Archives / November, 2005

Wanted! Comp Benchmark Participants

Wanted!  Comp Benchmark Participants Return Path is looking to benchmark our compensation structure with those of peer companies.  We would like to organize a project where an independent consultant gathers and compiles the data from a group of 10-20 companies and shares the aggregated results with individual benchmarks back with participants (the data will be anonymous on a per-company basis).  The data we’d need from participating companies (for all positions) is:  Title and summary of the job description; Base Salary; Bonus; and Location. The criteria for "peer company" is one that is comparable in size (50-250 people), geography (not rural, at least some in NY/Chicago/SF/LA), and industry (anything tech/Internet/services). We will act as the project manager.  Participating companies will mainly…

Doing Well by Doing Good, Part II

Doing Well by Doing Good, Part II At Return Path, we feel strongly that companies can and should make the world a better place in several different ways.  Certainly, many companies’ core businesses do that — just look at all the breakthroughs in medicine and social services over the years brought to market by private enterprises, including my friend Raj Vinnakota, who I wrote about in part I of this series last year.  But many companies, including Return Path, aren’t inherently “save the world” in nature (although some people in online marketing would have you believe that we are!), and those companies can still make a difference in the world in a few ways: 1. Organize projects in the local…

links for 2005-11-26

This is going to be BIG! – I noticed that you are also not using LinkedIn Charlie O’Donnell from Union Square Ventures has a great post about LinkedIn, its limitations, and some things it could do to be MUCH cooler and more useful. (tags: VC Technology Media Social_Networking)

Not-so-Counter Cliche: Forecast Early and Often

Not-so-Counter Cliche:  Forecast Early and Often There’s no "counter" in this week’s counter cliche, although this is a cross-post to two of Fred’s recent postings.  In his VC Cliche of the Week, he talks about the need for early-stage companies to forecast often, and he was nice enough to cite Return Path as his case study.  I thought I’d give some color on this from our perspective here. Forecasting is a pain, so we adopted the model of as 12-month rolling forecast with quarterly reforecasts (and correspondingly quarterly incentive comp structures) out of necessity.  For early stage companies in emerging industries, there are simply too many moving parts in the business to provide enough visibility to produce an accurate 12-month…

Book Short: Underdog Victorious

Book Short:  Underdog Victorious The Underdog Advantage, by David Morey and Scott Miller, was a worthwhile read, though not a great book.  It was a little shallow, and although I enjoyed its case studies (who doesn’t love hearing about Ben & Jerry’s, Southwest, JetBlue, Starbucks?), I didn’t feel like the authors did enough to tie the details of the success of the case study companies back to the points they made in the book. That said, the book had some great reminders in it for companies of all sizes and stages.  The main point was that successful companies always think of themselves as the underdog, the insurgent, and never get complacent.  They run themselves like a political campaign, needing to…

links for 2005-11-16

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » They’re meltinggggg Jeff Jarvis on Why We’re Glad We’re New Media…good stats on all the troubles facing “old media” nowadays (box office, newspapers, music, radio, books) (tags: Technology Media) Our Customer Is The Entrepreneur | Union Square Ventures Fred Wilson on how VCs relate to entrepreneurs vs. their limited partners. They should think of entrepreneurs as their customers, and think of LPs as shareholders. (tags: VC Technology Entrepreneur)

Counter Cliche: Head Lemming

Counter Cliche:  Head Lemming Fred’s VC Cliche of the Week last week was that leadership is figuring out where everyone is going and then getting in front of them and saying “follow me.” While it’s certainly true that juming out in front of a well-organized, rapidly moving parade and becoming the grand marshal (or maybe the baton twirly person) is one path to successful leadership, CEOs do have to be careful about selecting the right parade to jump in front of for two reasons. First, just because lots of people are going in a specific direction doesn’t mean it’s right.  There’s nothing good about ending up as the Head Lemming.  It just means you go over the cliff before the…

A Typepad User, and Proud of It

A Typepad User, and Proud of It SixApart showed huge corporate courage today when they emailed their entire blog user base, apologized (for the second or third time) for service interruptions the past month, then announced a cash remedy. As a default, they’re giving everyone half a month of service for free.  This is obviously a huge hit to the company financially and probably more of a gesture than anyone expected.  But better than that, they allowed users to click through to their web site and automatically get a full month for free — or a month and a half for free — if they felt in good conscience that the service outages were more harmful to them.  They also…

Hackoff – The Blook, Part II

Hackoff – The Blook, Part II A few weeks back, I posted about a new blook (book delivered in single episodes via blog) called Hackoff.com – An Historic Murder Mystery Set in the Internet Bubble and Rubble, by Tom Evslin.  A few weeks into it, and I’m hooked.  It’s: – complete and total brain candy, or mental floss as Brad calls it – a great 2 minute break in the middle of the day (episodes are delivered once a day during the week) – a very entertaining reminder about some of the wacky things that went on back in the Internet heyday – a good look into some of the processes that go on behind the scenes in taking a…

Overload

Overload Fred had a great posting last week called The Looming Attention Crisis.  He talks about how he’s at his limit of trying out new technology and consuming information/feeds.  He’s right — except I’d argue there’s nothing looming about the crisis.  Those of us who were early adopters of RSS (perhaps early adopters in general) are in full Overload mode at this point. The negatives associated with this problem are pretty clear.  One of my very first postings, Present AND Accounted For, talked about the perils of multitasking on interpersonal relationships; that’s probably the biggest negative to the availability of all this information.  Attention, as Fred says, IS in fact a zero sum game.  The great problem associated with all…

Armistice Day

Armistice Day Back in May, writing about Decoration Day, I promised an exciting conclusion to the “forgotten past names of minor American holidays” series this week.  I’m on vacation the rest of the week, so I’ll post today about Friday’s holiday, what we now call Veterans Day but what Grandma Hazel still periodically calls Armistice Day.  Once again, Wikipedia to the rescue. Armistice Day is the anniversary of the official end of World War I, November 11, 1918. It commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at eleven o’clock in the morning — the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh…