This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write in 12 years as Return Path’s CEO. I hope it never has an equal. One of our long-time employees, J.D. Falk, passed away last night after a year-long struggle with cancer. J.D., which most people don’t know was short for Jesse David, was only 37 years old. Although I cannot claim to be a close friend of J.D.’s, I have known him fairly well in the industry going back about eight years, and he has been a trusted member of our team here for the last four+ years. J.D. did great work for us at Return Path, but my admiration for him goes beyond that. I admire him first for…
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Return Path
Protecting the Inbox
Protecting the Inbox We only have one out of our 13 core values at Return Path that’s closely related to the content of our business. But as with the other values, it says a lot about who we are and how we approach the work that we do. That value is: We believe inboxes should only contain messages that are relevant, trusted, and safe We occupy a pretty unique space in the email universe – we serve senders and receiving networks, but aren’t directly in the mail stream and therefore don’t directly touch end users. So much of our business, from our Certification or whitelisting business, to our new Domain Assurance anti-spoofing/anti-phishing business, revolves around building trust in our company…
More Than 1/3 of Your Life
More Than 1/3 of Your Life When I was a kid, so my parents tell me, I used to watch a lot of TV. For some reason, all those episodes of Gilligan’s Island and Dallas still have a place in my brain, right next to lyrics from 70s and 80s songs and movies. I also tend to remember TV commercials, which are even more useless (not that JR Ewing or Ferris Beuller had all that many valuable life lessons to impart). Anyway, I remember some commercial for some local mattress company which started out with the booming voiceover, “You spend 1/3 of your life in bed — why not enjoy that time and be as comfortable as you can be?”…
Beyond Policy
Beyond Policy Policies are an important part of managing employees. Similarly, contracts are an important part of running the commercial side of the business. But it’s impossible to legislate every potential down-the-road situation ahead of time. That’s why one of the 13 core values at Return Path is We believe in doing the right thing I’ll admit that more than most of our values, this one sounds like Motherhood and Apple pie. Who doesn’t want to do the right thing? The reason this value is an important part of our culture is that when we are in a tough situation, we stop and ask ourselves the most basic, yet thought provoking question — what’s the right thing to do here?…
Productive Eavesdropping
Productive Eavesdropping We’re in the midst of some pretty extensive renovations of our offices in New York at the moment. For better or for worse, we’re doing this work without moving out. We’ve basically crammed everyone into the back half of the office right now while the contractors are working on the front half. When that’s done, we’ll all move into the newly-refinished front so they can do the same in the back. One of the interesting side effects of this project is that I’m sharing my office with Anita Absey, our head of sales. It’s the first time I’ve shared an office in quite a while, at least since the first year of the company’s life when we all…
Building the Company vs. Building the Business
Building the Company vs. Building the Business I was being interviewed recently for a book someone is writing on entrepreneurship, which focused on identifying the elements of my “playbook” for entrepreneurial success at Return Path. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a full playbook, though I’ve certainly documented pieces of it in this blog over the years. One of the conversations we had in the interview was around the topic of building the company vs. building the business. The classic entrepreneur builds the business — quite frankly, he or she probably just builds the product for a long time first, then the business. In the course of the interview, I realized that I’ve spent at least as much energy over…
Challenging Authority
Challenging Authority My dad told me a joke once about a kid who as a teenager thought his father was the dumbest person he’d ever met. But then, as the punchline goes, “By the time I’d graduated college, it was amazing how much the old man had learned.” The older we get as humans, the more we realize how little we know — and how fallible we are. One of our 13 core values at Return Path gets right to the heart of this one: We challenge complacency, mediocrity, and decisions that don’t make sense I will note up front that this particular value statement is probably not as widely practiced as most of the others I’m writing about in…
Who Are Your CPO and COO?
Who Are Your CPO and COO? Every senior management team needs a CPO and a COO. No, I’m not talking about Privacy and Operations. I’m talking about Paranoia and Optimism. On my leadership team at Return Path, many of us are Paranoid and many of us are Optimistic, and many of us can play both roles. But I’m fortunate to have two business partners who are the Chiefs – George Bilbrey is our Chief Paranoia Officer, and Anita Absey is our Chief Optimism Officer. Those monikers fit their respective roles (product and sales) as well as their personalities. My view is simple – both traits are critical to have around the management table, and they’re best when they’re in some…
Why We Occasionally Celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day
Why We Occasionally Celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day No kidding – next Monday is September 19, and that is, among other things, International Talk Like a Pirate Day. We’ve done a variety of things to celebrate it over the years, not the least of which was a series of appropriately-themed singing telegrams we sent to interrupt all-hands meetings. I can’t remember why we ever started this particular thing, but it’s one of many for us. Why do we care? Because We are serious and passionate about our job and positive and light-hearted about our day This is another one of Return Path’s philosophies I’m documenting in my series on our 13 core values. I’m not sure I’d describe our…
9/11’s 10th
9/11’s 10th I wasn’t yet writing this blog on 9/11 (no one was writing blogs yet), and if I had had one, I’m not sure what I would have written. The neighborhood immediately surrounding the World Trade Center had been my home for more than seven years before the twin towers fell, and it continued to be my home for more than seven years after they fell. That same neighborhood was Return Path‘s home for its first 18 months or so, across two different offices. Like all Americans, the attack felt personal. Like all New Yorkers, it was in our face. But it hit home in a different way for those of us who lived and worked in Lower Manhattan….
A Community of Employees
A Community of Employees One of the most memorable moments in a valedictorian speech that I’ve heard or read was at my sister-in-law’s graduation from Northwestern about 10 years ago. The speaker’s closing line was something like “Most of all, when you go out into the world, remember to be kind to other people. It’s one of the best things you can do for the world.” It’s not as if people are generally trained or predisposed to be UNkind to each other. But respecting other people and being kind to them is sometimes elusive in our busy lives. I think one of the things that makes Return Path more of a community and less of just a “place of work”…