VC Blogs as People Journalism?

Well, maybe if Jeff Jarvis has his way. After dissing most VC blogs as 'abstracted' and 'cliched', he suggests:

VC gossip, catty VC valuation badmouthing, anonymous confessions of the top 10 ways VCs blow off venture beggars, sex tips of the nearly wealthy...

Now I'm not actually sure if he's serious or tongue in cheek, but since Jeff won his spurs starting up Entertainment Weekly, let's take him at his word for the duration of a post, and forecast the chances of VC bloggers turning into People style dish artists.

Ain't. Gonna. Happen. 100%. Here are a few of the reasons why the Valley scene will never be like Hollywood journalism.

Hollywood thrives on publicity. To some extent 'brand awareness' is the only asset of an entertainment celebrity, from actor to news anchor to director. Just make sure the name is spelled right, even if it is the Enquirer or ET. General press notice just gets a VC a batch of dumb proposals and dumb questions.

The VC thrives on word of mouth. What we crave is a good reputation in the trust network that connects up good ideas, smart people, and money. And dishing your deals would do what to that?

The value VCs add is highly specific, taken in both the vernacular and transaction cost economics senses of the word. In most cases, the deal analysis and ongoing business direction will require a good deal of analysis of (variously) the technology involved, the market entry tactics, competitor's capabilities, strengths and holes in the team, fund raising environment, and so on. Particularly early stage deals tend to be 'one-offs' (and if they aren't, you've got to wonder about competitive barriers).

So given that we aren't going to dish on specific deals, and that each of them is likely an oddball in some way, it's hard to come up with pithy and often applicable rules that aren't so high level as to be banal. The comment by Jeff's contrarian friend that "I’d rather see VCs talk about situations where they *didn’t* follow the business cliches" is therefore astute.

So to answer one of Jeff's queries, no, most VCs don't talk in slogans amongst themselves (and those who do are scary). You might call if carefully calibrated and highly motivated gossip, if you want, but it's part of how VCs do a job of putting together ventures in the face of great uncertainty. And there's no motivation at all for that gossip function to be publicly visible.