Child Prodigies, or Misspent Youths? I just got an email from a reader of this blog with a subject line of "15 year-old entrepreneur" and a series of engaging questions around starting a business (and actually, quite a good idea for one as well). It got me thinking about being a kid and being an entrepreneur at the same time. The author of this email is impressively savvy and focused on the world of business and startups. Ben Casnocha is another one. Ben is 19, has already started two companies, and has written and published a book called My Startup Life. When I was 15, I actually did have an inkling that I was going to go into business someday,…
Archives / September, 2007
Lighten Up!
Lighten Up! As with Brad, I love a good rant, and Dave McClure’s wild one this week about how VCs and Lawyers Need to Simplify, Innovate, and Automate is fantastic. I have a roughly 3 foot shelf in my office that has all the bound paper documentation for the financings and M&A we’ve done here over the years and have always felt like it’s an enormous waste on many levels. The insanity of the faxes, zillions of signatures, original copies, and triplicates is overwhelming. But the core of the rant is a beautiful and simple suggestion that those who invest in lightweight technology companies and automation platforms should learn how to use just those technologies in their own businesses. I…
We’re Right Up (Down?) There With Lawyers Now
We’re Right Up (Down?) There With Lawyers Now I remember reading somewhere a while ago that the least respected professions in America were used car salesmen, politicians, and lawyers. Well, step aside everyone — according to a J. Walter Thompson study reported in DMNews, only 14% of Americans have respect for people in the advertising business. I’m going to include that anyone who works in marketing services, by extension. Don’t get me wrong – I wouldn’t have expected people in the advertising profession to join the upper echelons of the study with military personnel, doctors, and teachers. But 14% is a pretty low number. Beneath that single number, though, lie some conflicting data. For example, · 72 percent agree, “I…
Clients at Different Levels
Clients at Different Levels Recently, I’ve become more aware that we have a huge range of clients when it comes to the level of the person we interact with at the client organization. I suppose this has always been true, but it’s struck me much more of late as we’ve really ramped up our client base in the social networking/web 2.0 arena, where most of our clients are CEOs and COOs as opposed to Email Marketing Managers. Of course, we don’t care who our day-to-day client is, as long as the person is enough of a decision maker and subject matter expert to effectively partner with us, whether it’s on deliverability via Sender Score or on list management or advertising…
The Wheels of Justice Move Slowly
The Wheels of Justice Move Slowly I am on Jury Duty this week, or Jury Service, as it seems to have been renamed since the last time I did it. Although it’s a pain and disruptive to my schedule, I never mind doing this — it’s all part of the social contract here, right? I have two main observations so far from my general view of the world: 1. How on earth does the justice system actually function? "Business hours" are basically 10-12 and then 2:30-4:00. I assume that at least some work happens before and after, but yeesh. If I ran my business that way…well, you know. Could it be that our government might be a little more effective…
Unleashing the True Power of Email
Unleashing the True Power of Email A recent Behavioral Insider column had a truly tantalizing quote from iPost’s Steve Webster: "There is the presumption that when someone receives an email message they then click on the email go to the Web site and either make a purchase or not and then they are done interacting with your email. This turned out to be wrong. We discovered very quickly that the power of an email impression lasts for weeks after the customer has actually received the message. The particular interaction they will have with you later really depends more on their personal preferences than on your putting a new email in front of them." The highlighted portion is a point we’ve…
A Dreary Day at Ground Zero
A Dreary Day at Ground Zero I walked down to the World Trade Center site early this morning before work, which I usually do on September 11 if I’m not traveling. It was raining and still dark out at the time, which made the scene a little more dreary and rushed (no one stopping as long to reflect) than usual. But something felt different this year that went beyond the weather. Obviously for those who lost friends or family six years ago, the day will always be one of mourning and memory, but for everyone else, though the day is still quite solemn, the vibe and focus seem to be more focused on “next steps” than in past years. Between…
Personal Reputation
Personal Reputation There was a recent New York Times article that covered a relatively new company called Rapleaf that aggregates publicly available and privately submitted data about individuals, mostly from social networks, and then resells that data in bulk to marketers to help them target advertising more effectively, supposedly to names they already have permission to mail. I’m sure the company would think I butchered that description, but it’s close, anyway. While there are a lot of comments and posts flying around about the ethics of that data collection, I won’t focus on that here. Publicly available data is publicly available data. This isn’t a lot different than banks swapping your data to create a FICO score, Abacus swapping your…
Back to Business?
Back to Business? Today is the day every year that everyone keeps saying, "well, it’s back to school time." Ignore for a moment the fact that half of the schools I hear about now start in the middle of August…it’s interesting to see how some things in the business world really slow down in the summer, especially in August as well as the school system. People really disappear for vacations, short and long. Even if we aren’t like our European counterparts who really have it figured out and can virtually shut down in August, it’s just harder to get things done. People might not all be out at the same time or for as long, but having one or two…