Peter Delevett covers startups and venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News. He's been a journalist in Silicon Valley since the dot-com daze.
Kred’s most influential VCs: Al Gore, Biz Stone, Kevin Rose. Really?
Kred, the social analytics tool that claims to measure one’s online influence, just put out a leaderboard of the venture capitalists who wield the most clout on social media. While my list of most influential VCs might include names like Reid Hoffman, Marc Andreessen, Mike Moritz and Jim Breyer, Kred’s number crunchers claim that Al Gore — the guy who invented the Internet — is at the top of the list.
Kred defines “influence” as “how frequently a person is retweeted, replied [to], mentioned and followed on Twitter.” Which is all well and good, but is Gore really a VC? Sure, he’s been a partner since 2007 at Kleiner Perkins, but the firm’s own website acknowledges that Al spends most of his time on his climate-change nonprofit. I have yet to see a funding announcement from Kleiner that has Gore taking the lead role in an investment.
But let’s say you give Gore the mulligan. Is Biz Stone a VC? Since decamping from Twitter last year, he and co-founder Ev Williams have re-launched Obvious Corp., which near as I can tell is a sort of incubator/seed fund for “various things.” Its own website says it’s “more of a philosophy than a company.” Third on Kred’s list is Kevin Rose, who did indeed join Google Ventures earlier this year (much to the chagrin of my colleague Chris O’Brien). Again, though, there are people within that very firm with more impressive records as venture capitalists.
Investors like Chris Sacca, Michael Arrington and Fred Wilson, who probably have far more actual influence in the startup world, appear further down on Kred’s list. John Doerr, who’s created billions of dollars in value by backing the likes of Google and Amazon, ranks 22nd. He and Andreessen no doubt have better things to do all day than post to Twitter (or worry about their Kred rankings). Nor am I really trying to diss Stone and Rose, who’ve created groundbreaking Internet companies. But while I understand how Kred is defining its terms, I’m having a hard time buying the argument.
Kred CEO Andrew Grill, for his part, says the ranking system (and a companion list of investors who spend the most time retweeting and mentioning others) “provides a good indication of those people who really ‘get’ social and are most likely to be open to a discussion about funding.” So, in case you didn’t already know, Dave McClure may be good to approach about your idea for a social media startup.
Peter Delevett covers startups and venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News. He's been a journalist in Silicon Valley since the dot-com daze.
2 comments
Shawn
Hi Peter, this is Shawn from Kred. Thanks for your coverage of our list.
We created our list from our Datamine of 1,400 days of real-time social data by compiling names from several sources, including going through the ‘mastheads’ of about 50 top VC firms, then matching up their Kred score to determine their influence on public social channels. We also used our API to detect people using certain words in their bios, then referred back to other articles/lists on the same subject as a sense-check.
To some degree – and to stay impartial about a list driven by review of an influence measuring algorithm – we have to rely on how people and their firms portray themselves rather than trying to make a qualitative call about their “VC-ishness.” Biz Stone, for example, is named as an advisor at Spark Capital (ref: http://www.crunchbase.com/person/biz-stone and http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/07/biz-stone-joins-twitter-investor-spark-capital-as-strategic-advisor/).
Thanks again for your coverage of our list. We’d love to help with any future stories
Very best
Shawn
Sep 27, 2012
Peter Delevett
Thanks, Shawn.
Sep 27, 2012