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.
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