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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
Rumor has it that he is not afraid to stand up for what he believes is right. Doing a quick search on Google shows exactly that - he only gets tough when he wants to correct a "wrong".
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
>"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.
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.
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.
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.