Startup CEO, 2nd Edition

About the Author

Matt Blumberg founded Return Path in 1999 because he believed the world needed email to work better and because he wanted to build a model workplace for the knowledge economy. Matt‘s passion about enhancing the online relationship between email subscribers and marketers so that both sides of the equation benefit was part of the formula that drove Return Path from an initial concept to a profitable company of almost 500 employees worldwide with $100mm in revenues and ultimately to its successful exit in a strategic sale to Validity in 2019.

After leaving Validity, Matt ended up doing a couple of Interim CEO stints, including one particularly interesting one starting up an organization for the State of Colorado called the Innovation Response Team. The role as leader of the Response Team required rapid‐response creative programs that were entrepreneurial, out‐of‐the‐box thinking. It also required deep connections to the private sector (as well as cross‐agency collaboration within various levels of government), integrated with the state's Emergency Operations Center. The impact as an interim leader of these two organizations led Matt and a group of former Return Path colleagues to start a new company called Bolster. In partnership with High Alpha and Silicon Valley Bank, Bolster is a talent marketplace that matches companies and executives on an interim, fractional, advisory, and project basis. Think of Bolster as “NetJets for senior executives.”

Along with the ...