Backwards I came to an interesting conclusion about Return Path recently. We’re building our business backwards, at least according to what I have observed over time as the natural course of events for a startup. Here are a few examples of what I mean by that. Most companies build organically for years…then start acquiring others. We’ve done it backwards. In the first 9 years of our company’s life, we acquired 8 other businesses (SmartBounce, Veripost, Re-Route, NetCreations, Assurance Systems, GasPedal Consulting, Bonded Sender, Habeas). Since then, we’ve acquired none. There are a bunch of reasons why we front loaded M&A: we were working hard to morph our business model to achieve maximum success during the first internet downturn, we knew…
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Technology
BookShort: Vive La Difference
Book Short: Vive La Difference Brain Sex, by Anne Moir and David Jessell, was a fascinating read that I finished recently. I will caveat this post up front that the book was published in 1989, so one thing I’m not sure of is whether there’s been more recent research that contradicts any of the book’s conclusions. I will also caveat that this is a complex topic with many different schools of thought based on varying research, and this book short should serve as a starting point for a dialog, not an end point. That said, the book was a very interesting read about how our brains develop (a lot happens in utero), and about how men’s and women’s brains are…
Guest Post: Staying Innovative as Your Business Grows (Part One)
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve recently started writing a column for The Magill Report, the new venture by Ken Magill, previously of Direct magazine and even more previously DMNews. I share the column with my colleagues Jack Sinclair and George Bilbrey and we cover how to approach the business of email marketing, thoughts on the future of email and other digital technologies, and more general articles on company-building in the online industry – all from the perspective of an entrepreneur. Below is a re-post of George’s column from this week, which I think my OnlyOnce readers will enjoy. Guest Post: Staying Innovative as Your Business Grows (Part One) By George Bilbrey As part of The Magill Report’s…
The iPad’s Limitations as a Business Device
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…
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….
Feature Request, Part II
Feature Request, Part II In Part I, I asked for time zone alerts on cell phones for off-hours and a mechanism for alerting people when they’re replying-to-all when they were bcc’d. Today, I ask for an iPhone (and I suppose Android) app: turn a photo of a whiteboard into a Word or PPT document!
Investment in the Email Ecosystem
Investment in the Email Ecosystem Last week, my colleague George Bilbrey posted about how (turns out – shocking!) email still isn’t dead yet. Not only is he right, but the whole premise of defending email from the attackers who call it “legacy” or “uninteresting” is backwards. The inbox is getting more and more interesting these days, not less. At Return Path, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of startup activitiy and investment (these two things can go together but don’t have to) in in front end of email in the past couple years. I’d point to three sub-trends of this theme of “the inbox getting more interesting.” First, major ISPs and mailbox operators are starting to experiment with more interesting applications…
I Don’t Want to Be Your Friend (Today), part III
I Don’t Want to Be Your Friend (Today), part III My first thought when my colleague Jen Goldman forwarded me a SlideShare presentation that was 224 pages long was, “really?” But a short 10 minutes and 224 clicks later, I am glad I spent the time on it. Paul Adams, a Senior User Experience Researcher at Google, put the presentation up called The Real Life Social Network. Paul describes the problem I discuss in Part I and Part II of this series much more eloquently than I have, with great real world examples and thoughts for web designers at the end. If you’re involved in social media and want to start breaking away from the “one size of friend fits…
Agile Marketing, Part II
Agile Marketing, Part II I wrote about this years ago when I was temporarily running Marketing and was noting a lot of the similarities between running contemporary Product Development and Marketing efforts. Nick Van Weerdenburg just put up a great post called Why Marketing is Becoming Like Software Development which you should read if you run or work in, or work closely with, a marketing department.
Feature Requests
Feature Requests Here are two new features I’d like to see in life: Any time you hit “reply to all” when you are in the BCC line – a giant red alert should pop up and say “are you really sure you want to let all these people know that you were BCCd on this thread?” Any time you place a call to a cell phone that’s outside of the person’s normal time zone – a giant red alert should pop up and say “are you sure you want to call this person at 3 a.m. in Singapore?” before completing the call I’m not sure to whom these requests should be addressed, so I’ll just start with the open web.
OnlyOnce, Part II
OnlyOnce, Part II After more than six years, my blog starting looking like, well, a six-year old blog on an off-the-shelf template. Thanks to my friends at Slice of Lime, OnlyOnce has a new design as of today as well as some new navigation and other features like a tag cloud and Twitter feed (and a new platform, WordPress rather than Typepad). I know many people only read my posts via feed or email (those won’t change), but if you have a minute, feel free to take a look. The site also has its own URL now – https://onlyonceblog.wpengine.com. With my shiny new template, I may add some other features or areas of content over time, as well. There are…