Entrepreneurs teach VCs, not the other way around. And I was lucky early in my career to back Seth Godin, who taught me a lot. When I met Seth, he was writing books and building a web company. I backed that web company, Yoyodyne, which exited to Yahoo! a few years later. But books were always Seth's passion and he's written a bunch of them. He's also deconstructed the book publishing business and pushed it to do things that were considered unacceptable. I recall when he put out a free pdf of one of his books six months before the book came out. And increased the book's sales numbers in the process. He did that in the 90s.
It is old news now that Seth is doing a Kickstarter for his next book. I've thought for a long time that authors should take their advances from their avid readers on Kickstarter instead of from book publishers who will lock them up and hold them back. In something like four days, Seth has taken an advance of $216,000 and there are 26 days to go. Who knows, he might get a seven figure advance if this keeps going like this.
To read the full, original article click on this link: A VC: The art of important work, of making a ruckus and of inventing the future
