socialmedian: 7 Months Into My 2nd Stint as a Startup CEO

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7 Months Into My 2nd Stint as a Startup CEO - socialmedian

Submitted by Jasongoldberg

Aug 12, 2008

Summary

One of the first things I did when getting started on socialmedian 7 months ago was to write out a list of many of the lessons I learned in my first turn as a startup CEO at Jobster from 2004 to 2007. Trust me, there were plenty of them. You can read them here.

As I set out to apply these lessons the 2nd time around, I promised myself that I would periodically stop to write an update. I had meant to do the first update after 6 months at socialmedian but we got so busy with our recent beta launch that I'm just now getting around to it about a month late.

Starting a second company reminds me of a valuable lesson from my first day of undergraduate studies at Emory University years back. The dean of something-or-other walks into a room full of about 500 nervous yet confident know-it-alls and says: "You are going to learn a lot of lessons the next 4 years. But let me be the one to tell you the most important lesson of all right now, and it's not anything you are going to read in a textbook. Go home tonight and take out a picture of your parents and study that picture and remember their ways. Because I promise you that you are going to spend a good part of the rest of your life both running from your parents and becoming them.

That's a bit like what starting your second company is like: A whole lot of running from (the mistakes of) your first startup while reverting back to your strengths that first drove you to be an entrepreneur. Finding that right blend between the two is the key.

The point of this post though isn't to do a critique of what I've done differently this time vs. the last time around.

The point of this post is to provide some fresh insights into act 2.

When we set out to start with socialmedian back in January of 2008, we purposely set out to start a different type of startup. At least, very different than most these days. [read on...] Read the full article

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