B+ for Effort? Effort is important in life. If Woody Allen is right, and 80% of success in life is just showing up, then perhaps 89% is in showing up AND putting in good effort. But there is no A for Effort in a fast-paced work environment. The best you can get without demonstrating results is a B+. The converse is also true, that the best you can get with good results AND without good effort is a B+. Now, a B+ isn’t a bad grade either way. But it’s not the best grade. In continuing with this series of our 13 core values at Return Path, the next one I’ll cover is: We believe that results and effort are…
Archives / November, 2011
Remembering J.D.
This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write in 12 years as Return Path’s CEO. I hope it never has an equal. One of our long-time employees, J.D. Falk, passed away last night after a year-long struggle with cancer. J.D., which most people don’t know was short for Jesse David, was only 37 years old. Although I cannot claim to be a close friend of J.D.’s, I have known him fairly well in the industry going back about eight years, and he has been a trusted member of our team here for the last four+ years. J.D. did great work for us at Return Path, but my admiration for him goes beyond that. I admire him first for…
Protecting the Inbox
Protecting the Inbox We only have one out of our 13 core values at Return Path that’s closely related to the content of our business. But as with the other values, it says a lot about who we are and how we approach the work that we do. That value is: We believe inboxes should only contain messages that are relevant, trusted, and safe We occupy a pretty unique space in the email universe – we serve senders and receiving networks, but aren’t directly in the mail stream and therefore don’t directly touch end users. So much of our business, from our Certification or whitelisting business, to our new Domain Assurance anti-spoofing/anti-phishing business, revolves around building trust in our company…
Learning to Embrace Sizzle
Learning to Embrace Sizzle One phrase I’ve heard a lot over the years is about “Selling the sizzle, not the steak.” It suggests that in the world of marketing or product design, there is a divergence between elements of substance and what I call bright shiny objects, and that sometimes it’s the bright shiny objects that really move the needle on customer adoption. At Return Path, we have always been about the steak and NOT the sizzle. We’re incredibly fact-based and solution-oriented as a culture. In fact, I can think of a lot of examples where we have turned our nose up at the sizzle over the years because it doesn’t contribute to core product functionality or might be a…