Ed talks about the importance of the back channel

by on November 26, 2005

Do you treat everyone nicely?

Well, Ed Sim demonstrates why you need to. He asks his back channel before he hires anyone. I know lots of people who do this.

What’s a back channel? It’s people Ed knows and trusts.

The VCs are very tied into the back channel. One time a VC told me what various people in the industry thought of me (not all of it complimentary, either!)

Think that doesn’t matter? Uh, huh.

  • Orbit
    well why would VC need to like you, VC are for people who want to create big companies....hmm..thats everyone isnt it..hehe
  • Orbit: VCs also recommend employees to small companies that don't have VC money. I've seen this happen many times. VCs build their own reps by helping companies out.
  • LIke they say, it's not who you know, it's who knows you. Add to that "and what they think of you as a potential hire".
  • how can I edit my template?

    http://nelsonnie.wordpress.com
  • Nelson: you can't yet. Gotta wait for the feature to be turned on. Sorry.
  • R U that naive Robert? Surely not unless you believe you're own publicity. This is shonking psycho babble BS. Ask Bill - on these criteria - would he have a job at MSFT? Doubt it. Would Steve? And God forbid - what about Lawrence Ellison? Come on Robert - you must know better than that. Get real and come back to the world where the big business action is and not in the ephemeral nonsense of Web 2.0 (WETFTM) of FU'd consumer relations.
  • Christopher Coulter
    I second that motion, people that eternally try to make people "like" them will never get anywhere and will end up just a spinning wheels into a wishy washy superficial lathered mess. Leadership and making headway, will bump heads, just do what you think is right, and if the product is good enough and stands up and has enough marketshare, who cares what the back-channel gossips say? A million motives in the back channel too. People respect leadership far more than Tina Brown style back-channel sucking up.

    Shonking psycho-babble BS, well yes, but then that's 70% of this blog, with 30% ego. "Ephemeral nonsense", oh nice wording, can I re-use that? :) But per 'back to the world where the big business action is'? Well to "come back", you first had to have been there. Big biz doesn't have the trendy parties or the new new stuff that always interests the info-overload ADD blogger types, nor does it have the the rare cultic just-became-a-millionare personalities that make the grunts believe in all the smoke and mirrors.
  • Christopher - that is a UK/Euro-centric cynical view of the world...
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