Weekend Musings

Marina del Rey Beach

Hello, happy Saturday, and welcome to my weekend musing. This week has seen a lot of 12+ hour days at Fashion Metric and we’ll be working through the weekend now. As a startup you never have to work, you only do it when you want to and we have recently closed deals with some amazing new designers and are hard at work on the next iteration of the platform.

Building a startup is very different from building a website. While the website is a component of the business, there is an algorithm, underlying technology, legal agreements, partnership meetings, relationship building, advice from our investor and advisors, and the list goes on. This week I shared the six things I learned in the first six-months as a startup founder/CTO on Medium. I can tell you that the journey so far has been more incredible than I could have imagined, and also completely different than I imagined.

Next week we’ll be heading to Vegas for TRAFFIC and I honestly couldn’t be more excited for the conference. Given all my excitement some people have asked if I’ve been paid to promote TRAFFIC or if I have some special deal. I don’t, in fact we pay full price to go just like everyone else. Last October TRAFFIC in Florida exceeded my expectations in every way possible and helped to propel my business to new heights, this is why I’m so excited about Vegas and promoting the heck out of it! It was worth every penny and as I continue to take a more strategic role in Linton Investments I am finding the time I get to spend with other CEO’s in the domain space to be absolutely invaluable.

TRAFFIC Florida 2012

That being said I was also amazed at all of the people I met that I didn’t know. This year I am getting more and more emails from people who are attending TRAFFIC for their first time and once again I’m looking forward to meeting new people with new ideas and new ways of seeing the world. Life is all about perspective and by exposing yourself to more people who see the world in different ways you too can expand the way you think and run your own business.

I don’t work day-to-day in Linton Investments any more and over the last two years my biggest role in the company has been hiring great people, and as things go with business, firing people that weren’t doing the work that needed to be done. I’ve done less outsourcing and scaled the team back, less people, more productivity, and most now based in the US.

I still have a lot to learn, and people like Jason from Domain Holdings, Frank Schilling, and many more who will be at TRAFFIC next week are the people I love to learn from. They have built businesses much bigger and more successful than mine, and it’s the conversations I have with them that really help. On top of that it is great to do the same for others and help people just starting out build their businesses and hopefully see the world a bit differently.

This is the platform that TRAFFIC creates, an opportunity to network and connect with some of the most high-quality people in our industry, and meet new people who may help you see the world a bit differently than you did before.

Okay, time to go! We’re off to the gym for our Saturday morning Cardio Core Ball class and then back to Fashion Metric. I hope you’re all having a great weekend and look forward to seeing many of you in Vegas next week!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton