ups."_

Again, Ron may be brilliant, but making money as a tech investor during a tech
boom doesn't require genius.

Finally, people seem to talk like getting these investors in your fund raising
indicates that your startup is...something. The fact is, these guys are open
about their model: throw money at lots of startups and hope that a few turn
out. For example, the other day there was a hiring thread that said "money
from top investors, including 500startups". To me, that means you're just one
in a bunch that, according to the head guy at the fund, is probably going to
fail.

As for the guy who said that these companies would have loved my money at the
time Conway invested, I'm not sure about that. You go to Conway _first_ ;
that's the advantage of being an insider.

