The Wonder Twin Powers of Fire and Nice - DataPop's Journey

Last week we reached a major milestone on our wild and crazy DataPop ride: we are thrilled to be joining the Criteo family for the next part of the journey. Before we get too far down that path though, I wanted to take a moment to share some simple but hard earned lessons and express some serious gratitude to everyone that supported us along the way.

It all started about 7 years ago in Palm Springs. We were a bit tipsy on visions of startup grandeur and ... a few cocktails. We heard all the stories about how hard and chaotic startups were. We ignored them. We fixated on the easiest startup metaphor: roller coasters. How hard could that be?

For those of you who haven’t done it, I’m not sure there is a way to better express the reality of startup life than Ben Horowitz’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things. But, as Ben mentions in the book, words can't fully capture it. That’s because no matter how you describe it, you can’t get the full sense of the journey unless you take it. The highs are higher than you could imagine, but the lows are so much lower. Small wins fill you with an excitement that’s hard to describe. Little no's can be devastating. And then, there are all those near-death experiences. Scott Weiss coined the perfect phrase for this: We’re F’d, It’s Over (WFIO). At my count, DataPop had at least 5 of these moments.

Through all the ups, downs and WFIO's, we relied on many things to keep the startup dream alive. But the two most important things responsible for the success of DataPop came in an unexpected package: fire and nice. Conventional wisdom has it that grit--or as I like to call it--fire, is a required element for startups. The broader startup definition of fire has been covered on many fronts by smarter people than me. At least once a year, I re-read Mark Suster’s posts on tenacity and resiliency as a jolting reminder that without fire you have no chance of thriving as a startup. One of the most meaningful moments for me at DataPop was when the entire team shared with each other their personal stories of fire and grit. Every story was inspiring and eye opening in its own unique way, and at several points on the journey, the lessons learned from these stories provided the fire we needed to keep going through all of those WFIO moments. On a personal note, the stories were a striking reminder that I am fortunate to spend my work life with some amazing people.

Alas, fire alone is not sufficient. The thing that I am most proud of at DataPop is that we combined this fire with something somewhat unusual in startup land: the power of nice. At DataPop, we called this give>get. Give>get is a nerdy way of articulating the old school notions of karma and the golden rule. It's an unconventional approach to startups if you believe in the cliche that nice guys finish last. We took this approach both because it was core to everyone at DataPop, but also because we were fortunate enough to be surrounded by mentors (Geof Barker, Suzie Brown, CEO Circle and the LaunchPad LA community), friends, customers, lawyers (yeah I said it ... lawyers! Dan Burnham is the king of give>get) and partners that walked the give>get walk. We were also lucky to have people in our careers prior to DataPop that set good examples of the power of nice at Skyline Labs (Bill Lehmbeck), DoubleClick (Kevin O’Connor, Jeff Epstein, Jeff Silverman) and Overture/Yahoo (Jim Stothard, Anne Frisbie, Tim Cadogan, David Karnstedt, Jeff Weiner). Given all of the support we received, and all of the trailblazing we had witnessed on give>get, we couldn't help but make nice part of the DataPop story.

We worked to build a culture at DataPop that encompassed these qualities. A place where fire and nice drove our culture, created new and exciting career trajectories, and helped build an impactful business. While we certainly made many mistakes along the way, I’m proud of what the DataPop team accomplished over the past six and half years.

Each step of this journey, our support network inspired us to both work with more fire and to strive to live up to give>get. I'm truly grateful for all of the support and guidance we've received along the way. In so many ways, this startup experience and the broader DataPop family have changed my life. More than anything, this experience has proven to me that nice people working with relentless fire can get some serious shit done.