Highs and Lows, Part II A couple years ago, I wrote about the Highs and Lows of entrepreneurship, and how you didn’t just have to steel yourself mentally for a roller coaster of highs and lows, but that you had to really prepare for the whiplash of having the highs and lows hit you at the same time. My sequel to the original post was inspired by some conversations with my colleague George Bilbrey this week. It used to be that when the high/low whiplash occurred, while I probably shared either the high or the low with someone in the company, it was unlikely that I shared both. So other individuals might see a high or a low, de rigeur…
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Entrepreneurship
Marketing is Like Baskin Robbins
Marketing is Like Baskin Robbins A couple years ago, I wrote that Marketing is Like French Fries, since you can always take on one more small incremental marketing task, just as you can always eat one more fry, even long after you should have stopped. Today, inspired in part by our ongoing search for a new head of marketing at Return Path and in part by Bill McCloskey’s follow up article about passion in email marketing in Mediapost, I declare that Marketing is also like Baskin Robbins – there are at least 31 flavors of it that you have to get right. McCloskey writes: I submit that the über marketer who is expert in all the various forms of interactive…
Right, That's MY Job
Right, That’s MY Job I made a dumb comment at our recent Board meeting that got me thinking. We came into the meeting with, in addition to lots of the regular updating and reporting, one specific strategic topic we wanted guidance on from the Board about something that’s been nagging the management team for a while without an obvious solution. We had a great conversation about the topic with the Board and got very clear guidance as to their perspective on what we should do. I agreed with most of it, albeit with a couple modifications, but more than anything else, I was happy for the note of clarity on an issue with which we’d been struggling as a management…
Book Short: Virtuous Cycle
Book Short: Virtuous Cycle Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business is a fun read if you’re a New Yorker who eats out a lot; a good read for entrepreneurs around scaling leadership skills as the business grows; and a great read for anyone who runs a serious customer service-oriented organization. I’ve eaten at all of his restaurants multiple times over the years except for the new ones at MOMA (perhaps a few too many times at the Shake Shack), and while I like some more than others (perhaps the Shake Shack a bit too much), they all do have great hospitality as a common theme. While there are a lot of good lessons in…
OnlyOnce is Ok
OnlyOnce is Ok Fred and Brad from Union Square Ventures have a great post today about the kinds of entrepreneurs they like to back and why. I particularly like it because almost half their portfolio is made up of companies led by first-time CEOs, which as you probably know, is one of the founding themes around this blog.
Book Short: Unsung Heroes
Book Short: Unsung Heroes If you like “entrepreneurship by analogy” books, you’ll like The Innovators: The Engineering Pioneers Who Made America Modern, by David Billington. I have to admit some bias here — Professor Billington was my favorite teacher and senior thesis advisor at Princeton (I almost majored in civil engineering because of him), and this book is one of a number he’s written that are outgrowths of his most popular courses at Princeton. And while there’s no substitute for the length or energy of his lectures, the book works. The book is basically a person-focused engineering history of America from 1776-1883. Billington talks about four classes of engineering product: public structures (mostly bridges), machines that produced power, networks like…
Book (Not So) Short: Raise Your Hand If You’re Sure
Book (Not So) Short: Raise Your Hand If You’re Sure I couldn’t get the catchy jingle from the 80’s commercial for Sure deodorant (you remember, the one with the Statue of Liberty at the end of it – thanks, YouTube) out of my head while I was reading the relatively new book, Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End. Written by HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kantor, Confidence is one of the few business books I’ve read that’s both long and worth reading in full. The book has scores of examples of both winning and losing streaks, from sports, business, politics, and other walks of life, and it does a great job of breaking down the core elements…
Lucky 7, or the 7 Year Itch?
Lucky 7, or the 7 Year Itch? Today is the seventh anniversary of the founding of Return Path. There are days when it feels like it’s been much longer, but most of the time, I feel like we’re still in the first quarter of the game here. The business is completely different than what we started and what we ever thought it would be, but it’s healthy, growing, and we’re having more and more fun every day. When I started the business, another more seasoned entrepreneur told me, "however long you think it’s going to take to build a great business — triple it." I’m not sure how long I thought it was going to take for us to hit…
Book Short: Another 8 Habits
Book Short: Another 8 Habits Besides having a fantastic title, Richard St. John’s Stupid, Ugly, Unlucky, and Rich is a fun and quick read. It’s a completely different style than Stephen Covey’s “habits” books (The 7, The 8th). It’s a little cartoony and list-oriented, and it’s a much quicker read — and also easier to put down and pick up without feeling like you’re losing your place. The book’s foundation is interviews, mostly by the author, of successful people who span many different careers, from artists to actors and models to athletes to politicians to business leaders. The organization is very solid, and the content is highly motivating. It’s a good guide to success in any field, and in particular…
Always On is Too Much On
Always On is Too Much On Among other things last week travelling abroad for work, I learned another good CEO lesson — sometimes it’s ok, even good, to be a bit out of touch. Don’t get me wrong. I’m Always On at the office, while travelling in the US, and usually at home and on weekends as well. And as I’ve said before in various postings (here, here, here, and definitely here), it’s great to completely unplug at least once a year for a peaceful vacation with friends & family. But last week was a nice lesson in the middle ground. I had an international cell phone that people at work didn’t seem to want to call, so they could…
The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, Part III
The Good, The Board, and The Ugly, Part III To recap other postings in this series: my original, Brad Feld’s, Fred Wilson’s first, Fred’s second, Tom Evslin’s, and my lighter-note follow-up. So speaking of lighter-note takes on this topic, Lary Lazard, Tom Evslin’s fictional CEO who ran Hackoff.com, now has his own tips for effective board management. You have to read them yourself here, but I think my favorite one is #3, which starts off: Never number the pages of what you are presenting. Lots of time can be used constructively figuring out what page everybody is on. Enjoy.