Book Short: I Wish This Existed 12 Years Ago Brad Feld has been on my board for over a decade now, and when he and his partner Jason Mendelson told me about a new book they were writing a bunch of months ago called Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, I took note. I thought, “Hmmm. I’d like to be smarter than my lawyer or venture capitalist.” Then I read an advanced copy. I loved it. At first, I thought, I would really have benefited from this when I started Return Path way back when. Then as I finished reading it, I realized it’s just a great reference book even now, all these years and financings…
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Business
Retail, No Longer
Retail, No Longer I’ve evolved my operating system as a CEO many times over the years as our business at Return Path has changed and as the company has scaled up. I’ve changed my meeting routines, I’ve delegated more things, and I’ve gotten less in the details of the business. But there’s one specific thing where I’ve remained very “retail,” or on the front lines, and that is the interview process. I still interview every new hire, usually on the phone or Skype and in most cases only for 15-30 minutes, and then I also do an in-person 15-30 minute check-in when someone is around the 90-day mark as an employee. For me, these have both been great mechanisms for…
The Value of Ownership
The Value of Ownership We believe in ownership at Return Path. One of our 13 core values, as I noted in my prior post, which kicks off a series of 13 posts, is: We are all owners in the business and think of our employment at the company as a two-way street We give stock options to every employee, and we regularly give additional grants to employees as well, as their initial grants vest, as they get promoted into more senior roles, and as they earn them through outstanding performance. But beyond giving those grants out, we regularly remind people that they are part owners of the business, and we encourage them to act that way. Among other mechanisms for…
Return Path Core Values
Return Path Core Values At Return Path, we have a list of 13 core values that was carefully cultivated and written by a committee of the whole (literally, every employee was involved) about 3 years ago. I love our values, and I think they serve us incredibly well — both for what they are, and for documenting them and discussing them publicly. So I’ve decided to publish a blog post about each one (not in order, and not to the exclusion of other blog posts) over the next few months. I’ll probably do one every other week through the end of the year. The first one will come in a few minutes. To whet your appetite, here’s the full list…
The Value of Constraints
The Value of Constraints The beauty of Twitter is that a tweet can only be 140 characters long. With that as a constraint, you end up seeing some amazingly creative messages on Twitter that manage to convey both a specific tone and a lot of content — in close quarters! The same logic can apply to business more generally. If you give your team two hours to solve a complex problem, you’ll be amazed at how far they can get with it, even if they don’t have enough time to do thorough research If you have to balance your budget every year, you’ll be amazed at the clarity of decision-making you find yourself with (Wonder why Congress can’t figure out…
Keeping It All In Sync?
Keeping It All In Sync? I just read a great quote in a non-business book, Richard Dawkins’ River out of Eden, Dawkins himself quoting Darwinian psychologist Nicholas Humphrey’s revolting of a likely apocryphal story about Henry Ford. The full “double” quote is: It is said that Ford, the patron saint of manufacturing efficiency, once commissioned a survey of the car scrapyards in America to find out if there were parts of the Model T Fird which never failed. His inspectors came back with reports of almost every kind of breakdown: axles, brakes, pistons — all were liable to go wrong. But they drew attention to one notable exception, the kingpins of the scrapped cars invariably had years of life left…
Sometimes, Things Are Messy
Sometimes, Things Are Messy Many people who run companies have highly organized and methodical personality types – in lots of cases, that’s probably how they got where they got in life. And if you work long enough to espouse the virtues of fairness and equality with the way you manage and treat people, it become second nature to want things to be somewhat consistent across an organization. But the longer we’re in business at Return Path and the larger the organization gets, the more I realize that some things aren’t meant to fit in a neat box, and sometimes inconsistency is not only healthy but critical for a business to flourish. Let me give a few examples that I’ve observed…
Try It On For Size
Try It On For Size I’ve always been a big fan of taking a decision or a change in direction I’m contemplating and trying it on for size. Just as you never know how a pair of pants is really going to fit until you slip them on in a dressing room, I think you need to see how decisions feel once you’re closing in on them. Here’s why: decisions have consequences. No matter how prescient leaders are, no matter if they’ve been trained in chess-like (three-moves-ahead) thinking, they can almost never perfectly foresee all the downstream reactions and effects of decisions. Figuring out how to create “mental fittings” is a skill that I think is critical for CEOs and…
Pret a Manager
Pret a Manager My friend James is the GM of the Pret a Manger (a chain of about 250 “everyday luxury” quick service restaurants in the UK and US) at 36th and 5th in Manhattan. James recently won the President’s Award at Pret for doing an outstanding job opening up a new restaurant. As part of my ongoing effort to learn and grow as a manager, I thought it would be interesting to spend a day shadowing James and seeing what his operation and management style looked like for a team of two dozen colleagues in a completely different environment than Return Path. That day was today. I’ll try to write up the day as combination of observations and learnings…
Blogiversary, Part VII
Blogiversary, Part VII Today marks the seventh anniversary of OnlyOnce. I haven’t marked the date with a post in three years, but here was my last such post (with links to prior posts in it). In sum up until now, my reasons for blogging have been written up as: “Thinking” (writing short posts helps me crystallize my thinking) “Employees” (one of our senior people once called reading OnlyOnce “getting a peek inside Matt’s head) My book reviews help me crystallize my takeaways from books and serve as a bit of a personal reference library I like writing and don’t get to do it often After seven years, though, I’m going to add another important point of value for me for…
Why Winning Matters (Especially When You’re Young)
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has long been a leading voice for direct marketing for nearly 100 years – back when direct marketing was really only about postal. It has evolved in that time to include phone, fax (for the nanosecond that was relevant), and then interactive tactics, including email. While the DMA has not always incorporated the new technologies in the most elegant way – the tendency has been to apply previous best practices, even when consumers have demanded a new way of thinking – the organization has made tremendous strides in recent years to re-shape itself into an organization that will be relevant for another 100 years. And one way it is doing that is by supporting and…