Fred's not actually grumpy. The reporter just put that in the title to get back at Fred for refusing to talk to him.

And as for that bit at the end about NYC not having a Facebook or Zynga, what does he think Fred could be doing that he isn't? That was a pretty low blow, considering Fred is probably the biggest regional booster of all VCs.

The idea that NYC isn't Silicon Valley because one of the guys who is doing the most for the NYC startup scene isn't doing enough is, quite frankly, moronic and not even worth discussing.

This is a classic sports writing trope as well -- blaming a team's best player when the team doesn't succeed, as opposed to blaming all the chumps around him who were the real cause of the team's failure. See Alex Rodriguez and the Texas Rangers, Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavs, Landon Donovan and the US Soccer team, Peyton Manning and the early 2000s Colts, etc.

pg is exactly right. couldn't agree more.

Fred should send Dylan Byers a copy of Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People. After reading that, Byers may suddenly realize that writing ad-hominem pieces about made up character flaws of one of the most respected and valuable VC in the business may only expose his own inadequacy as a journalist.

I don't know Fred personally, but from following him on Twitter to being an avid reader of his blog, he comes off far from grumpy. Fred's successful/unsuccessful investments aside - he's been nothing but a class act in all of his talks, tweets, blog postings etc. I think there is a lot to learn from him on a myriad of topics including technology, business, venture capital and more. Pardon my ignorance, but this article is absurd and AdWeek should be ashamed of themselves for posting it.

I have traded emails and ideas with Fred for several years now, he is not grumpy at all just as easy to approach as Mark Cuba..in fact.

Re: making NYC a startup hub equivalent to Silicon Valley - "Problem is, Wilson himself isn’t doing nearly as much on that front as he could be."

Where's the evidence for this statement? If anything, all the evidence in the article seems to point to the contrary.

Better yet, what should Fred be doing?

Anyone else notice that Ad Week's non-profile profile almost exactly parallels what Ad Age (fictionally) did to Don Draper on Mad Men?

http://www.amctv.com/mad-men/videos/mad-men-highlights-ep-40...

NYC "journalist" Dylan Byers Is a Prick

>Their investment strategy was based on an idea that was unique at the time [late 2003]: the belief that the Internet’s "next wave" would be in Web services, the "application layer." (Back then, apps were still a novel concept.)

WTF?

I need a shower after reading this.

AdWeek. They want your pageviews.