MyPunchblog

This post was written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO

I believe that every great company should have a high-level strategy that can be explained in two minutes or less. A company’s strategy is the blueprint to success, and a great strategy helps connect every single employee to the vision of the company’s growth.

Anyone who works at Punchbowl Software has heard me talk about our company’s strategy countless times. During any significant meeting, I’ll typically repeat our strategy complete with visuals on the whiteboard. Fairly often in these meetings, I’ll ask someone to explain our strategy in their own words. I believe the best way to learn is to put the concepts in your own words — it’s a powerful thing to listen to someone else describe the company’s strategy. No one is immune from being asked to repeat the strategy — from the developers to the financial people, and even the intern (sorry Jill).

Most around me would agree that I repeat our strategy a lot — probably to a fault. In fact, it’s become a company joke to make fun of the “pyramid” that I draw on the white-board. To me, this just tells me that I’ve done a good job at getting everyone on the same page.

So why do I repeat the strategy so often? Well, here are my top 5 reasons to repeat your strategy:

1. Get everyone on the same page: Whether your company is big or small, it’s important to make sure everyone understands the high-level strategy. Repetition is one way to make this happen.
2. Build ownership: The more each individual in the company feels ownership of the strategy, the more buy-in each person will feel in the company’s overall success. That’s a great way to build team unity.
3. Guide small decisions: There are countless small decisions your employees make everyday. If everyone truly understands the strategy, then all of these decisions will be made with your objectives in mind.
4. Keep your employees on message: Each employee is a window to the outside world. As you repeat your strategy, you’re also helping shape how your employees talk about the company with the outside world. Word of mouth is a powerful marketing tool — and strategy is an important part of your overall message.
5. Impart your vision: As I’ve written before, great managers are the ones that can step away from the office for a week at a time and know that the team is moving the company forward. As CEO, my vision and the company’s strategy are closely aligned. That makes it easier to take time off and re-charge.

And for all of the smart Alec’s out there — I’ll spare you the trouble. No, I’m not going to repeat this blog post. But you might want to read it again and ask yourself — can I repeat the strategy of the project/company I’m working on in less than two minutes? Why or why not? Perhaps a few more repetitions of the strategy are in order.

This post was written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO

As a CEO of a startup, I believe it’s really important to stop what you are doing and take some time out to say “thank you” to your employees. After all, they work long hours and are often under a deadline. So how do you show your appreciation?

What I like to do is pick an afternoon to take the team out to lunch and then choose an activity together. In the past, I’ve taken the team to an IMAX movie (dinosaurs) and we’ve also carved pumpkins during the fall. These days always make for great memories, and they help bring the team together.

This past Friday, I gathered everyone in the office for a quick impromptu meeting in the morning. I told them how much I appreciated how hard everyone had been working — and I announced that it was “Summer Day.” We closed the office at noon, and I took the team to have lunch (at a great Asian restaurant in Natick). After lunch, I arranged to have a group brewing session at a local “brew your own beer” place. We had a great time.

For those of you who haven’t taken the time recently to show your team how much you appreciate them, allow me to provide you with a few benefits of planning an afternoon out of the office:

1. There is no better way for team members to get to know each other than in a non-work situation. It fosters team unity that lasts.
2. An activity out of the office provides a shared experience that will be remembered for years to come.
3. Invariably, humor will come from these events — and that’s a great antidote to relieving some everyday stress.
4. A small investment in time and money will pay back many times over. Employees who love to work at the company are priceless.
5. It’s a great way to enforce that your company believes in a healthy work/life balance.

We had a great time brewing beer together, and we’re all looking forward to bottling and tasting our creation in a few weeks (that will happen outside of work hours). Here’s a great shot of a few of our employees working together to brew the perfect beer.

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

Is there an unwritten rule about how quickly one should respond to an email?

I received an email from my brother today with a simple, unimportant question that was anything but urgent.

Here at Punchbowl we have continual access to our email. Not only do we use it in the standard manner, we use Gmail chat to send quick notes and links as well.  So while some people check their email maybe a few times a day at their job, we check our email about 6,000 times a day (actually it just updates itself).

So when I received this email from my brother I could have responded in about 3 seconds. But I didn’t. I thought “that’s just a little too quick”. Is it me or is there a sort of grace period that you apply (depending on the person and the subject) when responding to emails? On the other side of the coin, have you ever received a response to an email waaay too quickly?

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

Our marketing intern started yesterday (Monday morning). More on that in a future blog post…

In preparation for her arrival, I set up an old Dell computer for her on late Friday afternoon. While I’m currently an avid Mac user–and have been for at least five years now–at one point in my life I used PCs for both work and home.

I didn’t think setting up the Windows-based computer would be a big deal. I figured out where all of the cords went, and everything looked good — but then the monitor wouldn’t turn on. What could I have done wrong? Well, plugging it in might have been a start. Gimme a break though… it was Friday afternoon and that cord was mysteriously missing from my pile.

But what takes the cake is that once I got everything up and running I noticed that the task bar was up at the top of the screen, instead of at the bottom where most people are used to seeing it. (Note the blue task bar at the top of this image):

I know I’ve made this change before on my previous PCs but could not figure out how to do it. A couple of other people in our office tried (even one of our Mac engineers!) with no luck. It was pretty hilarious to watch a few people try to move the task bar without success.

For the record, you move the task bar by *left-clicking* and slightly dragging the mouse…. Ah, Windows.

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

I’ve been at MyPunchbowl for almost five months and I’m happy to say that I finally ordered my business cards–yesterday. You might be wondering what took so long…

It goes back to my first or second day when I asked Matt about my phone. Until only recently the company had just one phone with one line. Unfathomable, right? But with only a handful of employees, most of whom had no need for a phone, there wasn’t really much need for more than one line. And as an internet company, shouldn’t we do most of our business online anyway? Matt thought about my question, looked at me and said, “Now you know what it’s like to work at a start-up.”

While I’ve been able to manage without my own line, it was clear that we needed to resolve the issue of the phones. But who would do it? We don’t have a dedicated office manager to take care of these things. Should the CEO spend his time on this issue? Or the engineers whose time is precious. Somehow I ended up with the undesirable task of figuring out the company’s phone system.

After considering landlines, cell phones, and other services, we ended up choosing VoIP with Packet8. So far so good. We’re still working out the kinks regarding the number of lines we actually need, conference call needs, etc.  But it is nice to finally have a phone at my desk!

And I’m still learning what it means to work at a start-up but having this experience early on prepared me for what to expect.

This post written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO

How do you judge your success? Do you value how others view your success or are you content with your own measuring stick for your accomplishments? I’ve been reading a book recently that deals with these questions, and I believe it’s an important concept for a startup like MyPunchbowl to consider. The book introduces the concept of an “Inner Scorecard” vs. an “Outer Scorecard.” Here’s my quick take on how this concept applies to our daily work on MyPunchbowl:

Inner Scorecard: How we judge ourselves, relative to our own goals:

• Satisfaction of our employees (in their daily work)
• Traffic and metrics relative to our plan (are we hitting our monthly and quarterly numbers?)
• Funding based on how much we need to run the company (Just enough and not too much)
• Costs and revenue according to our plan

Outer Scorecard: How we judge ourselves, relative to others:

• Employee satisfaction at other companies (Google has free lunch everyday!)
• Traffic comparisons to other companies (using tools such as Alexa or Compete)
• Press coverage and general internet buzz of MyPunchbowl relative to other sites (e.g. how many times your competitor appears on TechCrunch)
• Comparison to other companies who have raised money (e.g. How the ^%@&# did Chacha raise another $30M??)

Here’s my take: if you are a person (or company) who constantly judges your success based on comparisons to others, my guess is that you spend a lot of your time unhappy. I try to have a clearly defined “Inner Scorecard” so that we measure our success by our own metrics. It’s fine to compare yourself to others once in a while, but if it dictates your decisions, it’s probably a sign that your internal goals are not clear enough.

So keep your head down, your goals clear, and stop judging yourself by what everyone else is doing. Take care of business using your Inner Scorecard, and you’ll be happier and more successful.

A very wise man taught me an important lesson about a year ago:

Rather than saying “but”, try saying “and” instead.

I remember when I first heard this advice, my first reaction was that this was another one of those trite phrases that people like to say sometimes. However, I really trust the person who shared his wisdom with me, so I took the time to carefully listen to his perspective.

He told me that the word “but” is one of those words that triggers a negative response in most people. With this simple word, you can signal that you disagree or that there is some condition to the statement you just made. Consider the following phrases:

• I love your idea, but I don’t think it’s right for this scenario.
• The numbers may suggest that, but I don’t think you’ve analyzed them correctly
• I think you’re great for the position, but I need to think about whether you’ll be a good fit in our company

The word “and” signals that you have something to add to the conversation. It doesn’t put people on the defensive, and opens up everyone to a more productive conversation. Consider the phrases from above — this time with “and” instead of “but”:

• I love your idea, and I have some ideas of my own I would like to share with you.
• The numbers may suggest that, and I have another interpretation of the data
• I think you’re great for the position, and I want to spend more time thinking about how you fit in our organization

Do you use the word “but” more than the word “and”? Try an experiment today: everytime you want to say the word “but”, try substituting the word “and.” How do your conversations change? Are they more positive? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments of this blog post.

Thank you to the person who taught me this important lesson — and I hope this post brings a smile to your face.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve had a few spirited debates with some of my most trusted advisers. In each of the conversations, we had substantially opposing points of view. I’m surrounded with some *very* smart people, so any point of view that’s presented is usually very well thought out and stems from years of experience. However, when two smart people debate, there is often disagreement. As the CEO of a startup, it’s really important for me to listen to the opinions of those around me. But at the end of the discussion and debate, I have to make a decision — and I want to make sure that the entire company is behind me. So what happens when we don’t agree?

In these situations, I’ve found that there is really only one solution. It may sound trite, but it’s an important concept: you simply have to agree to disagree. What does that mean and what should you do? Here’s my list of the things to do when you agree to disagree:

1. First, and most importantly, you have to end the discussion. When the discussion gets to an impasse, it doesn’t help to keep debating. Agree to disagree and then move on quickly.
2. Make sure the other person feels like they have been heard. Say things like, “I hear your point of view, and I see your logic.” That will go a long way to helping everyone move on after the conversation has ended.
3. Show respect for the other person. Say “I really respect the time and energy that you’ve put into this discussion, but let’s agree to disagree.
4. Don’t revisit the topic again: it’s unlikely that a new discussion will result in a different outcome, so don’t enter into another debate about the same topic. Agree to disagree and move on.
5. Document both points of view shortly after the discussion ends. Whether you jot down notes or send a follow-up email, it’s important to try to capture the salient points of each person in the conversation
6. Admit when you’re wrong: if you agree to disagree and then later figure out that the other person was right, it’s important to admit that your point of view was wrong or flawed. This builds trust and better understanding — which is very important in any relationship.
7. Use humor: at the end of a debate it’s important to try and clear the air. I’ve always found that humor can help in these situations. Use wit and humor to help move the conversation to another topic.

What did I miss? Do you agree with my list? If not, let’s agree to disagree - and please post your thoughts in the comments.

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Planning a holiday party? Send a save the date using MyPunchbowl today!

There’s been a steady increase of Punchbowler dogs that hang out at the office with us these days. First there was Mozart, the dog of our landlord Steve. Then there was Ollie, brought to us by our newest developer Aaron.

In the last two weeks, we’ve had a few new dogs join the Punchbowlers. Our new tech support person, Colin brought us Jordy (who enjoyed lying on his back and pretending he was swimming). And today we have Pippy Louise, brought in by our new marketing contractor, Scott.

I don’t have a dog at home (we have two cats), so I’m always happy when we’re visited by our canine friends. Usually the dog finds a spot in the office to quietly hang out — in this case, Pippy Louise is spending this morning eating a bagel:

While it’s not a requirement to have a dog in order to get hired at Punchbowl, it sure is a nice bonus. So if you’re on a call with someone from Punchbowl and you hear barking in the background, now you’ll know why.

Well, technically… happy belated birthday.

Yesterday our landlord (aka “slumlord”) celebrated his birthday. Steve is the owner of our building, and he graciously leases out space to us at startup rates. We share a bunch of common areas with Steve, and he’s around more days than not. The Punchbowl team really enjoys having him around, and he’s even recently taken to our Roaring Lion drinking competition.

When we made the decision to get an office, we couldn’t have asked for a better situation. Our office is a relaxed and fun environment and Steve adds some color to our team everyday. Just this week, we’ve been graced by the presence of guinea pigs — apparently thanks to a pregnant guinea pig that Steve had at home. Steve named him “Punchy” in honor of his best tenants.

By the way, if you’re looking for a great lawyer in the Metrowest area of Boston, I would highly recommend Steve Meltzer. He can help with corporation paperwork, real-estate transactions, and run of the mill legal disputes. The best part: he won’t charge you the over-priced Boston lawyer rates.

Here’s a picture of Steve Meltzer with a signed can of Roaring Lion (hand signed by the team) and some celebratory cupcakes (thanks Margery!). Happy Birthday Steve!