First in my series of posts around creating the best place to work is to Surround yourself with the best and brightest. This one is simple. Build the best team you can possibly build…as you need it. As a founder, you may be the best person at doing everything in your company, especially if you are a technical founder. But as my long-time Board member at Return Path Greg Sands always says, when the organism grows, cells start to specialize. Eventually, you need a liver and a brain. Just like companies need a head of sales and a CFO (not to imply that Anita likes the occasional cocktail or that Jack likes math – turns out both like both). How…
Archives / July, 2012
Post on Return Path and People
Post on Return Path and People For those readers of OnlyOnce who aren’t also readers of Fred’s AVC blog, Fred invited our SVP People, Angela, to guest post on his site this week as part of his series on HR/People. Her post is here, and it’s a great encapsulation of a lot of what we do at Return Path from a People perspective.
The Best Place to Work, Part 0
The Best Place to Work, Part 0 I keep getting questions about a deck I’ve used several times at Techstars, Seedcamp, DreamIt, and the like which is called “7 Ideas for Creating the Best Place to Work.” So today I will launch a 7-part series over the next 7 weeks to describe my 7 points. As always, this is not intended to be perfect or comprehensive, but it is a bit of lessons learned over the last 12-13 years at Return Path. It’s just 7 ideas – not the only 7 ideas. And there’s nothing magic about the number 7, despite what George Costanza says. Or Steven Covey. Here’s the outline: Surround yourself with the best and brightest Create an…
Marketing Data: What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You
Marketers have blinders on when it comes to some aspects of data. We‘re so focused on using it to build relationships and businesses, that we don’t pay enough attention to data’s inherent risks. Those risks are real, though. Our brands are constantly under attack, and even trivial oversights in data handling can leave us—and our customers—unacceptably vulnerable. We need to better understand the risks. We need to know more. If marketers don’t develop industrywide expertise in all aspects of data use, if we can’t demonstrate that we can be trusted stewards of information, we risk losing our rights to use it. The DMA is taking the lead to make sure that we, as an industry, gain the knowledge we need:…