Techstars: One Pitfall to Avoid George and I met with our Techstars “mentee” companies again yesterday. As was the case with the last meetings, the sessions were energizing and fun and great to see new companies unfolding. One lesson I was reminded of yesterday with both companies is a timeless one, since at least the beginning of the commercial internet: Don’t create a “solution looking for a problem” I call this the Pointcast problem, after the mid-90s service that pulled headlines into screensavers and clogged corporate networks until the fad passed. One of the companies we’re working with has this challenge looming in front of them. They have a very cool concept and technology. It’s clear that it solves some…
Category
Entrepreneurship
Poking a little fun at VCs
Poking a little fun at VCs Fred posted a great slideshow this morning of “things VCs will never say.” I can’t tell if the show is meant to be serious or not — some of the things would be great to hear from VCs, some would be terrible — though Fred’s comment at the bottom leads me to believe he thinks it was serious. At any rate, it reminded me of the brilliant and hilarious “VC Calendar Calisthenics” post of Dave Hornick from 5-6 years ago, which you can see here. Even if you’ve read it before, it’s worth a refresher.
First day at Techstars: Where do you start?
First day at Techstars: Where do you start? I’m a new mentor this year at Techstars, a program in its third or fourth year in Boulder (and this year also in Boston for the first time) that provides a couple dozen companies with seed capital, advice and mentorship, and summer “incubation” services in a really well conceived for-profit venture started by David Cohen in Colorado. Yesterday was my first day up there with my colleague George Bilbrey, and we met with three different companies, two of which we will tag team mentor through the summer. I won’t get into who they are at the moment, mostly because I’m not sure what the confidentiality issues are offhand, but I’ll make the…
Book Short: Entrepreneurs in Government
Book Short: Entrepreneurs in Government Leadership and Innovation: Entrepreneurs in Government, edited by a professor I had at Princeton, Jim Doig, is an interesting series of mini-biographies of second- and third-tier government officials, mostly from the 1930s through the 1970s. The book’s thesis is that some of the most interesting movers and shakers in the public arena (not elected officials) have a lot of the same core skills as private sector entrepreneurs. The thesis is borne out by the book, and the examples are interesting, if for no other reason than they are about a series of highly influential people you’ve probably never heard of. The guy who ran the Port Authority of New York for 30 years. The guy…
Education and Entrepreneurship
Education and Entrepreneurship Fred posted his thoughts the other day that you don’t need a college degree to be a successful entrepreneur. He is clearly right in that one CAN be successful without it. Gates, Zuckerberg, Dell have proven that. I’ve always said that I didn’t think an MBA was a prerequisite for a successful business career. That’s easy for me to say, as I don’t have one despite many years of applying, deferring, cancelling, reapplying and general hand-wringing over whether or not to go in the mid-90s. An MBA is probably a positive on a resume for the most part (hard to argue it’s a negative), but it’s not a prerequisite. Every time I see “MBA preferred”…
New Email Blogger Extraordinaire
New Email Blogger Extraordinaire My good friend and co-founder George Bilbrey, Return Path’s President, is now blogging. His blog, Monkey Mind Labs, is aptly named in part after Return Path’s long-standing but little-known corporate mascot. His first few posts are up. My guess is that his blog will be a bit like mine in that it will cover topics about email marketing as well as entrepreneurship, but I can almost promise that George will be both wittier and more insightful than I. At least, that’s what he tells me. Take a look! Subscribe. Enjoy.
Challenge
Challenge I do a decent amount of fundraising for my high school and college, and we frequently employ “challenges” as a means of hitting our goal. For a fundraising campaign, that usually takes the form of finding a large donor to give matching gifts, or $X for everyone who gives more than $X, or $X for any new donor — something like that. We did a fun challenge program at Return Path this December that worked out pretty well for everyone, company and employees alike. We’ve been working the team pretty hard the last 4-5 months, and we wanted to give everyone some kind of fun noncash bonus as a thank you. We also had two major milestones that we…
Next One is the Big One, a.k.a. Nine is Fine
Next One is the Big One, a.k.a. Nine is Fine Today, Return Path turns nine years old. What an exciting year we’ve had, too. As I mentioned a couple months back, we completely reorganized the company this year, marking a major transition and a new stage in the life of the business. We acquired our largest competitor, Habeas, consolidating our space and further establishing ourselves as the leader in email deliverability and whitelisting. We marched right past our 1,000th client milestone and now are well on our way to our 1,500th. Thanks again to our fantastic team and our great group of investors and Board members for another fun and exciting year. Nine is fine…and now the march to The…
I Wonder if I Could Ever Work for a Big Company
I Wonder if I Could Ever Work for a Big Company And I mean a REALLY BIG one. At my high school reunion last weekend, my friend Jason, who I hadn’t seen in 10 years (and only once in the last 20), heard what I’m doing with my life, and said to me “I’m so glad for you. I couldn’t figure out if you were going to do big company or something entrepreneurial. I’m sure you would have done well either way, but isn’t what you’re doing more fun?” I think he’s right. It is more fun. Every time I have a meaningful interaction with a friend or client inside a huge company, I come away shaking my head…
No Separation Anxiety
No Separation Anxiety When we announced last week that we were selling our Email Change of Address (ECOA) business unit to our competitor Fresh Address as part of our corporate restructuring that allows us to focus exclusively on our flagship deliverability and whitelisting business, a bunch of people asked if me if that decision was emotional or difficult. As ECOA was Return Path’s initial business — you know, the one that was going to be $100 million in revenues within 5 years — shouldn’t I be sad to see it go? In the end, it wasn’t a difficult decision to sell the business. Times have changed. While it still works well as a product and generates profitable revenue,…
Managing in a Downturn
Managing in a Downturn I spoke at a NextNY event last night along with several others, including fellow entrepreneur David Kidder from Clickable and angel investor Roger Enhrenberg about this fine topic (Roger wrote a great post on it here) and thought I’d share a few of the key points made by all of us for anyone trying to figure out what to do tactically now that Sequoia has told us to be afraid, very afraid. Hope is Not a Strategy: Your business is not immune. It will do what everyone else’s will. Struggle to hit its numbers. Struggle to collect bills. Lose customers. There is no reason to hope you’ll be different. Get Into the Jet Stream: Develop your…