Last night I attended a wonderful event hosted by Battery Ventures, the fourth in their Digital Dollars & Sense series, this one on "Monetizing Local." Roger Lee moderated a rockstar panel with representation from CityGrip, Foursquare, Yext, and Groupon.
As a customer acquisition buff, I had been looking forward to the event from its first announcement. Each of these companies has a key role in how companies and consumers connect on a local level, and yet each is solving the problem in different ways. Beyond the content, which will come in a later post, and the networking opportunities before and after, one of the things that stuck with me the most were the differences in personalities and the difference between liking someone and respecting their business.
No different from a kid who meets one of his heroes only to be let down, that was the general feeling I had after both listening to one of the panelists and spending a few moments with them outside of the panel. I think there is something about human nature that makes us want to like a person who has done something we respect professionally, just as there is a hope that the person behind something we like would be a person we like. We know they must have exceptional talent, but we still hope they have something human.
There are no shortage of examples of exceptionally talented individuals who are demanding, difficult, and anxiety producing at the best of times while almost always being generally insensitive and unaffected. It's one thing to come across as self-centered, another to be smug and rude.
I'm still bullish on the business and the model, but I certainly do wish I didn't go in with expectations of thinking the executive behind it would be more like the business he ran. Expectations can be a killer. Sure, it makes it easier to root for the company and want to help them out when like and respect align, but as any investor could have told me, one is not necessary for the other. And, in many scenarios there isn't a correlation.
Thanks again to Battery for the excellent event.
