Eating Our Own Dog Food

As an early adopter, I usually "eat our own dogfood" as our companies get early betas, etc. But as life gets more complex, some of the more mission critical tasks I do won't brook too many crashes.  This is especially true now that I'm on Vista, and a reboot is 10 minutes or more. So I'd gotten somewhat out of the habit. Fortunately not completely so.

This morning, I was searching for a CD by an obscure jazz singer, Katie Eagleson.  Looking on Amazon (often my first quick look), led to a $39.98 price for the CD, which just seemed way out of line.  Then I thought "I wonder what Bigger Boat would suggest?" Full disclosure - Bigger Boat is a First Round Capital investment, and I'm a board member.   I had used it a year ago when we launched, but got out of the habit.  A quick search on Bigger Boat instantly took me to an $8.90 download of the CD - a quick $31.08 savings!

I've also been using the beta of Xobni which gives quite interesting information on my large (12GB) Outlook files.  I've installed and uninstalled it twice, but it's clearly moving forward and helpful. Now to start seeing what one of our newer investments, Mint can save me:)

So yes, it's a good practice for venture capitalists to eat our own dogfood. Not only can we better advise the companies, often they can help us in the same way we hope they'll help all their other users.

Comments

[Katie Eagleson]

Hi Howard,
This is Katie Eagleson, the singer referred to in your story. I know that the price of CDs was not the point of your blog, but I've been wondering why it's even LEGAL for somebody to charge that much on Amazon for my CD. I'm embarrassed by that. I hope no one out there falls prey. There are many other places to get it online that are reasonable. By the way.... I hope you enjoy the music!
Katie

[David S Rose]

What a spectacular example of the way Web 2.0 (whatever that is) is changing our world!

Howard posts a blog entry about some neat new technology, and as an example references an obscure jazz singer he likes. Katie Eagleson, said singer, has a Google blog alert running which tells her that she has been mentioned. She then leaves a comment on Howard's blog, which in turn catches my attention, and off I go to find a copy for myself (since we all know how good Howard's taste is :-). And of course, I'm going to use BiggerBoat to find a reasonably priced copy.

This kind of interlinked, interacting, user-generated content and networking is the essence of this brave new world, and I'm not sure that the effect of all this has truly sunk in yet, even with those of us in the 'digerati'...let alone the other 6 billion people out there.

It's a new world, and welcome to it! (And I can't wait to hear Katie's album...)

[Katie Eagleson]

A very new world indeed. I hope you enjoy the album.

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[Tim Marman]

And, of course, what would a new web world be without a couple of spam comments? :)

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