Nobody said it was easy.
No one ever said it would be so hard.
I’m going back to the start.
-Coldplay, The Scientist.
I have been blogging about my experiences in startups since 2004. Along the way I’ve had all sorts of ups and downs, successes and mistakes. I’ve learned a ton.
I’ve tried to use this betashop blog (and my socialmedian blog before it) as an outlet to provide budding entrepreneurs with transparent insights into lessons of a startup life. The post I’m most proud of, 90 Things I’ve Learned From Founding 4 Technology Companies, has been translated into several languages and read by many people. It was also turned into a video interview with Kevin Rose. That post was preceded by 57 things learned from starting 3 companies, which was preceded by a shorter piece on the socialmedian blog shortly after I left Jobster in 2008. (The socialmedian blog was unfortunately taken down following the acquisition of socialmedian by XING in 2009 so I can’t link to that post). I love hearing other entrepreneurs tell me that a part of one of those posts influenced their own startup journey.
In 2012 and 2013 I took the betashop blog in a direction that I’m not proud of. I allowed it to veer from its original mandate around startup transparency and lessons learned to more of a promotion tool for Fab. Sure, I shared more company data and info on betashop than most startup CEOs would imagine sharing, and I know that a lot of people appreciated the transparency. But to be perfectly honest the sharing was sometimes slanted; more and more betashop was used as a vehicle for pushing out positive data about Fab. That’s not full transparency. Someone once asked me, “will you still share so much data when things aren’t going so well?” At the time I said “Yes.” In reality, I did not. It’s really hard to proactively publish negative data about your company (imagine the post: “Hey, look how crappy our monthly sales were!”) I don’t know many good examples of companies who do that well, except for the occasional “why we failed” post from early stage startups. Company transparency can only go so far.
2013 was a pivotal year in my professional career and for Fab. In July 2013 Fab raised more than $150M at a $1B valuation. Just a couple of weeks after closing that financing I decided that the best path forward for Fab was to slow down and significantly cut the burn-rate while we strengthened the foundation vs. pursuing rapid growth. From August to November we cut our workforce by more than half, from 700 to around 300 today. I said farewell to one of my cofounders and to numerous other highly capable and extremely talented executives, managers, and doers. It was painful.
But, it was necessary. My job as CEO is to make the decisions that will provide the greatest likelihood of future success for the company. The decisions I made in the back-half of 2013 and the changes that resulted from them will enable Fab to be more customer focused, more resource efficient, and more long-term successful as we execute on our 2014-2017 plan.
On a personal level I took some justifiable hits in 2013. That goes with the territory when you raise money at $1B and then cut headcount and operating expenses as dramatically and swiftly as I did. I freely admit, when you grow revenue 500% year over year and become a media darling overnight, it’s hard to keep perspective. No doubt, we had lost perspective at Fab. We had started to dream in billions when we should have been focused on making one day simply better than the one before it.
My focus now is squarely on making Fab realize its full potential over time. I know that my near term decisions might not always make sense externally. I believe that over time we will prove it with real results.
“Over time” is the key part of that last statement. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned the past year is that time is an entrepreneur’s most precious asset. With time you can learn, adjust, and figure things out. The cost-cutting measures we enacted at Fab in 2013 bought us a lot of time. Now we’ve got to figure it out. Want to know how Fab is doing? Ask me again in 2017 ;-)
Regarding blogging.
From now on betashop will only feature a once-per-quarter long form blog post by me on recent lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur. It will be authentic. Four times per year I’ll try to come up with something of value to other entrepreneurs based on my own recent experiences.
No one ever said it would be so hard.
I’m going back to the start.
-Coldplay, The Scientist.
I have been blogging about my experiences in startups since 2004. Along the way I’ve had all sorts of ups and downs, successes and mistakes. I’ve learned a ton.
I’ve tried to use this betashop blog (and my socialmedian blog before it) as an outlet to provide budding entrepreneurs with transparent insights into lessons of a startup life. The post I’m most proud of, 90 Things I’ve Learned From Founding 4 Technology Companies, has been translated into several languages and read by many people. It was also turned into a video interview with Kevin Rose. That post was preceded by 57 things learned from starting 3 companies, which was preceded by a shorter piece on the socialmedian blog shortly after I left Jobster in 2008. (The socialmedian blog was unfortunately taken down following the acquisition of socialmedian by XING in 2009 so I can’t link to that post). I love hearing other entrepreneurs tell me that a part of one of those posts influenced their own startup journey.
In 2012 and 2013 I took the betashop blog in a direction that I’m not proud of. I allowed it to veer from its original mandate around startup transparency and lessons learned to more of a promotion tool for Fab. Sure, I shared more company data and info on betashop than most startup CEOs would imagine sharing, and I know that a lot of people appreciated the transparency. But to be perfectly honest the sharing was sometimes slanted; more and more betashop was used as a vehicle for pushing out positive data about Fab. That’s not full transparency. Someone once asked me, “will you still share so much data when things aren’t going so well?” At the time I said “Yes.” In reality, I did not. It’s really hard to proactively publish negative data about your company (imagine the post: “Hey, look how crappy our monthly sales were!”) I don’t know many good examples of companies who do that well, except for the occasional “why we failed” post from early stage startups. Company transparency can only go so far.
2013 was a pivotal year in my professional career and for Fab. In July 2013 Fab raised more than $150M at a $1B valuation. Just a couple of weeks after closing that financing I decided that the best path forward for Fab was to slow down and significantly cut the burn-rate while we strengthened the foundation vs. pursuing rapid growth. From August to November we cut our workforce by more than half, from 700 to around 300 today. I said farewell to one of my cofounders and to numerous other highly capable and extremely talented executives, managers, and doers. It was painful.
But, it was necessary. My job as CEO is to make the decisions that will provide the greatest likelihood of future success for the company. The decisions I made in the back-half of 2013 and the changes that resulted from them will enable Fab to be more customer focused, more resource efficient, and more long-term successful as we execute on our 2014-2017 plan.
On a personal level I took some justifiable hits in 2013. That goes with the territory when you raise money at $1B and then cut headcount and operating expenses as dramatically and swiftly as I did. I freely admit, when you grow revenue 500% year over year and become a media darling overnight, it’s hard to keep perspective. No doubt, we had lost perspective at Fab. We had started to dream in billions when we should have been focused on making one day simply better than the one before it.
My focus now is squarely on making Fab realize its full potential over time. I know that my near term decisions might not always make sense externally. I believe that over time we will prove it with real results.
“Over time” is the key part of that last statement. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned the past year is that time is an entrepreneur’s most precious asset. With time you can learn, adjust, and figure things out. The cost-cutting measures we enacted at Fab in 2013 bought us a lot of time. Now we’ve got to figure it out. Want to know how Fab is doing? Ask me again in 2017 ;-)
Regarding blogging.
From now on betashop will only feature a once-per-quarter long form blog post by me on recent lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur. It will be authentic. Four times per year I’ll try to come up with something of value to other entrepreneurs based on my own recent experiences.
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