Hundreds of thousands of people are trying today to get to see David Hornik. He is a celebrated venture capitalist who is based in Menlo Park in the heart of Silicon Valley. How do you get his attention when you are seeking funding as an entrepreneur? You have to either have such a compelling idea that he will listen to you or even better be introduced by someone he trusts and knows. He likes smart people who don’t waste his time, and come with the uncommon idea that he finds so unique he has to talk to you. David is a celebrated and successful VC who funds companies in social media and marketing like SixApart, Stumbleupon and VideoEgg.

David Hornik is renowned in the venture industry for his unusual perspective on social media. He is an investor in Six Apart, Stumbleupon and VideoEgg. His VentureBlog is one of the most highly read blogs in the industry and his podcast VentureCast, is educational and fun. David talks to me about his latest thinking on the social media world and explains why he feels Facebook is the most amazing platform today. We also discuss Twitter and the future for mobile. This is just part one of three podcasts from David Hornik that will air on Marketing Voices.

I was extremely complimented to discover a blog post about venture branding that gave me great kudos in my work with clients. Although August Capital is not currently a client of my firm, David Hornik a general partner there wrote about his impressions of what it takes to great venture branding and felt I did an excellent job.

As we all know, having others think well of your work is the best, so I am very happy to share that with my Marketing Voices listeners.

Given the 20 some years I have been doing this venture marketing work, it’s nice to know that I am impressing some of the people who most inspire me. David Hornik is certainly one of those people so I was especially thrilled to know he thinks I do great work!

The legendary Guy Kawasaki, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, author and Twitter aficionado talks about the strategies he uses for gaining incredible numbers of people following him on twitter. More than 180,000 people are reading his tweets as of October 2009. He talks about how there is no correct or incorrect way to use Twitter despite the challenging criticisms he gets from his followers on his strategy. He uses Twitter mostly promotionally just to build Alltop, a company he co-founded and loves dearly. Guy talks about how he is a broadcast network—more like PBS– as he educates his readers with his content-rich tweets. He uses ghost writers and discusses his transparency and tricks-of-the-trade.

Premier Venture Capitalist Sharon Wienbar discusses what’s hot and not so hot for 2009 in social media investment. In this 15 minute podcast Wienbar describes what every entrepreneur wants to know: what will make venture partners open up their checkbooks.

For more info see: www.scalevp.com

Guy Kawasaki, blogger, author of 8 books, venture capitalist and former Apple marketing executive, believes CMOs today should “just quit” if they are working with CEOs who don’t get social media. Talking from his home in Silicon Valley, Guy explains what is important about social media, how he plans to monetize his blog and his plans for his next book.