

Ron Conway Explained - sharpn
http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/07/ron-conway-explained/

======
rjurney
I read the book about Ron they mention, Godfather of Silicon Valley. It is not
a good book, but it is interesting in that it captures the fervor of the dot
com era.

The really funny thing is that the timing worked out so that the dot com
bubble exploded just before the book was finished. Rivlin therefore spends the
entire book building Conway up as the world's biggest jerk. The book is a
character assassination. Conway lets Rivlin into his life, and Rivlin is
unmerciful. Conway is depicted as the personification of the excesses of that
era. The book comes out after the market crashes and it had to hurt.

Then... Google hits. Conway was an early investor. He's back. His methods are
validated, his fund returns profit, he starts new funds. They prosper. And now
Conway is the king of the world again, and Rivlin is the douche.

Oh the ironing.

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faramarz
Does anyone here have experience working with Ron? anything else to add?

I really enjoyed reading through this article.

~~~
pg
We have a lot. This article is right on.

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tumblen
If anyone has read The Tipping Point, Ron Conway is an amazing example of a
'connector'.

In this example, he made a single connection that Tipped Tellme towards
success.

Would be interesting to put together a list of angel investors that similarly
stand out as connectors.

~~~
joshu
Ron isn't so much a connector as he is THE connector.

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paulbaumgart
This link works for me: <http://bhorowitz.com/2010/04/07/ron-conway-
explained/>

Could sharpn/a moderator replace it, please?

~~~
sharpn
Thanks for the updated link (no idea why it was moved). I tried to edit, but
couldn't - I guess it times out.

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SWalker26
I love this quote from the post: "If Ron’s awake, he’s working. He can be at a
party, in his pajamas, or at the Super Bowl. Ron is always on the job and the
network is always on." That's the world I come from. You have to work your
balls off to succeed (as I discuss in tip #6 here: <http://bit.ly/5Gccio>).
Fuck this part-time shit that Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (at
37signals) are pitching. Ask Larry Bird or Michael Jordan if they worked part-
time on their basketball skills?

~~~
marketer
You know, there's probably a whole class of professional athletes that have a
hard time supporting themselves. I don't have the numbers, but I'd expect that
most minor-league players don't make remarkable salaries, but they continue
for a chance to make it to the major leagues.

~~~
SWalker26
Maybe they're not working hard enough. Larry Bird and Michael Jordan both said
they were the first to the gym and the last to leave. My point here is simple:
there are no shortcuts to success (other than rare exceptions).

~~~
philwelch
And for a contrasting view, from Allen Iverson:

"We're sitting here, and I'm supposed to be the franchise player, and we're
talking about practice. I mean listen, we're sitting here talking about
practice, not a game, not a game, not a game, but we're talking about
practice. Not the game that I go out there and die for and play every game
like it's my last, but we're talking about practice, man! How silly is that?"

~~~
jfornear
Thanks, now I have this stuck in my head again... :)
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exOxUAntx8I>

I'm not sure why SWalker is being downvoted (unless it's just for his tone).
We really need to clarify criteria/comparisons here. Iverson should not be
compared to MJ or Bird (IMO), as 37signals should not be compared to Google.

Jerry Rice is probably the best counterexample to Iverson types. He's known
for working harder than anyone. No one could keep up with him, and he was the
best.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_records_held_by_Jer...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_records_held_by_Jerry_Rice)

If you want to be the next MJ, Bird, Rice, or Google, you better be working
hard... I don't understand why it's trendy to believe otherwise (assuming
SWalker is being downvoted in disagreement).

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barmstrong
LOVED the last ditch email haha...."we may be going down":

"So sometime after 11pm, I wrote Ron and essentially said: “hello, you don’t
know me, I’m an executive at a company you’re an investor in, and we need a
meeting—in person—with the CEO himself of this Fortune 50 company—this
week—and if you can’t make this happen, hey that’s ok, but we may be going
down—sorry.” Ron wrote back in literally 2 minutes and said, in what I have
learned is Ron’s distinctive email style (immediate, short, all caps), “AM ON
IT.”"

~~~
barmstrong
Just to elaborate...I'm thinking back to some of the most memorable moments of
my life, and they have come out of situations like this, where for some reason
you need to accomplish the impossible in a very short amount of time. That's
when you really do something drastic and operate on the edge of your ability,
and amazing stuff happens.

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netcan
I'm not sure exactly why, but something about this kind of sits badly.
Somehow, I don't like the idea that a person has this infrastructure role.

~~~
stretchwithme
it seems human networks are inevitably composed of humans

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jasonlbaptiste
I sincerely hope I have the honor of working with Ron one day. The values
described here are hard to come by and the same ones that I was taught to
value growing up. The values of honor, loyalty, and timeliness transcend
"money".

------
jackowayed
Am I the only one that _loathes_ those link previews?

~~~
Qz
Huh? Not getting any link previews here.

~~~
jackowayed
On the article, if your mouse passes over a link (and you have JS enabled), it
pops up a snapshot of what that page is, using <http://www.snap.com/>.

It appears to require you to have your mouse over the link for a little while
(like a tenth of a second), so if you always move your mouse fast and never
considered clicking a link, you wouldn't have seen it.

It's really annoying.

~~~
Qz
Maybe it's being blocked by AdBlock Plus -- I hovered for several seconds and
nothing showed.

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djhomeless
I've always had a high opinion about Ron despite never meeting the man. After
reading this, it makes you want him as an investor that much more...

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initself
That is the most readable site layout I have ever seen.

~~~
cookiecaper
I still used Readability on it. I appreciate that it's not gaudy or hard, but
I couldn't resize the text to the size where I like it (which is a large
size); after two Ctrl+Wheel-Up increments, the tab stops responding and has to
be killed in Chromium on Linux. Just used Readability because it doesn't have
the same problems.

~~~
Qz
Is chromium good? I just did ctrl+wheel up 10 times on that site in Firefox
and had no problems.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yeah, it's good. It's just the unbranded build of Google Chrome. I think it's
just a bug with one of the features on that page; it seems to zoom to screen
width and then crash when I try to go up more. Probably using a CSS shadow or
something else uncommon and buggy.

~~~
Qz
I just went back, and zoomed in and out from max and min zoom levels back and
forth several times, with a video streaming on my other monitor -- not a
hitch. I really don't think there's anything wrong with the website.

------
zackattack
The Game song, referenced: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkJZhKT7W6g>

P.S. HipHopGoblin is now open source, a few of us from HN are working on
bringing it back to life. We are implementing it now with DirectedEdge. Email
me if interested.

