Matt Blumberg
Startup CEO
ISBN: 978-1-118-54836-3
Over the course of my life, I’ve worked in a lot of different fields. In high school, I held down a part-time gig at a local TV station editing tapes of the weekend evening news. During one of the summers of undergrad, I worked at one of the smaller libraries at the university. (This was before smartphones, so I read a lot of novels that summer.) While I was in graduate school, I was a nursing assistant on the medical/surgical floor at a local hospital. I’ve built Web sites, helped put together continuing education courses, and organized community events. However, first-time CEO has been the most difficult role I’ve ever found myself performing.
During most of my time in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, I’ve worked at the very beginning of the process – getting people to pitch their ideas and to start building those ideas into startups and small businesses. Taking BondingBox beyond that initial Startup Weekend was my first venture beyond the very beginning, but I’ve had help in the form of Venture School and the rest of the team. Cider Finder is my first foray as CEO, and I’ve felt as though it’s truly been trial by fire ever since the beginning. I’ve sought out help where I can, but most of what I’ve learned has been through trial and error.
Startup CEO by Matt Blumberg is helping me fill in some of those blanks I still feel I have in my knowledge base. In fact, after reading this book, I realize that I have significantly more gaps in my knowledge base than I thought I did. Nearly every chapter in the book taught me something new, and managed to make my to-do list as CEO that much longer. Many of the books I have reviewed in this series are the one-and-done type, where you get through the book in a matter of hours, absorb a few key points, and then put the book away on the shelf or loan it out to someone else. This book will be a repeat read, for sure.
The book covers everything, from the birth of the idea and the foundation of the company, all the way through hiring, scaling, looking for investment dollars, and putting together a board. As of right now, I’m not at the point of scaling or hiring at Cider Finder, but I want to know what I should expect over the coming months and years as I continue to grow the business. Many of the topics covered in the book are things that should be discussed further in programs aimed at new CEOs – essentially, a crash course in what to expect over the following years.
One thing that stands out to me after reading the book is that I need better mentorship. It’s difficult for me to ask for help – a problem with which I’ve struggled for a long time. I’ve always been the person others look to when they need answers or need problems solved. It’s not that I feel asking for help is a personal failing; it just seems like it would be awkward. However, after slogging through a bunch of topics where at best I felt on shaky ground and at worst I was completely lost, I now realize that I need a mentor or two of my own. I realize that I need help to work through my company’s problems, just like others have talked with me about their issues.
If you take anything away from this book, let it be the section on self-care for CEOs. This section reminded me that I really need to spend more quality time with my family and friends outside of the entrepreneurial environment. Taking time for yourself is just as important as running a company, and if you don’t care for your own well-being, the company will suffer. Working from home allows me to spend more time with my kids – I’ve been able to watch them grow up, and I have the flexibility to attend recitals and events that I wouldn’t if I were working in an office somewhere during standard business hours. However, I know I can and should do better, and this book showed me that.
Overall, 9/10, would recommend to CEOs anywhere along the path of building a startup or small business. I’m glad I found this book early on in my CEO journey, and don’t have to completely feel my way through the dark. If you don’t walk away from this book with at least one revelation, you didn’t read it well enough.