The iPad’s Limitations as a Business Device I love my iPad. Let me just start with that. I’ve found lots of use cases for it, and it’s very useful here and there for work. But I’ve seen a bunch of people trying to use it as a primary business device, which I can’t quite figure out. Here are the things that prevent me from making it my main business device: lack of keyboard (can mitigate with the keyboard dock, which I have) lack of mouse (not a killer limitation, just takes some getting used to, also the arrows on the keyboard dock help) lack of connection to files and true Office compatibility (this can largely be mitigated through a combination…
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Business
The UnEmployee
The UnEmployee We have a few people who I think of an UnEmployees. They are people who we have almost hired over the years (sometimes more than once), but never have, people who are in our industry and are friends of Return Path. Sometimes they are clients or partners, sometimes they aren’t. Sometimes they have a token stock option grant as advisors, sometimes they don’t. In any case, these people have played an incredibly valuable role in our company’s development over the years. They are extra “eyes and ears” for us that have often served up valuable information before any of our regular employees heard things. They have made powerful connections for us with other companies in the industry. They…
Turn it up to Eleven!
Turn it up to Eleven! For some reason, I didn’t do this the very first year I started writing OnlyOnce, but on December 6 every year since then, I’ve marked the anniversary of Return Path‘s founding here. In the midst of an otherwise fantastic year, this hasn’t been a particularly good couple of weeks for us. We have been targeted by a company we’ve never heard of before for a lawsuit that angrily denounced our business, and while the suit doesn’t have a shred of merit, it will probably cost us an arm and leg to make it go away. And the recent phishing attack incident is a long way from being behind us as well. We’ll come through both…
Selling a Line of Business
Selling a Line of Business It’s been a couple of years since Return Path decided to focus on our deliverability business by divesting and spinning out our other legacy businesses. That link tells some of the story, and the rest is that subsequently, Authentic Response divested part of the Postmaster Direct business to Q Interactive. Those three transactions, plus a number of experiences over the years on the buy side of similar transactions (Bonded Sender, Habeas, NetCreations), plus my learnings from talking to a number of other CEOs who have done similar things over the years, form the basis of this post. The Authentic Response spin-out was also partially chronicled by Inc. Magazine in this article earlier this year. It’s…
Why I Love My Board
Why I Love My Board, Part II I’ve written a few things about my Board of Directors over the years, some of which I note below. Part I of this series isn’t particularly useful, though there’s an entertaining link in it to a video of Fred that’s worth looking at if you know or follow him. Today, we are happy to announce that we are adding a new independent director, Scott Petry, the founder of Postini and now a senior email product leader at Google (read the official press release [here]). Scott’s a fantastic addition to our already strong Board, and the process of recruiting and adding him has made me reflect a bit on my Board and its strengths…
Playing Offense vs. Playing Defense
Playing Offense vs. Playing Defense I hate playing defense in business. It doesn’t happen all the time. But being behind a competitor in terms of feature development, scrambling to do custom work for a large client, or doing an acquisition because you’re getting blocked out of an emerging space – whatever it is, it just feels rotten when it comes up. It’s someone else dictating your strategy, tactics, and resource allocation; their agenda, not yours. It’s a scramble. And when the work is done, it’s hard to feel great about it, even if it’s required and well done. That said, sometimes you don’t have a choice and have to play defense. Playing offense, of course, is what it’s all about. …
Book Short: Sequel Not Worth It
Book Short: Sequel Not Worth It Mastering the 7 Essentials of High Growth Companies, by David Thomson, was a poor sequel to the solid Blueprint to a Billion [review] [buy]– and not worth reading if you’ve read the original. It was very short for its price and contained mildly interesting examples of “blueprint companies” that augmented the original book but didn’t uncover any new material or add any thinking to the mix. Basically, it was like another couple chapters that should have been part of Blueprint. It is not a bad buy in lieu of the original if you haven’t read either one yet, as Blueprint is a bit longer than necessary, but otherwise, you can skip this one. On…
Why CEOs Shouldn’t Mess with Engineers
Why CEOs Shouldn’t Mess with Engineers I went to the Vasa Royal Warship Museum in Stockholm the other day, which was amazing – it had a breathtakingly massive 17th century wooden warship, which had been submerged for over 300 years, nearly intact as its centerpiece. It’s worth a visit if you’re ever there. The sad story of its sinking seems to have several potential causes, but one is noteworthy both in terms of engineering and leadership. The ship set sail in 1628 as the pride of the Swedish navy during a war with Poland. It was the pride of King Gustavus Adolphus II, who took a keen personal interest in it. But the ship sank literally minutes after setting sail….
Managing by Checklist
Managing by Checklist The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, started as an article in The New Yorker a few years ago by Atul Gawande and then turned into a book as well (book, Kindle). I haven’t read the book; the story in the article is about life-and-death issues and how Intensive Care Units in hospitals work most successfully when they “manage by checklist” — they keep thousands of small steps performed by different people in order. The story is very telling for business as well and reminiscent of David Allen’s productivity books, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Work and Life. The reality as far as I’m concerned…
What Does a CEO Do, Anyway?
What Does a CEO Do, Anyway? Fred has a great post up last week in his MBA Mondays series caled “What a CEO Does.” His three things (worth reading his whole post anyway) are set vision/strategy and communicate broadly, recruit/hire/retain top talent, and make sure there’s enough cash in the bank. It’s great advice. These three are core job responsibilities of any CEO, probably of any company, any size. I’d like to build on that premise by adding two other dimensions to the list. Fred was kind enough to offer me a “guest blogger” spot, so this post also appears today on his blog as well. First, three corollaries – one for each of the three responsibilities Fred outlines. Setting…
Style, or Substance?
Style, or Substance? I had an interesting conversation the other day with a friend who sits on a couple of Boards, as do I (besides Return Path’s). We ended up in a conversation about some challenges one of his Boards is having with their CEO, and the question to some extent boiled down to this: a Board is responsible for hiring/firing the CEO and for being the guardians of shareholder value, but what does a Board do when it doesn’t like the CEO’s style? There are lots of different kinds of CEOs and corporate cultures. Some are command-and-control, others are more open, flat, and transparent. I like to think I and Return Path are the latter, and of course my…