A first-time CEO writes about entrepreneurship and email
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Good riddance to non-competes

I love that the FTC just banned non-competes, as everyone expected they would. Normally, I’m in favor of small government and fewer regulations, but this is one where I think the government has a legitimate interest in setting up guardrails to a free market. We started off at Return Path years ago with a standard and fairly benign non-compete...

Wed Apr 24, 2024 00:27
Decisions

Happy Leap Day! One of the better books I’ve read in the last 6 months is James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, which provides a great framework around habits. It’s worth a read, whether you’re talking about business habits/routines or personal ones. This isn’t a book review, but...

Thu Feb 29, 2024 14:34
Book Short: Less is More

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, by Leidy Klotz is a great read, and in concert with the philosophy of the book, this will be a short blog post. The book’s basic premise is that less is more, addition by subtraction. The author’s examples range from the genius of the Strider Bike (bike without pedals) that allows 2-year olds to ride...

Thu Feb 15, 2024 15:35
How I Engage with the CBDO

(Post 4 of 4 in the series on Scaling CBDO’s- other posts are, When to hire your first Chief Business Development Officer, What does Great look like in a Chief Business Development Officer and Signs your Chief Business Development Officer isn’t Scaling) Other than the weekly executive meeting, your day as a CEO rarely has an entry of “meet...

Thu Feb 8, 2024 11:22
The Dowry

Here’s one to keep in mind – we did this a few times at Return Path, and I was just reminded of it when I was coaching another founder who is doing the same thing right now. Sometimes when you’re doing a strategic acquisition and it’s an all-stock deal, you can insist as a term of the acquisition that the target company’s investors invest...

Thu Feb 1, 2024 13:56
Signs your CBDO isn’t scaling

(This is the third post in the series… The first one When to Hire your first CBDO is here, and What does Great Look Like in a CBDO is here). The metrics for understanding whether or not your CBDO is scaling differs from other functions like Sales, People Ops, Customer Service, and Finance because throughout the scaling process the CBDO team...

Thu Jan 25, 2024 11:21

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