In Chapter 16 of 16 of his 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur and SimpleGEO co-founder confronts new challenges present in starting a business. Managing and motivating staff as a general manager promises to be a big initial challenge for Stump as he builds headcount and assembles a product team.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: Where is your entrepreneurial transition challenging you most?
Joe Stump: I would say management is challenging me most. At Digg, I was not a direct manager; it was more like captain of the football team. I’ve always been more in those type of positions and much more comfortable in those type of positions. Now, I have to plan, do sprint planning, I have to implement that, follow up on that, there is paperwork minutae that is involved with that. Then, figuring out how to motivate people. There is a lot of stuff that goes into being a good manager and I don’t think I’m a great manager right now. So I think that is what is challenging me the most.
In Chapter 15 of 16 of his 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, programmer Joe Stump develops skills not learned at work with side projects on nights and weekends. These efforts help bolster Stump's customer- and media-facing experience across public relations, marketing, and customer support. He eventually leaves Digg for a startup, www.simplegeo.com, where drawing on these skills becomes necessary to manage daily operations.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: How have your side projects, whether it is iPhone application development or PleaseDressMe.com, contributed to your entrepreneurial development?
Joe Stump: The things I’ve learned from that are you need to build buzz & PR. You need to engage users. Customer support is a huge thing. If people are using your product and having problems with it, you have to react and iterate. I think that those side projects – none have them have been what I consider technically challenging at all – but they have all been challenging to me in terms of “how do I take action on customer support?”, “how do I promote this?”, “which promotions work the best?” and that kind of stuff.
In Chapter 14 of 16 of his 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, Digg colleagues Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose support Joe Stump with friendship, life lessons, encouragement, mentoring, and entrepreneurial guidance. From a post-surgery hospital pick-up through a decision to accept a leap into starting a company, the constant support provides Stump reassurance when making big life and career choices.
Transcript:
Erik: How did your friends from Digg, Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose, inspire you to take steps and be an entrepreneur?
Joe Stump: What Jay has taught me is that you can be a good human being and be a good businessman at the same time. Jay is one of my favorite people. I think one of the best things about Jay, one of the best stories I can use to convey Jay’s personality is: I had back surgery a couple years ago and Jay and Kevin picked me up from the hospital. Jay came up to my room and was like “well, you ready to go?” and I was like “yeah.” The nurse was in there. I introduced him: “this is my boss, Jay.” And he was “I’m not your boss today. Just a friend picking you up.”
Kevin has influenced me and mentored me. Basically, he made me accept the fact I was an entrepreneur and that I had to do this. He also helps me a lot with product and stuff. Kevin is really good with product.
Jay did the same thing, where he was “You have to do this. I have always known you were an entrepreneur. It’s just a matter of you accepting it.” He has also mentored me a lot on the business side. Raising venture capital is an extremely – it’s an interesting game to say the very least – and having someone like Jay, who at this point, he has taken a company public, he’s raised probably a couple hundred million dollars over multiple rounds of financing, he knows everybody. Having a guy like that you can call up and say -“I have this term sheet, can you talk about it” - it’s invaluable. You cannot put a price on it. There are other entrepreneurs out there that would give their pinky to have that
In Chapter 13 of 16 of his 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, entrepreneur and programmer Joe Stump defines his technologist role as solving problems to make the world smaller through making technology as accessible to people as possible. Stump aims to lower Internet user technology barriers to entry. He provides examples from eNotes, specifically getting people accessible, easy-to-use study materials to elevate classroom performance, to Digg, getting people information they want so they may share and discuss with others.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: How do you take your passion for building virtual skyscrapers as a programmer and map that to a deeper life purpose?
Joe Stump: I feel very strongly that technology has changed humanity for the better. The world is becoming smaller, and that is a great thing, and technology is making that happen at a pace that we would have never been able to achieve without it. My purpose as a technologist and as a programmer is to facilitate that as much as I can and to make technologies as accessible as I can. As an engineer, I look at the world and see problems that need to be solved…and I think that is core to being a guy – they say men are fixers.
My passion is technology and the great thing about that is technology is something that, right now, and has traditionally a high barrier to entry, and I like lowering those barriers to entry. At Digg, it was about getting people the information that they want and allowing them to share it and discuss it as easy as possible. At e-notes it was about getting people the materials that they needed to get As in class and making it as accessible and easy to use as possible.
In Chapter 12 of 16 of his 2009 Capture Your Flag interview, Joe Stump shares two early career confidence building experiences. As a 20-year old, Stump is tasked with building out large scale websites and e-commerce architectures. This trust, aimed directly at someone others might deem too young for the responsibility, shapes Stumps perception for what is possible as well as his appreciation for being responsible and accountable with large projects. Over time, Stump builds upon these, ultimately landing a lead architect role at Digg.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: What life experience did the most to bolster your self-confidence?
Joe Stump: I would say there were a couple things where people took chances on me and I succeeded. One of them was Keith at Portable Computers when he took a chance on me to rewrite – I mean he literally handed the keys to the kingdom over to a 19-year old kid.
So I rewrote the whole website in PHP, and that went well, which directly led to me getting the job at Care2. Matt there took a risk again. Here is this 19-year old - I turned 20 two days after the interview. So here is a 19-year old kid from middle of nowhere Michigan and he took a chance, moved me out there and I worked on a huge website. Those are probably the two big things where people took chances on me that forever changed the course of who I am and what I do.
Since 2009, Capture Your Flag has interviewed a cohort of rising leaders who share lessons from their journeys to help others plan, pursue and achieve life and career aspirations. The resulting 3000+ Near Peer Video Library can be licensed for commercial use.
