guide - TJ's Blog

An Update on Tata Communications

When Tata Communications acquired Kaylera, I thought it would be a simple swap and a way to introduce a more global perspective. This was naïve.…

The Four Growth Investments You Must Make

The five companies I watch—Bandwidth, LinkMobility, Sinch, Upland, and Twilio—ended 2023 with $9.2 billion in revenues. Collectively, they are projected to end 2024 with a…

Messaging and Growth in the Pandemic

By March 2020, the pandemic had shut down the world. Its effect on businesses was swift and brutal. Airlines, hotels, restaurants, manufacturing, retail, health, and…

Growth and Valuation in 2024

The seventh week of the year kicks off the earnings season for the messaging space. On Valentine’s Day, within twenty-four hours of each other, Twilio,…

My Ten Most-Clicked Posts of 2023

Last year I shared the most popular emails as per Substack. Here are my most-clicked blog articles as per my WordPress plugin: 1. My Best…

The Confidential Layoff Spreadsheet You Keep to Yourself

Be a manager long enough, and you'll either initiate a staffing cut or be asked to execute one. There is plenty of literature about who,…

A Simple Plan to Keep Your New Hire Excited

The goal of onboarding is to make the new employee a contributor as soon as possible. It is crucial to get it right, and yet…

How to Score Your Budgeting Mindset

I stumbled on the questions I wrote about last week circa 2013-14. Fresh from our first round of funding (Series A to fund EZ Texting's acquisition), I…

3 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Asking for Budget

The best managers are superb capital allocators. They take expensive investor money and assign it to the proper growth initiatives. Accountability for a team or…

eNPS & Company Culture

A robust, vibrant, living company culture needs strong feedback loops. It’s pretty easy to accomplish this when it’s you and your co-founder in a garage, a team…