Guest: Pascal Levensohn- Levensohn Venture
Host: Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices

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It doesn't take a huge amount of dollars to develop, I think a really credible and strong blog or Podcasting program, I think, what it has to do, is more passion and commitment. This shouldn't be a chore.

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This is Podtech.net, welcome to MarketingVoices, featuring the fresh respectives of innovative marketing leaders and examining how social media is changing marketing, through out the world. Here's your host Jennifer Jones.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Hi! This is Jennifer Jones and today on MarketingVoices, I have Pascal Levensohn, who's Founder and Managing Director of Levensohn Venture Partners. And Levensohn Venture Partners, is a venture firm that is very well known and very successful, and Pascal himself has been innovating with social media for years. And he has published ground breaking articles on the venture industry and corporate governance topics since 1999. So, one of the reasons that I wanted to have Pascal on Marketing Voices is given that he's with the venture firm and he's essentially in the service business, where I'm seeing more and more increased interest and people using social media from accounting firms, law firms, venture capital firms, I've had a couple of e-mails from people on that.

I wanted to ask Pascal, because he has been a Blogger since January of 2005 and he now has a Podcasting series called VC-InsideOut that I'll be asking him questions about today and it produces really original -- his show produces original content twice per month. So, he's very prolific and his firm is very prolific, and so it's a really good subject in a sense for MarketingVoices, because of the fact that he does so much. So, Pascal with that long introduction, welcome to MarketingVoices.

Pascal Levensohn - Levensohn Venture Partners
Thanks, Jennifer, good to be on the show.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Good. So, my first question is, why did you decide to start using social media in your business?

Pascal Levensohn - Levensohn Venture Partners
Well, social media and blogging actually came to me as an afterthought for the business. I actually started using blogging, because of my personal interest in religious pluralism in interface dialogue. I'd had some interesting experiences in the Middle East in 2004, was sending e-mails to larger, larger groups of people. And then I said, Well maybe I should be blogging about this, and having it be more interactive as well," and, so I really launched the Blog on religious issues of cultural power and then actually started blogging about business things some months after that.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, what kind of benefit have you seen from your Blog then given that objective ever since (ph)?

Pascal Levensohn - Levensohn Venture Partners
Well, the biggest benefit is that I've built a community of interest and have initiated conversations with people that have stemmed from my blog post. And, also that I've met people in circles that have read my material and suddenly we have a whole new thing to talk about, that I didn't even know, we had uncommon. So, it's really open, new link to people that I had no idea, could exist.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, given that it's kind of a unique topic to really focus on, as a founder and a managing director of Venture Firm, you've got sort of this religious tone to your blog and topics. Talk to me a little bit about that how did that come about?

Pascal Levensohn - Levensohn Venture Partners
Well, my background, personal background is, I come from a multi faith family. My mother was a Christian catholic, my father was a Jewish Holocaust Survivor and what's been really interesting is that a lot people don't normally find out about your background, your personal history from business interactions. And, so I found that it's actually made the discussions that I have with people in business, much more interesting. I found that I share either ethnic things with people that I had no idea, I might have a link too. And it's really changed the nature of interactions that I have with people in business, and make them actually a lot more rich and colorful.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, do you find that you've got any new deals out of -- since your Blog?

Pascal Levensohn - Levensohn Venture Partners
I've definitely been approached by entrepreneurs who make a point even before meeting me and telling me that they really enjoy what I've written about, and I've had lots of words of encouragement. And so then it creates an affinity and it makes sort of for more interesting conversation and I think that to the extent that makes someone feel more comfortable, make them feel that I am more approachable that we have something else to talk about, besides what's the pre-money that's a good thing.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, now you just started this podcasting series called VC-InsideOut. Can you talk about why you decided to start podcasting?

Pascal Levenhsohn - Levenhsohn Venture Partners
Absolutely. Podcasting is really the next extension of this whole Web2.0 concept of interactivity and you want to give people a sense of the real body language that's behind the things that we are writing about and there's nothing better than that, then hearing our voices, actually hearing our voices and getting a sense of what's really that conversation going on, what is it really about and so podcasting, because I am an amateur musician and I've always been interested in sound and I had personally -- have a ProTool software, was really easy for me to basically say, "Hey why shouldn't I start doing some of these Podcast shows directly," and so, we decide to create a program around it and everyone else in the firm got pretty excited about it and actually first few shows feature a number of the partners in the firm and will all be -- all five of us are going to be doing Podcast on different subjects, but this is definitely more narrow we defined. We were focusing on business issues that has to do with corporate governance and with entrepreneurs, because they are very relevant to our business.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, give me a little sense about how you kind of orchestrate the podcasting and in the real technical sense, so I know there are a lot of people would say, "Oh! My gosh, how do you have time to do it?" So, sort of walk us through kind of the time commit you have and how you actually do the Podcast?

Pascal Levenhsohn - Levenhsohn Venture Partners
Podcasts actually technically are pretty easy to do, so just as with this one, it takes say 20 minutes to put the show together then you do some editing, I can go from cold start to having an episode completely produced in 90 minutes. We've established a dedicated website, which is vc-io.com. So, we have a web designer who maintains our normal levels in venture partners website and we just can upload an MP3 file very easy to do and so it just takes a little bit of skill with ProTools, but other than that it's really pretty simple to do.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, when you first started doing all this, did you have any real expectations on what you expected to get out of it?

Pascal Levenhsohn - Levenhsohn Venture Partners
I really didn't -- what I liked about it was that, it was an interesting way to reach out to people and then see what happens. I mean the reality is that, blogging and podcasting it's still early days, there's a lot of noise in the blogosphere and the biggest challenge I think technically, in terms of the Internet overall ability to distil through this information. It is one of the larger unstructured data mining projects out there. And so, you've got things like sphere or company know now (ph) in the RSS space, you've got Technorati out there, you've got a bunch of things that are tools trying to address, how do I harness and get through all of this mountain of data.

And now the data is compounded, because it goes into voice, either it's even more difficult to mind how you're going to analyze what is on those Podcasts other than the taglines that people get. So, it's early days, the whole issue of credibility, I wanted to start writing things on my blog that were credible and that debugged some thoughts that maybe other people are saying about intolerance and about religious pluralism and also to disseminate information that is not so easily available based on my own direct experience, for example, traveling in Israel and being involved in certain social projects over there. So, I've been very pleased with the fact that there is a significant community of interest has developed around the things that I am doing and I think that's great, but in terms of bigger expectations I think it's really early days.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
So, what about the challenges that you've faced, you sound very positive, you didn't sound like there's anything negative, but there's going to be something. There's always a little bit of twinge of challenge, can you talk to us about that?

Pascal Levenhsohn - Levenhsohn Venture Partners
I think there's two things, 1) I have been disappointed that there's less interactivity than I would like. I was expecting to get more comments and recently, I have had some really thoughtful comments as oppose suppose to the vulgar, "I hate you" et cetera type of stuff, which I don't get very often either, but everyone's in a while, you get a whacko who just post something that's crazy on your blog and you have to clean it out. But I'd like to see more interactivity and I think that there are technical hurdles to that and so obviously there's companies working on different products, one of our companies informative has a product called BlogScope, which is designed to help with more interactivity so you can get real time answers from people on your blog, but again these things are not fully deployed and so I'd like to see --- I view that as a challenge still. And then the other is, how do you navigate through the mountain of misinformation that is in so many blogs and how can you sort of call the noise out the interference in all of these huge channels of information?

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Yeah, now I think that's definitely key. And that's what leads to my next question is, in terms of matrix, I am looking at these I don't know if you as a venture firm really has a specific matrix, the way you say a marketing person, in a big company would on the amount money spent, time and all of that as it leads into, "Okay I'm going to these stuff," do you have any way of saying, "Okay. Look we're going to put this kind of matrix on it and if we exceed that, then we'll feel great or if we don't then we won't?"

Pascal Levensohn - Levensohn Venture Partners
I think that we don't even really look at it that way in terms of our own efforts, because it doesn't take huge amount of dollars to develop a really credible and strong blog or podcasting program. I think what it has to do is, more passion and commitment. This should not be chore. So, if you're contemplating using social media, as a business tool, don't make it a chore, because I think that's when you'll be scratching your head and saying, "Well, I'm not getting what I thought I wanted to get out of it." Me personally, it's therapy for me to be writing my blog, I mean my wife says to me, - "You get so much out of just, because it's an outlet for you to get these ideas out," and that's exactly what it is. And so, again I'm not recommending it is therapy for everybody, I am just saying that it's a really fun thing to do when you should think of it that way and make it useful and irrelevant to what you are doing in your business, or your personal life and that of itself, will make it worthwhile.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Well that's great. This has been very, very helpful. I'm sure that I'll get a lot of feedback from people saying that, or especially in the venture business or in the group of attorneys or something like that, this is a good Podcast, because a lot of people assume that it's only for companies and not necessarily for services businesses. So, thank you very much for the time with me on MarketingVoices.

Pascal Levensohn - Levensohn Venture Partners
Thanks very much Jennifer.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Let me make sure I've got all the listeners tied into your website, it's www.levp.com.

Pascal Levensohn - Levensohn Venture Partners
Correct.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
What is the direct link to the VCIO?

Pascal Levensohn - Levensohn Venture Partners
Sure It's VC- InsideOut is the name of the program and the website is www.vc-io.com.

Jennifer Jones - Marketing Voices
Great, well my thanks again and so to all my listeners, I have been talking with Pascal Levensohn, who's Founder and Managing Director of Levensohn Venture Partners, which is a venture firm in San Francisco, California. And to everyone else, thank you so much for listening to MarketingVoices and until next week may all the voices you hear be MarketingVoices.