Had to reblog Atlas Ventures, Fred Destin's January 10 take on what makes for a great VC site.

Not only becuase he gushes about the Matrix site (thanks Fred):

"Best Overall Design Award: Matrix

You can take issue with the small fonts and the relatively classic feel of this website, but as a piece of VC web design the Matrix Partners effort does its job wonderfully well.  Lead with entrepreneurs, clear navigation bar underneath, direct access to subsections from the navigation bar, clean and clear interface etc.  It’s rich and deep and easy to navigate.  They even manage to make some of their quotes work, because they keep the endorsement implicit.   See Marc Fleury’s: “everybody told me JBoss would never succeed”.  Nice touch."

But also because he makes some great points about the lack of differentiation in VC marketing:

"One of the challenges that all venture capitalists are dealing with is that we are all peddling essentially the same product.  Funding “disruptive innovation” ?  Check.  Backing “world class entrepreneurs” ? Check.  Building “World class companies” ? Check.  Bizarrely no one wants to back dimwits with no ambition.  To make the copy less obvious, some firms like Flybridge tone the style down and talk about working with “great entrepreneurs to build innovative companies”.  At Atlas we went down the same route and talk about “partnering to solve difficult problems”.  And since “disruptive” is the most overused word in the history of innovation, we got cute and talk of “non-linear innovation”…"

Full post here.