CEO Diary: What Makes a Great Day? 5:30 a.m. – run (have to keep up with Brad) 8:45 a.m. – networking coffee with former main contact at large strategic partner; now CFO of another company in the industry 9:30 a.m. – work time/email/read newsletters, Wall St. Journal online, various RSS feeds 10:30 a.m. – internal meeting to discuss mothballing a product feature that’s hard to maintain and doesn’t generate much revenue 11:00 a.m. – internal meeting to clarify roles and responsibilities between account management and client technical operations 11:30 a.m. – brainstorm 2006 strategy with head of one of our lines of business 1:00 p.m. – great sales call on a Tier I prospect with new sales person; business almost…
Archives / September, 2005
Book Short: The Most Rapacious Guys in the Room
Book Short: The Most Rapacious Guys in the Room I just finished The Smartest Guys in the Room, by journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. This is the story of Enron, and what a tale it is! The book is a good quick business novel read. It reminded me a lot of Barbarians at the Gate, except that it made me far angrier. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m at a different place in my career now than I was 10 years ago and therefore have a different appreciation for what goes on in companies, or if the Enron guys were just far worse than anyone surrounding RJR Nabisco. But in any case, as my Grandpa Bill would have…
links for 2005-09-22
How to Hire Like a Start-Up Great blog posting from Rob Walling on hiring like crazy (tags: Blog Entrepreneur Technology)
Hackoff – The Blook
Hackoff – The Blook Fred and Brad have already posted some pertinent details as well, but here’s a must-read for you – entrepreneur Tom Evslin, who has a great blog, has just launched an online book, serialized as a blog. It’s about a fictitious Internet bubble company called Hackoff.com (nice name!), and you can subscribe to the episodes of the book, either by RSS feed or by email. The first episode and various subscription options are all here. Tom’s a great writer and had front row seats/was a lead actor in the bubble. The first episode has me hooked. This is going to be fun!
RSS Advertising
RSS Advertising This is two-day-old news by now, but in case you missed it, we just announced than we – Return Path – are partnering with Feedburner to take RSS advertising to the next level (coverage here, here, and here). As you probably know if you receive my feed or other ones, Feedburner has been doing some experimenting with ad units at the bottom of feeds for months now, first using Amazon and more recently Google AdSense to serve up ads. And as you may know if you look at ads closely, neither of those services has done a great job making the ads truly relevant. I can’t tell you, for example, the number of times I write a posting…
Reality Bites
Reality Bites So Oracle is buying the $1.5 billion revenue Siebel for $5.85 billion, and eBay is buying the at most $60 million revenue Skype for $2.4 billion, which could grow to $4.1 billion if Skype hits some performance targets. Huh. Must be all those pesky customers, receivables, and assets bogging down Siebel’s books. UPDATE: Fortune’s David Kirkpatrick, one of the most insightful journalists covering technology, makes some sense of this in this week’s Fast Forward column.
It’s Easy to Feel Like a Luddite These Days, Part II
It’s Easy to Feel Like a Luddite These Days, Part II In Part I, I talked about tagging and podcasting and how I felt pretty lame for someone who considers himself to be somewhat of an early adopter for not understanding them. So now, 10 weeks later, I understand tagging and have a del.icio.us account, although I don’t use it all that often (quite frankly, I don’t have tons of surfing time to discover cool new content). And I’ve even figured out how to integrate del.icio.us with Feedburner and with Typepad. I’m still out of luck with Podcasting, mainly because my iPod and computer setup at home makes it really difficult to add/sync, so I haven’t given that a shot…
Why Publishing Will Never Be the Same, Part II
Why Publishing Will Never Be the Same, Part II In Part I of this series, I talked about our experience at Return Path publishing a book back in January through a new type of print-on-demand, or self-publishing house called iUniverse and why I thought the publishing industry was in for a long, slow decline unless it changes its ways. We had another interesting experience with iUniverse more recently that reinforces this point. It turns out, although iUniverse is mainly a “self publisher,” they also have a traditional publishing model called their Star Program, which includes an editorial review process. The good news for us is that they contacted us and said they liked our book so much, and sales are…
Book Shorts: Fred the Cow?
Book Shorts: Fred the Cow? I enjoyed two interesting, super-quick reads from last week that have a common theme running through them: being remarkable. The Fred Factor, by Mark Sanborn, is one of those learn-by-storytelling business novellas. It’s all about the author’s mailman, Fred, and how Fred has figured out how to make a difference in people’s lives even with a fairly routine job. The focal points of the book are things like “practice random acts of kindness” and “turn the ordinary into the extraordinary by putting passion into your work.” It’s a good reminder that it is unbelievably easy, not to mention free, to be kind and thoughtful, and that those things are always always always worth doing. Kinda…