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[Abstract] In his 20 years of career, he learned a profound lesson, which made him wiser, more efficient and wiser.

Bi Chinese station September 13 report

As a serial entrepreneur, Zeta Interactive CEO David Steinberg (David A. Steinberg) has had a glorious success and suffered a bitter defeat. He has learned a great lesson from his 20-year career, which makes him wiser, more efficient and wiser.

Less than a year after he graduated from college, Steinberg entered the fast-growing mobile phone industry. In 1992, he created retail chains and businesses to Sterling Cellular, a business-to-business e-commerce company. Then, he founded the telephone marketing company Sterling Communications. In 1999, he sold the company together with his retail business. That same year, he founded the online mobile and business-to-business E-commerce company InPhonic.

In the most glorious period, inphonic, the company gained about 400 million dollars in revenue, Steinberg said. In 2004, it was rated by Inc as the fastest-growing private company in the United States and was successfully listed in the year. By 2007, however, the company went bankrupt due to mismanagement and a range of other factors.

He quickly rose from frustration and founded digital marketing with John Sculley, a business partner, former president of Pepsi-Cola and former nerdy Apple, which renamed Zeta Interactive this year, Sculley. The Zeta Interactive company created 90 million of billions of dollars in revenue last year, according to Steinberg, which has broken 100 million dollars since the start of the year. He expects the company's annual growth rate of 90%, its operating profit margin will reach 10%, which means the Zeta Interactive company is in a healthy and rapid development of the road.

He says the following are the lessons he learned from his career ups and downs that have benefited him so far.

1. Organize talents, set up process and pursue sustainable development.

One reason for InPhonic's eventual failure, Steinberg says, is that it has grown too fast. Within a year, it has grown from offering 100,000 discount handsets to consumers to offer 1 million discount handsets. Both in terms of manpower and technology, the company is not prepared enough. With the company struggling to adapt to new changes, customer service has been under a lot of pressure; Eventually, the company's cycle of offering discounted handsets increased from 1 months to 6 months.

Looking back, Steinberg said he should have put the company in a more manageable direction and eliminated employees who were not comfortable with the new directions. "Those who help you develop to the current level are not necessarily able to help you reach the level you want to achieve in the future." "he said.

In his current company Zeta, Steinberg says, he has chief information Officer Jeffrey Nimenov (Jeffry Nimeroff), who specializes in ensuring that the company's technology is adapted to the company's development. By adopting a data-based development strategy, Steinberg avoided the unnecessary risks by avoiding many of the projects that his company was not capable of.

2. Bold decentralization.

"It took me 20 years to realize that I couldn't do everything." Steinberg said with a smile.

He said, for example, that 15 years ago, he could not effectively play the role of Steve Gerber, the incumbent's chief operating officer, because he could not Gerber and give him day-to-day management decisions.

The lesson, Steinberg says, is that to train the leaders in your company, you have to recruit some very smart people. "You can teach smart people to do everything. "he said.

3. Change every 6-9 months.

Steinberg argues that fast-growing companies need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant, but that's not to say they need to rush into new business.

Zeta started out in the field of education and later developed into a big data marketing solution, and now it's developing well.

As the leader of InPhonic, he said, he should have bought an external wireless company to keep people interested in inphonic and to cope with its accelerated growth.

4. Don't let yourself into a difficult situation.

One of his mistakes, Steinberg said, was to put a chain of development on the InPhonic company. This may be related to the media hype that InPhonic's company was when he was young. As a result of this, some projects, when they were not working and should have ceased, had not been stopped in time by the media's excessive coverage.

When he runs Zeta, he will be contacted by the media after he has found a truly workable project. He says his current company is "the largest but unheard of technology company in New York." It's much better to be quiet and find a development strategy than it is to limit the ability to take a tack, he said.

5. Don't be afraid to let the market find you.

"Most startups start getting involved when something gets hot. "But that's not necessarily the best option," Steinberg said. If you have a good idea, don't wait for the market to mature to realize it, so once the market cools you will lose the opportunity to scale up.

If you have a good idea, Steinberg suggests, you need to start a company around it immediately, regardless of what the market is doing today. If your good idea turns out to be a great company, you don't have to worry about finding a market.

Similarly, Steinberg said he would never set up an exit strategy when he started the company, as some successive entrepreneurs did. "If you run well, you'll have a good exit waiting for you." "he said. (Le study)