Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business Hardcover – January 1, 2013

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business by Matt Blumberg is a comprehensive resource for CEO’s and management of VC-backed startup companies. It’s part of Brad Feld’s Startup Revolution series. I try to practice almost all of the principles of this book and now encourage every CEO that I work with to read it. I guarantee you’ll walk away with multiple specific and actionable changes to implement at your company.I’ve known Matt for more than a decade and worked with him at multiple businesses. He’s someone I respect and look up, and and there is probably no better sign of than the fact that Return Path acquired my last company OtherInbox. It was an easy decision, knowing that Return Path was an amazing company with a bright future, an incredible executive team I would love to work with, and an amazing culture that would take good care of my team. This book is really the Return Path operating manual, so by reading it you’ll get a good sense of why I was so attracted to the company and working with Matt.I listened to the audio version of the book on Audible in my car on my daily commute to work, which was very disconcerting at first because someone else besides Matt is narrating it (quite common). The first time I saw Matt after finishing the book, I was confused again when I heard his real voice!What was so fascinating to me is how much of this book I already knew from my relatively brief 2 year time at Return Path. It’s truly woven into the fabric of the company, such that everyone knows how these things work and they are reinforced constantly. As I read the book, I was constantly thinking, “knew that”, “yup”, “I remember that”, and “yup, that’s how we do it at Return Path.”What I love about this book is that it’s so PRACTICAL. There are tons of specific techniques and tactics that you can pull out and apply directly to your business. And the book is comprehensive. It covers everything.- Forming your company- Coming up with the idea- Building the team- Attracting investors- Company culture- Compensation- Remote employees- Planning- Forecasting and Budgeting- Building a board of directors- The board book- Running board meetings- Serving on other boards- Taking care of yourself- Personal productivity- Business travelMatt explains straightforward strategies and practic tactics for hiring, training, and firing employees. He tells his own examples of difficult situations and managing different types of people that make each of these topics relatable and easy to understand.One of the most valuable operating procedures I found in the book is how Matt structures and plans the quarterly rhythm of the company around the board meetings. He plans the 4 board meetings for the following year and everything else works backward from there… an executive offsite to prepare for the board meeting, the “board book” which is shared with the entire company, financial reporting, and goal setting.Another great operating procedure Matt describes is a set of different meeting models. Daily stand ups, weekly checkins, quarterly strategy meetings. He explains the various formats and a practical perspective on how to make best of use of them and adapt over time based on the needs of the business.One great saying I picked up from the book is the NIHITO Principle – Nothing Important Happens In The Office. Get out there and talk to customers and be in market!Matt references and credits many other popular business books such as The Lean Startup and The Advantage but you don’t need to know anything about those other books to understand the concepts here.“Startup” is a relative term. Some people think of 3 geeks in a garage and others think of a 400 person company with 10 offices that is gearing up for IPO. While there are many topics in this book that would apply to both types of CEO, the book leans more towards the successful, high growth startup than the struggling entrepreneur in the valley of death.With Startup CEO, Brad Feld has added another book of required reading to join Do More Faster, Venture Deals, Startup Boards, and Startup Communities. Go buy it now!

If a book has one actionable idea, it's a great success. Matt Blumberg has provided a gold mine of ideas, at least to me. Thanks!Matt rekindled the idea of blogging for me. I used to think of blogging as something to do when you aren't busing creating "real stuff". Matt promotes the idea of maintaining a public persona for recruiting purposes. He is also into transparency, and talks candidly on his blog about his work at Return Path. That's likely to be my goal in renewing my blogging efforts.Transparency is a core value for Matt. He takes it a step further than most CEOs. Here's a recent example on his blog. I've always believed in transparency. What I appreciate about Matt's approach is that he describes the mechanisms to achieve it: 360-degree reviews, postmortems, admit mistakes, the "board book", and, of course, blogging.Matt's book is a collaborative effort. He includes "cameos" from many other people at Return Path and a few outsiders, too. The contributions are excellent, and demonstrate Matt's commitment to teamwork.This is a book about Return Path and some content is taken from Matt's blog. Some reviewers have complained about this. To me, it makes sense, because the context is necessary to show how the ideas work. Matt's blog allows him to user-test his descriptions of those ideas. Taken together, it's a cohesive and coherent story of Matt's career and life at Return Path over the last 15 years, warts and all.Matt is a "systems guy". I relate to that. As you may have guessed already, his systems encompass everything in his life, including his "home operating system". Really? Yup. He talks about "anchors" like Friday night dinner at home and coaching a kid's sports team. These days it's necessary, especially if you are running a startup, like Return Path. While my life isn't nearly as complicated, I appreciate Matt's approach to squeezing "every minute out of each day". It's important when you have to balance everything.One of the techniques I hope to implement is "just a second". Matt insists "on finishing whatever quick task or thought I'm working on before engaging" in an interruption. It's tough to do this, especially given that I'm such a pleaser. However, Matt has reminded me how important this is. You have to be interruptible, and you can control your task switching time so you are most efficient.All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. As a Return Path investor, Startup CEO increased my confidence in Matt as captain who knows keeps a tight ship with grace and style.

A bit basic but could be useful for a beginner

I read Startup CEO when it first came out and am going through it again on audio during my LIRR commute. Solid work. I read a lot (1-2 books/month) and felt Matt covered an enormous amount of relevant ground with a respectable attitude - and all written in a way a reader can enjoy.My "musts" for reading books from the startup execution genre are: (1) must be current, (2) must be from someone who has been there, (3) must offer many well articulated actionable takeaways, (4) must stand out from other books in this genre. Taking lots of notes during the book because it is hitting bullseye on all 4 musts gets it 4 stars. The fact that I am already reading it again and recommending it to others gets it 5 stars.Readers have a lot of options when it comes to the subjects Matt covered in his book, but his book is unique. Plus, given that I love to read, I was excited to learn about additional books which I have since added to my reading list - books that had a big influence on Matt. This book describes much of the execution necessary (plus execution necessary in a broad range of startup situations) once a company is ramping up through its growth trajectory into exit territory.

Not the best money I've spent. I flipped through it, bookmarked a dozen pages, and called it a day. I fell asleep somewhere in-between Chapter 1 and 30. And I got sick of Blumberg's constant advertisement of Feld's Venture Deals book (BTW: that one's a bear of a read, too). If I were you, I'd skip this one and anything else in Feld's "Startup Series", unless you actually enjoy being bored to tears.