Category

Technology

A New VC Ready to Go!

A New VC Ready to Go! One of the interesting things about being in business for 13 years (as of last week!) at Return Path is that we have been around longer than two of our Venture Capital funds.  Fortunately for us, Fred led an investment in the company with his new fund, Union Square Ventures, even though his initial investment was via his first fund, Flatiron Partners.  And even though Brad hasn’t invested out of his new fund, Foundry Group, he remains a really active member of our group as a Board Advisory through his Mobius Venture Capital investment. Although our third and largest VC shareholder, Sutter Hill Ventures, is very much still in business, our Board member Greg…

Book Short: Culture is King

Book Short:  Culture is King Tony Hsieh’s story, Delivering Happiness (book, Kindle), is more than just the story of his life or the story of Zappos. It’s a great window into the soul of a very successful company and one that in many ways has become a model for great culture and a great customer service model.  It’s a relatively quick and breezy read, and it contains a handful of legendary anecdotes from Zappos’ history to demonstrate those two things — culture and customer service — in action. As Hsieh himself says in the book, you can’t copy this stuff and believe it will work in your company’s environment as it does in Zappos’.  You have to come up with…

Book Short: Internet True Crime

Book Short:  Internet True Crime Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet, by Joseph Menn (book, kindle) was a bit of a disappointment.  I was really hoping for more of an explanation of how the “business” of Internet crime works — what the economics are like, what the landscape/scope/sectors are like, who the players are. What I got was a bit of a true crime novel, the story of Barrett Lyon and Andy Crocker, who are respectively a geek and a cop, and their very specific stories of tracking down a handful of internet criminals around a handful of technical tactics (DDOS attacks and botnets).  It wasn’t bad, the stories were…

Book Short: Steve Jobs and Lessons for CEOs and Founders

Book Short:  Steve Jobs and Lessons for CEOs and Founders First, if you work in the internet, grew up during the rise of the PC, or are an avid consumer of Apple products, read the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs (book, kindle).  It’s long but well worth it. I know much has been written about the subject and the book, so I won’t be long or formal, but here are the things that struck me from my perspective as a founder and CEO, many taken from specific passages from the book: In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important.  Man is that ever true.  I’ve come up with some…

Blogiversary, Part VII

Blogiversary, Part VII Today marks the seventh anniversary of OnlyOnce.  I haven’t marked the date with a post in three years, but here was my last such post (with links to prior posts in it).  In sum up until now, my reasons for blogging have been written up as: “Thinking” (writing short posts helps me crystallize my thinking) “Employees” (one of our senior people once called reading OnlyOnce “getting a peek inside Matt’s head) My book reviews help me crystallize my takeaways from books and serve as a bit of a personal reference library I like writing and don’t get to do it often After seven years, though, I’m going to add another important point of value for me for…

Guest Post: Staying Innovative as Your Business Grows (Part Two)

As I mentioned in a previous post, I write 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. I recently posted George’s column on Staying Innovative as Your Business Grows (Part One). Below is a re-post of George’s second part of that column from this week, which I think my OnlyOnce readers will enjoy. Guest Post: Staying…

Backwards

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…

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….