FeedBurner's Dick Costolo chooses blogs over business plans

Filed in archive How-to on July 3, 2006

Dick Costolo, co-founder and CEO of feed management provider FeedBurner, says given the choice between writing a business plan and putting your ideas on a blog, he'd pick the blog every time.

The topic came up during an interview with Greg Galant, host of pod cast Venture Voice, in a June 20, 2005 program when discussing FeedBurner's most recent round of funding including backing from Brad Feld, blogger and managing partner of Mobius Capital Funds.

Reading Brad's blog and gaining insight in to the kinds of companies in which he had invested and what he thought of them had aided when it came time to pitch FeedBurner for funding, Costolo said.

The comment prompted Galant to ask whether perhaps entrepreneurs should concentrate on creating blogs instead of business plans to which Costolo answered that they should.

He added:

I'm saying if you ask me to choose one or the other, I think in this Web 2.0 world of being able to get companies off the ground quickly, being able to build things, release them and then iterate....and iterate and iterate and iterate and keep rolling out things more frequently that it behooves entrepreneurs to use a blog or some other quick start method of communication as a vehicle for getting awareness and understanding of what they're trying to do instead of building a detailed business plan, trying to get funding around an idea by cold calling people and then, you know, getting started based on that funding.

Costolo further suggested:

I think that having a blog, thinking about what you're doing and writing about what you're doing in the blog is a much faster way to build an audience and generate interest.

Though venture capitalism is beyond the focus of this blog, which focuses more on going it alone, it seems Costolo's advice may be as important if not more so for the bootstrap entrepreneur.

With no venture capitalists or bankers to impress in the beginning what better and less expensive way to get the message out about who you are and what you do?

Clearly the business blog's evolution as part sales pitch/part press release/part independent media is well on its way. Costolo's vision of blog as business plan opens a new dimension of interaction in the earliest stages of a company.

The new development will likely lead to considerable new experimentation including on this blog in the future.