Live from an Air Canada middle seat.

I like to think of myself as a very accessible person.  I've been saying for 7+ years, that I'll take meetings, listen, answer emails, etc.  I do it to go against the grain of "You have to know somebody that knows me" or other nonsense. I process, on average, 450 or so emails a day, thankfully 2 voice mails a day (hint), and I'm hanging in.

So, with that, I'd like to believe given the open nature of this offer, people would use it judiciously. Given the latest rash of stuff flowing in, most with the 'saw your blog' openings, I thought it would be helpful to point out a few things.

• Assume I'm busy and I'm blowing through your stuff at lightening speed.  I speed read, try to find the nugget, the question, pound an answer and I'm off to the next one.
• Assume I'm a stupid, attention deficit, english is my third language, Luddite, goofball with a checkbook.   This outlandish commentary is my admittedly over the top, melodramatic, not so polite way of saying you have to get to the point in a reasonably targeted way given your audience, me.  I am a VC trying to turn one dollar into ten. Or more. You have to focus your email/note to the point. To what I'm doing.  I'm not Dragon's Den, not recruiting for America's Next Top Model or American Idol.

Problem/Solution/How we can all make money is my simple three part mantra.

Unfortunately, the process can just grind down. Here are three email exchanges which I've changed slightly to protect the people/product, etc.

First up: I'm the only one who can do this.

Them: "Rick, your blog is amazing, you are the only one who does it right. As it happens, I too am the only guy who can solve a serious data integrity transfer integration problem between mobile devices, cloud computing services, and peer to peer interactions.  How can I get you to come by my lab and see this"

Me: It's difficult for me to justify a flight to AUSTRALIA from Canada without some additional information, like perhaps , an executive summary, PowerPoint, or web site where I can play with this cool stuff.

Next up: I'm too busy

Them: Mr. Segal. Love the newsletter. We're three people with extensive video compression experience and want to get money to start selling our product.  Our compression engine allows HD movies to be streamed over a dial-up Internet and CDMA mobile phones.  What's the process to get money or sell this to Mark Cuban? It's worth 100 million but we'll take $16.5 million.

Me: Sounds interesting. I need a plan of some type, demo, summary, slide deck, etc, to better evaluate what you have.

Them: We're way to busy to do any of that. If we can get some money, we'll hire somebody.

Last Up: VCs suck, do you?

Them: I've read your blog and you appear to suck less than other VCs. I have an idea to crush Microsoft and Facebook all at the same time. If you do suck less than the rest of your ilk, I'll share my plan.

Me: Actually, I suck more.

On the last one I almost lied just so I could see what a Microsoft/Facebook crush em combo sandwich would be.

Late last year I wrote a blog post suggesting that individual bloggers like me were being replaced by traditional media as the leading voices in the blog world. It caused a bit of a stir and I followed it up the next day by saying that "social media requires real people".  My point in both posts is that I really like to read blogs owned by and written by a person as opposed to a team of people being paid to blog. I made my point and moved on.

Today I read a post on The Standard that suggests the same thing. Ian Lamont writes the following about the Techmeme leaderboard:

the old-school A-listers aren't being displaced by the many talented B-to-Z listers out there. Rather, the Leaderboard is increasingly populated by mainstream publishers, tech blog networks, and corporate blogs and PR sites.

And in addition, Nick Carr is taking the summer off from blogging, Scoble's moved the hub of his energy from his blog to FriendFeed, and Calacanis has quit blogging entirely.

As Jason said in his first email (he's moved from blogging to broadcasting):

In the early days of blogging Peter Rojas, who was my blog professor, told me what was required to win at blogging: "show up every day."

I agree completely. In good times and bad, I blog every day. That's how it is for me. And I don't plan to change that. I get so much value out of blogging that I can't imagine doing what I do without a little time every day writing down my thoughts.

But change is afoot. Today, we get the news that Alley Insider "raised a pot of money at a mind boggling valuation". That's a joke from Henry Blodget, founder of Alley Insider. But  the fact remains that  Alley Insider raised about a million dollars to build out the Alley Insider blog. I like Alley Insider and they re-run some of my posts there from time to time.

And last week Rafat Ali sold Paid Content for $30mm to The Guardian. When that was announced, a friend of mine suggested to me that I could sell AVC for $5-10mm. First, I am not sure that's true, but second I could never do that.

This blog is me and I am this blog. It's mine and will always be mine. I understand why many of the individuals who made blogging what it is are either moving on or turning their blogs into businesses. That's the way it is. But I am fortunate that this blog is totally integrated into my business and provides great value to me and my partners. So it's sustainable from an emotional and economic perspective and I plan to keep showing up every day.

Recently, I've gotten a couple of notices from an outfit called Backcheck.net.  They are a division of something called Checkwell Decision Corporation. They have concerncheck.net and exitcheck.net.  Back in an airplane so no links, sorry.

Consider how this process works:

First, I get this email (names, etc, redacted, this privacy thing going around):

"Hello Rick Segal,

BackCheck has been contracted by [] Inc. to conduct a pre-employment reference check on [], who has provided us with your name as a reference. A member of our HR Interviewing team will be calling you within the next 24 hours to request that you answer a few questions about Christopher. This step is vital to []’s potential employment with [], and we greatly appreciate your assistance.

We respect that you are busy and may not be available when we call.  As a result, we would like request that you contact us at your earliest convenience.  Please call us at 1-866-xxx-xxxx or 604-xxx-xxxx.

Thank you in advance for your assistance in completing a reference for []."

I'm not going to pick on the 'we would like request' because I ain't perfect with grammar, spelling, etc, but I'm just saying..

Here's the suck part. I'm massively busy and while I love these two people, would hire these two people, recommended these two people, this is just a friction heavy way to close the loop on getting 15 minutes of my time.

This is why I'm counting on Tungle to hunt down companies like this and fix this. "Dear Rick, we know you are busy, please click here to pick a time that works for you and we will call."  And, lord, how hard is it to set up an IVR to do this. Please tell us why you like this person, press pound when done with this question. Press one if you'd hire this person again, etc, etc. 

Lesson for you? Friction free, folks, friction free.

Opportunity?  It seems to me that somebody could go all Guy "12,000 dollar web company" Kawasaki, Open Source, Web 2.0, Y-Combinator on these Backcheck people and kick their bureaucratically inefficient butts up into a mainframe drive pack. 

(I get this way when I'm in a middle seat.)

Bonus observation: Here's why search isn't finished yet.  The reference above to Guy will never come up in a search engine today because of the blurb in the middle of the first and last name.  Solve that problem, you're the next Google.  It's about analyzing the sentence, etc, blaah blaah.