Getting Good Inc. There’s an old saying in PR about “getting good ink,” referring to good press – a phrase that will probably replaced by something like “getting good bits” soon enough now, I’m sure. Anyway, Return Path was very fortunate to be ranked #167 in this year’s Inc. Magazine Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in America. See the list here and our press release here. We were also happy to see clients of ours like Constant Contact, Fishbowl, and Zappos on the list, as well as fellow email companies Exact Target, Vertical Response, and research panel Epocrates. That’s all the sign of a healthy industry! While we never rest on our laurels, it’s certainly nice…
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Entrepreneurship
Your Goal: Professional Nirvana
Your Goal: Professional Nirvana Brad wrote a delightful post the other day entitled "My Work is Play to Me." His theory about how to achieve it is worth reading. I, too believe that my work is play (under this definition), and that has been one of the things that’s kept me going as an entrepreneur for nearly seven years now. And you don’t have to be a VC, or a CEO, or be working remotely to achieve the state. This is reminiscent of the Fish books (here, here, and here), although in a more fundamental, philosophical, internally-generated way. Those are good, quick "airport" reads — at least get the first one, which is the story about the famous Pike Place…
Good Help is Hard to Find
Good Help is Hard to Find We’re having a bitch of a time lately hiring good sales people. We’re growing like crazy this year and are trying to invest more in our salesforce, but it’s not easy. And we’re a good catch. Good brand, healthy company, good comp and benefits, charming CEO, the works. I just traded emails with a friend who is CEO of another online marketing services firm who said the same thing, with the exact same explanation I have: I have been so unimpressed with everyone from our space (weak links drop out, mediocrity churns from company to company, and true talent is retained). Anyway, we have gotten very lucky with a few key hires the past…
Feedburner…They’re Real AND They’re Spectacular
Feedburner…They’re Real AND They’re Spectacular Sometime in early 2004, I met Dick Costolo, the CEO of Feedburner. We met about at the same time he also met Fred and Brad (I can’t remember who met who first), both of whom subsequently invested in the company. We hit it off and had a number of informal and formal conversations over the past two and a half years about online media, the interplay of RSS and email and blogs, and entrepreneurship. Feedburner and Return Path have developed a still-somewhat nascent partnership as well to bring ads in feeds and ads on blogs to Return Path’s Postmaster advertisers. I was recently fortunate enough to be invited by Dick and his team to join…
Counter Cliche: Sometimes You Need a Shortstop
Counter Cliche: Sometimes You Need a Shortstop Fred’s Chiche of the Week this week is about drafting the best available (corporate) athlete. I think he’s right lots of the time, especially in startup companies where people need to wear multiple hats. And it might also be a good rule of thumb in larger companies, when you want to have flexibility to move managers around from group to group and get them to easily take on new challenges or responsibilities. But sometimes, you just need a shortstop, and if you were the GM of a baseball team, your manager or owner would be pretty ticked off if you went out and hired a decathlete for the job. Companies who are in…
Counter Cliche: But It's Ok If Some of Them Turn Out to Be Frogs
Counter Cliche: But It’s Ok If Some of Them Turn Out to Be Frogs This week, Fred says You Can’t Kiss All the Pretty Girls, meaning that it’s easy for VCs to get a little carried away, get outside their strike zone or core thesis for investments, put money to work in too many places, and make some mistakes. Sure, some pretty girls turn out to be nightmares when you actually start to date them. But if you’re a VC, it’s ok if some of the pretty girls turn out to be frogs. You have a diversified portfolio. You invest in dozens of companies, and as many VCs have said over time — you lose all your money on 1/3,…
Big Apple, Little Company
Big Apple, Little Company Ed Daciuk, on of my blog subscribers, questions: What is your view on the benefits of being in NYC as a startup? Fred wrote a good posting several months ago and a related one this week on early stage investing in the NYC market from the perspective of a venture capitalist. His main points: (1) NYC is a great place to invest in early stage tech-related businesses as long as they’re not "core technology" businesses like semiconductor or hardware, because (2) core technology companies are more exciting to investors, and therefore the investors have clustered around those companies in places like Silicon Valley or Boston. He also thinks this dynamic is changing as more and more…
Counter Cliché: And Founders, Too
Counter Cliché: And Founders, Too This week, Fred’s chiche is that "the success of a company is in inverse proportion to the number of venture capitalists on the board". I’d argue that the same statement is true of founders or management. Boards help govern the company and watch out for shareholder interests. Boards give outside perspectives and strategic advice to the company’s leadership. Boards hire and fire the CEO. And — more and more every day with large public companies — boards keep management honest. How can these critical functions occur when a Board has too many members of the management team on it? They can’t. We’ve had outside directors at Return Path from Day 1. I’m not advocating that…
Counter Cliche: Pick a Geek Term
Counter Cliche: Pick a Geek Term Fred has a good cliche this week — he talks about how an organization has a particular "clock speed" and needs to hire people who can operate at that speed. I agree whole-heartedly but have always referred to this exact thing in a different way. We have always said when we’ve acquired another company that we need to "port that company onto our Operating System." So pick your favorite geek term, but I like the notion of porting someone to another operating system better because it implies that people can change a little bit more.
Counter Cliche: I Know When I See One, Too
Counter Cliche: I Know When I See One, Too I haven’t written a counter to one of Fred’s VC Cliche’s of the Week for a while now, but today’s was too good to resist. While I haven’t (and most entrepreneurs haven’t) worked with 200 VCs, I have seen, heard about, been one (sort of), and worked with enough of them to know enough to comment as follows: as is the case with Fred and entrepreneurs, I’m not sure I can define what makes a great VC in one phrase, but I know one when I see one, and here are some of the characteristics they exhibit: – Major pattern recognition — "I’ve seen this movie before, and I know how…
Book short: Myers-Briggs Redux
Book short: Myers-Briggs Redux Instinct: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial DNA to Achieve Your Business Goals, by Tom Harrison of Omnicom, is an ok book, although I wouldn’t rush out to buy it tomorrow. The author talks about five broad aspects of our personalities that influence how we operate in a business setting: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. These traits are remarkably similar to those in the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator that so many executives have taken over the years. It’s not just that you want to be high, high, high, high, and low in the Big 5. Harrison asserts that successful entrepreneurs need a balance of openness and conscientiousness in order to be receptive to new ideas, but…