Silicon Valley pitches over podcast

We’re intrigued by what venture capitalist Fred Wilson is doing with podcasts. He’s soliciting entrepreneurs to send him a recorded audio file, which he downloads for later listening on a bike ride. And it happens with minimum hassle: Entrepreneurs simply tag their audio files at del.icio.us with an identifier that Fred subscribes to, via RSS.

For example, there’s this pitch from San Francisco start-up CozmoTV, which CozmoTV CEO Alexander Rowland recently sent Fred. It’s open for everyone else to hear too. He gets his point across well. A web application with a Netflix-like interface that allows easy delivery of TV and other content in new ways. The 3.5 minute pitch is “a long elevator ride,” as even Rowland concedes — but was good enough to make Fred’s “best” list. So Fred, who is in New York, can listen easily to Silicon Valley pitches like this one. See Fred’s most recent posting about this. Fred’s muscles are nothing to sneeze at (see picture), but Fred, please send us an updated calf picture next year, so we get the “after” podcast effect.

Here’s our earlier post on this, with more thought on the podcast pitch.

We’re interested in this podcast idea, and we’ll mull over how SiliconBeat can make use of audio files in our own reporting about valley start-ups. Stay tuned…