In a very kind gesture, Ivan Kirigin submitted this blog (and Intercom.io’s blog) to answer the question posed by Disqus, What is the best content marketing campaign you have seen and why? I’m honored by his comment. In response, David Fleck, head of revenue at Disqus asked whether the blog has ever led to an investment and whether that’s the right KPI for it.

I haven’t yet found a startup through the blog that Redpoint eventually invested in, but I’m hopeful it will one day. But this blog has helped me compete for investments. Ex Post Facto is my place to share how I think about products and markets and startups.

In a recent competitive fundraising process, a founder came across the blog and read about product design philosophy and how build a sales team. The ideas resonated with him. Without spending weeks getting to know each other, he knew how I would think about his business and that gave him and his team confidence that we would work well together. Naturally, I was over the moon when he told me that.

I’ve thought quite a bit about how to measure the success of this blog. A while back, I wrote that I would like to measure “the fraction of entrepreneurs and startup employees I reached the day before.” But my thinking has evolved a bit.

Recently, I read a post about Adam Rifkin’s research into building networks and communities and the last few paragraphs resonated with me.

There are lots of ways to measure success for the blog, but ultimately the best measure is the value it brings to the community. In particular, I want this blog to help the startup community and the best way to do that is by contributing honest writing that provokes conversation and debate, helps founders solve problems and points to areas of opportunity.

That’s why I try to fashion this blog as a journal of my learning. When I write, I’m writing the thoughts I would want to read if I were an entrepreneur starting a business.