Billions With Zero Knowledge - Austin Hill, Entrepreneur & Angel Investor

I made my first blog post just over three months ago on October 19th 2006. I mentioned in that post, that an inaugural post was forthcoming. Well I’ll be posting it soon. I decided to experiment with the whole blogging thing for a few months before posting the original first post that I wrote. I expect I’ll edit it a bit based on my experiences these past ninety days.

Here are some quick statistics.

1. I’ve made 50 posts in the past 92 days.
2. There have been 147 comments left (including some of my own comments).
3. My Technorati ranking when I first measured it on November 1st 2006 was 471,327. Today my rank is 17,932 (as of this writing).
4. When I first checked, I had 9 links from 7 blogs on Technorati on November 1st 2006. Today I have 313 links from 178 blogs.
5. My Wordpress Slimstat plug in which is my oldest stats package says I have had 73,407 hits and 8,803 unique visitors since Oct. 17th when the blog was turned on.
6. My Mint statistics package which went live shortly after I launched says that I’ve had 27,746 total hits and 5,439 unique visitors.
7. The must subscribers I’ve had on RSS is 93, although I’ve been averaging about 75 regularly lately. (If you enjoy the blog, consider subscribing via RSS or you can subscribe via email)
8. I have become among the first hits on Google when you search for my name. My bio at Radialpoint and Synomos’s homepages use to be on the 2nd or 3rd page of results before I started blogging. (This is essential for executives today. When someone wants to know about you, they Google you - and if you aren’t putting your own voice on the first page of Google results - you are missing an opportunity to start a conversation. If you don’t have a personal blog, setup your LinkedIn Public Profile page to promote your experience and network. Google yourself and see if you are promoting your personal brand in the results.)
9. I’ve had visitors from 40+ countries with the single largest percentage (12.7%) coming from Montreal.

I want to thank my readers and my friends who have given me tips introducing me to the tricks of blogging. Thanks to those of you who have linked to me, or helped our Gifter project by leaving a wish. I appreciate the comments, feedback and how many old friends and new friends have reached out and contacted me through this blog.

I encourage you to reach out if you have something interesting in Canada that you are working on. I am going to be continuing to write posts about Canadian Internet and social media projects, entrepreneurs and other interesting Canadian tech community news.

I haven’t really tried to comment or track everything that is occurring in the blogosphere or the industry. I don’t write about the latest technology news, whatever Techcrunch covers or Apple releases. I’ve written about topics that I have some perspective or opinion on. I am trying to help build a conversation and a sense of community among Canadian technology executives, angel investors, entrepreneurs and technologists. So expect me to continue to write about Canadian technology projects, entrepreneurs and community related events.

I have a lot of areas that I’d like to improve with my writing style. Brevity is something that I need to work on.

I’ve most enjoyed the interviews I’ve conducted with different people who are doing interesting things in Canada. I plan to continue doing interesting interviews with entrepreneurs, social media experts and interesting people I meet in my travels.

My biggest regret is not getting my podcast going. It’s taking a bit longer then I thought. I had hoped to be a blogger & podcaster by now. Between working on our startup, some of the volunteer, advisory and angel work I do, and Gifter.org (look for some changes soon to that project) I’ve been holding off.

I’ve got some great audio interviews with Robert Scoble, Canadian author Don Tapscott, Mike Sikorsky and Jason Woodrow from Cambrian House, Mike McDerment from Freshbooks, my old friends Elliot Noss from Tucows, David Hornick (VC, podcaster), and Jeff Clavier (who is also my former VC when he invested in Zero-Knowledge while at Reuters Venture Fund). I am going to get these up in the next month, sorry to you guys for the delay.

Blogging has become invaluable in how I conduct business. I don’t think I have anything new to say about the benefits of blogging that hasn’t been captured in the great book Naked Conversations by Shel Israel and Robert Scoble.

I’m convinced that blogging is becoming a crucial activity for any entrepreneur building a company, a personal brand, raising money or wishing to have a voice in their industry.

On Mon 22 Jan 2007.