Earlier I’ve written around the skill of operating at different levels of the business – one minute taking a call with a customer around a particular initiative, the next minute planning your goals for the next three years. The human mind is more geared towards focusing on the near term, what’s right under our nose- which is why we’ve taken a concerted effort to try and operate at a higher...
Diplomacy is the art of letting somebody else have your way. – David Frost As Contactually has continued to scale, I’ve given away more and more ownership of the company to the appropriate internal leaders. While I remain ultimately responsible, that doesn’t line up with having ultimate decision making. Any overriding of decisions risks undermining the ownership of the...
“I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance”- Steve Jobs I’m a strong believer in that perseverance is the underlying trait of any real accomplishment. The ability to recover from failure (however one characterizes a temporary setback) is increasingly more and more critical, and is what...
Common present day mantra de-values the idea for new venture, putting much more emphasis on the execution. While I agree, that does not mean the concept itself is meaningless. Ideas for new ventures, products, etc may hit you at any moment. I’ve found it productive to do my best to capture those. Going back to 2009, I’ve been capturing most ideas for new products in Evernote. It can be something...
I’ve come to learn from others and from our own experiences that its natural – and necessary – to continuously address how duties are divvied up among leadership – especially among multiple founders. When Contactually was first incorporated, we had a pretty simple split between “build” and “sell.” Tony was brought on to “sell” while Jeff...
The first few days at my first job out of college at a big company, was, to no surprise, a tedious checklist of forms to fill out and compliance-based sessions. AKA, welcome to the company, here’s how not to get fired, I’ve learned that how you onboard employees makes a huge impact – similar to onboarding a new user to your product. To no surprise, our earliest employees were...
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” -Winston Churchill Be forewarned; this is one of the more abstract concepts, and therefore posts, that I’ll write about. This has been floating around in my head for some time – an accretion of thoughts rather than a singular concrete idea. In the wake of the recent electoral upending of society, and the shockwaves that...
I realize that most of my recent posts are around the common thread of “things I’ve learned scaling a startup” – this, of course, holds true to that expectation. There are a set of common adages related to talent – hire slow + fire fast, don’t screw up culture, don’t cut corners. One of the interesting concepts, however, is matching the caliber of talent...
We recently celebrated our fifth Founders Day – the anniversary of us incorporating the company on October 11th, 2011. While “Proactive CRM” was the initial idea that we pursued, we’ve spent a fair amount of time articulating what the “big idea” behind it was – and therefore, the impetus for devoting so much time and resources towards our goal. As the company has evolved and matured...
Our daughter was born over the summer.
Like any new father, there is the macadam of emotions, most pervasively the fear of the unknown regarding caring for a new, and completely dependent, life.
So I solicited a bunch of advice from friends and, rather than keeping it to myself, put it into an ebook for future new dads.
Get it here, and good luck!