Offline …

I’m in DC for a couple of days meeting people and so mostly offline. If you have something urgent to communicate, be sure to cc info at blogads.com.

I took the train up today and enjoyed napping and re-reading my much annotated copy of The Loyalty Effect. When I’m really into a book, I do a lot of writing in the margins. The first time I read TLE, we were ramping up Pressflex, our webmaster service for European publishers, so it is fun to see our pre-occupations reflected in my old marginal scribblings.

The lessons of the book: a) find and keep smart customers b) hire and retain great staff c) sell shares only to patient and passionate investors, who want you to do (a) and (b) 24/7 through thick and thin.

Bottom line: I’m very glad we never sold shares to VC. Blogads wouldn’t be here today if we had somebody breathing down our neck demanding 35% annualized returns on $5 million. You can do a lot of customers a lot of good without hitting those kind of numbers; in fact, it is far easier to serve people well and grow intelligently if you don’t aspire to those kind of returns.

Speaking of European journalism, I’m very happy Matt introduced me to the FleetStreetBlog.