Startup CEO, 2nd Edition

Conclusion

I began writing the first edition of Startup CEO about ten years into our entrepreneurial journey at Return Path. What began as a simple idea to provide email change of address services in 1999 expanded to include all sorts of products, leading one of my board members to comment that we were the world's smallest conglomerate. That wasn't a compliment! The idea behind the first edition was not to share the Return Path journey, since that's unique to us, our market, competitors, people, and culture, but to share all (or a lot of) the issues I faced as a first‐time startup CEO that other startup CEOs are likely to face.

I wrote this book for you, the first‐time startup CEO, because there's no way to learn how to be a CEO other than being one. Just because you're a first‐time CEO, seeing situations for the first time, doesn't mean that no one else has seen similar situations. And this book shares what I've learned, the mistakes I've made, and the challenges I dealt with that other first‐time CEOs will probably grapple with.

The second edition was written almost 20 years after our founding and we have now survived the dot com crisis of 2000, 9/11, the financial meltdown of 2008, and are in the throes of the global COVID‐19 pandemic today. We grew from a handful of employees to almost 500, and from virtually no revenues to over $100 million. We also faced situations that first‐time CEOs are likely to encounter as they grow, and we eventually sold the company, which I talked ...