Updated

Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki, founder of Garage Technologies, a Silicon Valley venture firm that invests in early-stage start-ups, has launched a blog.

Garage used to consult for start-up companies, helping them do things like raise cash, but more recently became a full-fledged seed-stage venture firm.

Kawasaki recently wrote the book The Art of the Start, a good primer for those wanting to start their own company and have no idea how to write a business plan, pitch their company or put a team together.

But just a few days after launching, Kawasaki's blog has been dissed by uber-blogger Jeff Jarvis, who is calling it just one more of...

the same.

What amuses me is that it fits the mold of so many other VCs' blogs -- many of which I read and enjoy -- for they are filled with abstracted rules of venture life, like these from Kawasaki: "missions vs. mantras," "the art of intrapreneurship," "top 10 lies of venture capitalists." I wonder whether they are following a leader or whether this is just the way VCs think and talk. (Around the table at home: "As part of my continuing series about how to present better dinnertime conversation, let me list the top 10 cliched lies Dads tell their startups, er, I mean, kids.") It's time for a VC to break free of the form: VC gossip, catty VC valuation badmouthing, anonymous confessions of the top 10 ways VCs blow off venture beggars, sex tips of the nearly wealthy.... Or perhaps follow Tom Evslin's lead and tell funny stories with deeper meaning.

Doc Searls, meanwhile, points to another local VC blogger "who breaks the mold," Christopher Allen, who apparently has been at it for two years but we never noticed.

Christopher Allen

Allen is a venture capitalist over at Alacrity Ventures in Berkeley, and if you read his heady blog, you see that now Steve Jurvetson has competition for being chief VC geek blogger. Prior to Alacrity, Allen was chief technology officer for Certicom.

Update: Venture capitalist Tim Oren explains why VCs tend to stay conceptual:

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?...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.

(Via)

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