Archives / July, 2006

Social Computing: An Amusing Anecdote About Who is Participating

Social Computing:  An Amusing Anecdote About Who is Participating We learned something about Wikipedia tonight.  Mariquita was reading an article on Castro on CNN.com entitled “Castro Blames Stress on Surgery” about his upcoming intestinal surgery. [Quick detour — I’m sorry, Castro blames the surgery on stress?  Isn’t it good to be the king?   And he’s handing  the reins of government over to his oh-so-younger brother Raul, at the tender young age of 75?] Anyway, we were debating over whether Castro took over the government of Cuba in 1957 or 1959, so of course we turned to Wikipedia.  Ok, so Mariquita was right, it was 1959.  But more important, we learned something interesting about Wikipedia and its users. There were three…

links for 2006-07-29

Techdirt: India Says No Thanks To The $100 Laptop It’s kind of a “Let Them Eat Cake!” response — which kind of makes sense, given our recent trip to India. (tags: india Technology)

Your Goal: Professional Nirvana

Your Goal:  Professional Nirvana Brad wrote a delightful post the other day entitled "My Work is Play to Me."  His theory about how to achieve it is worth reading.  I, too believe that my work is play (under this definition), and that has been one of the things that’s kept me going as an entrepreneur for nearly seven years now.  And you don’t have to be a VC, or a CEO, or be working remotely to achieve the state. This is reminiscent of the Fish books (here, here, and here), although in a more fundamental, philosophical, internally-generated way.  Those are good, quick "airport" reads — at least get the first one, which is the story about the famous Pike Place…

links for 2006-07-27

The dangers of relying on collective intelligence revealed! Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence Founding Fathers, Patriots, Mr. T. Honored (From The Onion — hilarious) (tags: Humor Social_Networking wikipedia Technology history onion)

links for 2006-07-25

A VC: Scars From The Last Bubble Fred has a good posting on some of the downsides of having managed through the bubble bursting. I wrote about this (a little bit) last year in Ratcheting Up is Hard to Do (/2005/01/ratcheting_up_i.html), but Fred’s posti (tags: Entrepreneur VC Management)

Good Help is Hard to Find

Good Help is Hard to Find We’re having a bitch of a time lately hiring good sales people.  We’re growing like crazy this year and are trying to invest more in our salesforce, but it’s not easy.  And we’re a good catch.  Good brand, healthy company, good comp and benefits, charming CEO, the works. I just traded emails with a friend who is CEO of another online marketing services firm who said the same thing, with the exact same explanation I have: I have been so unimpressed with everyone from our space (weak links drop out, mediocrity churns from company to company, and true talent is retained). Anyway, we have gotten very lucky with a few key hires the past…

Feedburner…They’re Real AND They’re Spectacular

Feedburner…They’re Real AND They’re Spectacular Sometime in early 2004, I met Dick Costolo, the CEO of Feedburner.   We met about at the same time he also met Fred and Brad (I can’t remember who met who first), both of whom subsequently invested in the company.  We hit it off and had a number of informal and formal conversations over the past two and a half years about online media, the interplay of RSS and email and blogs, and entrepreneurship.  Feedburner and Return Path have developed a still-somewhat nascent partnership as well to bring ads in feeds and ads on blogs to Return Path’s Postmaster advertisers. I was recently fortunate enough to be invited by Dick and his team to join…

Listen Up!

Listen Up! I’ve always felt that the ability to listen (and the related ability to ask smart questions) is highly underrated in business, while presentation and speaking skills tend to be overrated. We practice the art of SPIN Selling at Return Path, which is a sales methodology based on asking questions and listening rather than constantly pounding features and benefits.  And boy, does it work.  When done well, sales close much more quickly and prospects/clients are much more engaged because they really understand the need that they have for our services. The same principles apply to management and leadership as well.  While you certainly have to be somewhat authoritative and clear thinking as a leader, it’s almost always better to…

Amazon: Icky Slippage Business Model

Amazon:  Icky Slippage Business Model I never signed up for Amazon Prime, Amazon’s “pay a bunch up front then get free fast shipping all the time” deal, mostly because I usually buy more than $25 worth of books at a time, so shipping is free anyway.  But today, they hit me on the checkout with a free three-month trial of Prime, so I clicked yes – what the heck? My bad for thinking they were just being nice to me as a VERY GOOD CUSTOMER.  The confirmation email they sent had buried in the fine print that my subscription would auto-renew after three months for the usual $80 if I didn’t proactively opt-out on their web site. That’s a business…

Less is More

Less is More The latest research shows that people spend 51 seconds reading any given commercial email newsletter, as opposed to 15 seconds on a promotional email.  I find this credible based on personal experience, at least the ratio of the two, although I might do a little less on both. Return Path’s Stephanie Miller blogs about this and the implication for marketers on the Return Path Online Resource Center for Email Marketers.

Book Shorts: Sales, Sales, Sales, Sales, Sales

Book Shorts:  Sales, Sales, Sales, Sales, Sales Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book of Selling and Little Red Book of Sales Answers were great refreshers in sales basics for you as CEO (and head of sales, and sales manager, and sales rep).  The books were a bit “self-help” flavor for my taste as a reader, but they were excellent on content, and I have two long pages of notes of “back to basics” items I need to remind myself and my team about. Anyone at Return Path in sales/account-project management/marketing — your copy is on the way, hopefully by way of a barter I proposed with the author (sorry, Stephanie and Tami…), but in any case, we’ll buy them.  Anyone else…