At the end of last week I left a cryptic tweet saying I was ‘working on some important paperwork‘… Well, I’m pleased to announce that NutShell Mail, one of the companies in the portfolio of startups I advise, has been aquired by email marketing campaign solution Constant Contact.
If you’ve not yet checked out NutShell Mail, it is one of those really smart ideas you wish you’d had yourself, which is why I was so excited at giving the opportunity to contribute to it.
NutShellMail delivers to your email inbox a nicely crafted email of the activity streams from all of your social networks. You set this up to occur a couple of times a day, and what you are presented with is an email you can quickly digest during natural breaks in the day. It’s particularly good for people who are easily distracted by the updates from a desktop client and constant Facebook email notifications.
Back to the aquisition: I’m so pleased and overjoyed for founders David Lyman and Mark Scmulen along with David N, Nirav and Todd. They have all worked so hard for this.
I’ve worked with them for just over a year and in that time they have achieved so much. Highlights for me have to be them moving out here for fbFund and their pivot expansion into providing email digests for Facebook Fan Pages, which is probably one of the areas Constant Contact is particuarlly excited about.
Advisory capital
However, this also validates my decision to dedicate a proportion of my time on forming and working with a select portfolio of companies in an advisory capacity. A concept Stowe Boyd once described as “advisory capital” (the link to his blog post sadly seems to be broken).
I love working with startups and so anything I can do to help steer product strategy decisions, give platform advice or leverage my contact network is really fulfilling.
With this in mind, I’m going to be formalizing this part of my work over the coming weeks, and no doubt taking on a few more companies to mentor and advise. If you have thoughts or ideas on early-stage startups that I might be able to bring value to, please let me know.
Ben, on behalf of the entire NutshellMail team, thank you for playing such a critical role in our success. We would not be where we are today without all of your great help and insight. You have been a wonderful advisor and friend!
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