This quote has resonated more than anything I think I’ve said in past year. I said it with regard to a point a colleague had on page 12 of a deck that I thought should be in the front, and then repeated the anecdote in Suster’s web show. There’s a conventional wisdom that every page and sentence of your work [...]

I send approximately 20 to 50 cold emails a week.  I’ve been doing this as a core part of my job function for roughly the past ten years.  I’ve always been responsible for generating partnerships or revenue as all or part of my job responsibilities, and I’ve found nothing converts as consistently and powerfully as cold emails. In a bygone [...]

Most brand marketing sites are like wet nerf balls. A wet nerf ball hits the ground with a thud. It’s similar to a partially deflated basketball – you get the point. In the case of brand sites, a lack of bounce means a lack of sharing. People land on these sites and hit them with a thud; there is no [...]

[ORIGINALLY POSTED ON BUZZFEED BLOG] BuzzFeed Boost 2.0 is a self-service tool for seeding your content on both BuzzFeed and Facebook.  This is an extension of the self-service platform that we introduced in October.  We’re currently offering Boost in three tiers, two of which allow for campaigns (boosting multiple posts) and Facebook extension. CPMs begin at set maximum levels, and we [...]

I’ve met and read of numerous CEOs lately who accept as a fait accompli that their companies are not fully under their control. Such leaders say things like, “we have no way of mandating things” with a smirk as if that is a happy unavoidable fact of life. It’s an embrace of bureaucracy that I find disturbing coming from the [...]

I often ask interview candidates how they spend their days. I do this because I find it hard to evaluate the role people can play in a startup in the absence of concrete functions and tasks.  Saying you do “strategy,” “sales,” “business development,” or “work with clients” is hard for me to get my head around. I want to hear [...]

The answer to most sales prospects requests are “yes” or “no.”  The answer is almost never “maybe” or “let me check with the development team.”  Offering custom solutions to prospects before they buy the “off the shelf” solution typically wastes time and resources and seldom results in revenue maximization.  I’ve learned this lesson, but still occasionally fail to follow my own rule [...]