3 ms·

I think personal emails are a nice touch, but I wonder what happens if a venture is acquired, sold or even passed on. I remember a friend who worked for a popul

I think personal emails are a nice touch, but I wonder what happens if a venture is acquired, sold or even passed on. I remember a friend who worked for a popular publication in town going through a legal battle over her Twitter account. At the time, companies did not have the naming conventions they do now (@NPRxxxx or @CNNxxxx) that drew the line between personal and professional accounts. When she left the publication, her Twitter account went with her and the publication felt that, since those followers came from her work at the publication, they were owned by them. Now, if your venture fails, absolutely that personal email connection is incredibly invaluable. I just wonder if in other instances it would end up biting you in the ass.

nate 13y ago
Ah, that raises a good point. When I left my first company Inkling (http://inklingmarkets.com http://inklingmarkets.com) to run what became Draft (http://draftin.com http://draftin.com) full time, I realized I didn't have my own "brand". People know me through Inkling. Especially when it came to writing. All this writing that I was really proud of was on the Inkling blog. And now I don't work there anymore. No one even knows that writing exists. Your friend obviously ran into a problem with this approach, but I predict it's more frequent that we create assets like company blogs and Twitter accounts that get thrown away as we move through life and our projects and we don't build anything up for the long term. You can definitely balance this. Today I make sure I spend a lot more time on building up assets that directly reflect me: my blog Ninjas and Robots (http://ninjasandrobots.com http://ninjasandrobots.com) and my Twitter account. But I still have a Draft Twitter account I use to do some "corporate" messaging.
- jdbernard 13y ago
  Having spent most of my career thus far building cool things I can't really talk about in detail this hits home.

nate 13y ago

Ah, that raises a good point. When I left my first company Inkling (http://inklingmarkets.com http://inklingmarkets.com) to run what became Draft (http://draftin.com http://draftin.com) full time, I realized I didn't have my own "brand". People know me through Inkling. Especially when it came to writing. All this writing that I was really proud of was on the Inkling blog. And now I don't work there anymore. No one even knows that writing exists. Your friend obviously ran into a problem with this approach, but I predict it's more frequent that we create assets like company blogs and Twitter accounts that get thrown away as we move through life and our projects and we don't build anything up for the long term. You can definitely balance this. Today I make sure I spend a lot more time on building up assets that directly reflect me: my blog Ninjas and Robots (http://ninjasandrobots.com http://ninjasandrobots.com) and my Twitter account. But I still have a Draft Twitter account I use to do some "corporate" messaging.

jdbernard 13y ago
Having spent most of my career thus far building cool things I can't really talk about in detail this hits home.