A sharing of experiences, tales and rants of the path leading up to and including my 6th startup company. 6 startups = 1 IPO, 2 acquisitions, 1 failure, millions in venture capital $, hundreds of employees in cities worldwide and the building of my latest venture, the Rubicon Project - one of the fastest growing advertising companies in history.

Part II: Optimized for Profitability

By Frank Addante

Two years ago, I wrote a blog post that garnered a lot of (friendly) flack from our investors here at the Rubicon Project. Titled Optimized for Speed = 30% Waste, in the post I talked about how different companies operate in various gears at different stages of their development. I noted that it's really important to define and set the "gear" for the company and make sure everyone is aware of what it means.

the Rubicon Project has reached the point in our development where it’s become time to switch gears. It’s still all about optimization, but now it’s about optimizing for profitability, not speed. Why?  It’s time to go from the “find out” stage (building) to the “roll out” stage (making it work).  Now that we’ve figured out the business model, proven scale, achieved critical mass, successfully executed multiple acquisitions and have deployed globally – now’s the time for us to focus on scaling profitability.


When optimized for speed, you should expect that 30% of all of your efforts will be wasted:


  • - 30% your decisions will be wrong;
  • - 30% of your money will be wasted;
  • - 30% of your time will be wasted.

The goal of “Optimized for Speed” is to generate market share quickly and figure out the business model as fast as possible.  The 30% waste is generated by making fast decisions - on hiring, advertising, product development, operating infrastructure and strategy. But, when right, optimizing for speed will put you leaps ahead. We’ve been optimized for speed for the first 3 years of our life as a company. We’ve been focused exclusively on driving market share, customer growth and product development. And happily, the results speak for themselves.



Today, we are the #1 Yield Optimization platform in the world and this platform powers the largest open marketplace for display advertising on the Internet.   We are doing for display advertising what Google did for search advertising.  Our technology processes over 50,000,000,000 ad transactions monthly for over 300 of the web’s largest publishers, and reaches over 550 million Internet users globally.

But the truth is that there was waste. We raised a lot of capital – $42 million, to be exact – and with that kind of capital we were able to make some investments in areas we never expected to do as quickly as we have. For example:


·      Our plan had us opening only one international office in 2009-2010. Instead, we have built strong presences in 5 countries: the U.S, U.K., Australia, Germany and France;
·      Last year, as we saw the market moving toward buying by audience, we successfully acquired an audience data company called OthersOnline.  With the 50 billion ad transactions, 550+ million users, 9 billion page views, 135 million daily search results and 500 billion keywords we process monthly – we were able to turn this data into dollars for our customers with this acquisition.
·      Acquiring a malware security company was something we neither anticipated, nor would have been able to do without strong capital and revenue. But as it became clear that malware was a large and growing problem for publishers, we made a strategic move, and in May we acquired SiteScout for their proprietary, advanced security platform and their brilliant team of security experts joined our Rubicon Project family.
·      New product launches outside of our original plan: Audience Data Platform, Brand Protection Platform, Permission Controls and Protected RTB (private beta)

Some of the decisions and investments we made in those first three years for the sake of speed don’t make sense any longer.



We hired a large number of people – especially on the demand side of our business – to quickly develop and then manage our relationships and transactions with ad networks and exchanges as we simultaneously developed the technology that would automate that part of our business. Now that we’ve launched REVV for demand, our automated buying platform for demand sources, we don’t need so many people to do this work. That said, we couldn’t have reached this point in the market without those team members who were committed in helping build our organization.  Nonetheless, our market development efforts here are complete – we now have all of the relevant ad networks and exchanges plugged into our platform (more than 550 globally.)  The addition of Protected RTB, with which we’re meeting great success in private beta, will make that side of the business even more efficient. The commitment of resources to these areas that drive our technology (and with that technology, increased automation & efficiency for us and our customers) have led to less need for as many people to do that work.


Now that we’ve got great traction in the marketplace as well as the technology and products in place to automate more of the business both internally and externally, we’ve moved into a strong position to achieve the ultimate test of success for any startup company and its stakeholders: profitability. We are on track to do $100M+ in revenue this year, and with discipline, will reach profitability in Q4 of 2010. All of this in just over two years of launching our product into the market...  What does optimizing for profitability mean to us day-to-day as an organization?



  • Discipline
  • Focus
  • Performance
Discipline: there are many examples of maintaining good discipline – around spending, product development and growth as a business. In addition, there must be discipline around ensuring that all the team members who are with us are at the top of their game – and completely focused on the right things. To truly be optimized for profitability, you have to make decisions about people who aren’t hitting their performance targets with greater discipline than you might have during an optimized-for-speed phase.



In a recent internal company newsletter, I wrote a note to the team that I titled “Free Throws and Defense” (I will post it later.)  It basically talked about focusing on fundamentals, because that’s what wins games.  I believe very strongly in setting the tempo and pace for the game and making others play your game, especially when you’re in the lead.  To do this, it requires extreme discipline.  You need to establish your core offering and markets that you want to focus on and you should fight hard to win 100% of the deals in your core, anything outside of that you need to be OK losing (and hopefully pick them back up later) – that’s what discipline is about.



Focus: it’s essential to success, as we all know. Focus doesn’t just mean working hard. It means working smart: prioritizing projects, opportunities and goals. To this end, we’ve decided to focus on three core product areas going forward – we call it our Go Forward List. We’re making some changes to the way we do business to ensure those areas, which will drive us to both reach our profitability goal and service our customers, premium Web publishers, most effectively, will get the most time, attention and resources.  Along with this, we have also put together a Not Right Now List, this is equally important for companies to establish.  In a sea of opportunity, it is often times easy to drown yourself in chasing too many of them at a time.



It’s important to align your organization around no more than 3 overall goals.  We set our goals to establish brand-franchise in these three areas:



-       #1 Yield Optimization (maintain current position)
-       Top 5 Source for Audience
-       Top 2 Source for RTB



This is all in the spirit of maintaining our position as the innovation leader for publishers.


Performance: In this case, I’m talking about customers, not employees. We’re more committed than ever to achieving the publisher-centric goals we set out in our manifesto in February: to innovate digital advertising technology for publishers to keep digital media free for consumers and to help content flourish. To do this, we have to be sure that our technology platform, REVV for publishers, is the best possible choice for accelerating ad revenue – essentially that it continues to outperform the alternatives in all the areas we’re focused on. So we’re adding people and other resources in the areas that drive our technology; including 5-8 people on our product and engineering teams to help us achieve the technology vision we laid out in our manifesto.


Our decision to optimize for profitability is driven not only by the stage of growth and market share we’ve achieved. It’s also driven by opportunity – the need for a yield optimization platform to drive revenue for publishers across the $71 billion in digital advertising spend has never been greater, nor has the market ever felt more poised for dramatic growth as more and more brands follow consumers online. Sellers and buyers, both large and small, are reporting rising media sales compared to a year ago. Moreover, tremendous innovation in the space promises to accelerate change and growth still further this year.  Shifting gears requires extreme discipline, but it’s important to do it at the right time.

Get Out of the Office!

By Frank Addante

Ok, I’m going to revive this blog.  Thank you to all of you who have sent me emails requesting that I continue writing.  My apologies for going MIA!  Without trying to come across as though I’m making excuses, it was difficult for me to keep writing after I broke my arm last January.  The recovery took about a year – even now, typing for extended periods of time strains my hand.  I’m still rebuilding strength from my damaged nerves over a year later.  After not writing for a while, it was difficult to jump back in.  So, I just decided to just do it (lame Nike reference, I know!) 

Aside from the broken arm things at the Rubicon Project have been exploding.  We grew 270% on a revenue basis in 2009, went from 35 to 150 employees, set up offices all around the world (London, Australia, Hong Kong, etc.), raised $33MM in venture capital and launched a bunch more products.  Needless to say, things have been a little nuts for me.  Rather than use that as an excuse, it has inspired the topic of this post.

I run a very different company today than I did a year ago.  Running a global company with multiple product lines, a much larger team (spread out in offices around the globe) and hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through our platform has completely changed the dynamics of the business and my role has needed to change in it, accordingly.  Personally, this has been a big shift for me, and one that came quite rapidly.  I could have never planned for Rubicon’s rapid success and the last thing on my mind was how to plan for the evolution of my role within it.  In short, I’ve had to go from playing “running back”, to “quarterback” to now “coach.”  There is a big difference from “doing things” and “being responsible for things getting done” and it’s a difficult switch for scrappy entrepreneurs (who are used to doing everything themselves in the beginning) to make.  Two years ago, I was building desks along with my co-founder Craig to keep our engineers building, our sales people selling and our support team servicing.  It was the right thing to do at the time.  Today, the company footprint is very different, its goals are more complex, the risks in the business are intensified, the opportunities are greater and more plentiful and I have a lot more people to answer to as the overall equity value of the company has dramatically increased (investors, employees, shareholders, etc.)

I’ll write a series of posts on CEO/Founder evolution, but the one that I want to focus on right now is probably the biggest lesson I have learned:  Get the hell out of the office!  My company is no longer confined to the walls of our headquarters in L.A.  We now exist in San Francisco, New York, London, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong and soon to be in more cities, countries and continents.  We have customers, partners, employees, press and investors in all of those places and prospective ones as well.  We’re operating in different economies, with different laws, cultures and markets.  Sitting in our headquarters in L.A. would give me a limited and skewed version of what’s really going on in the company and in the markets we operate in around the world.  The only way for me to get a true picture of our evolved, global business is for me to experience it directly, and sitting at my desk only hindered my ability to gain a broader, more global perspective. 

I learned a great lesson from Peter Sealey (former CMO of Coca-Cola, President at Columbia Pictures and now professor at Stanford and Berkeley.)  Peter told me a story about how when he was at Coca-Cola, they tried many times to break into the market in China.  After millions upon millions of dollars and a few people getting fired, multiple attempts to break into the market had failed.  Confused by the repeated failure, Peter decided to take matters into his own hands and fly to China.  The first thing that he did when he landed was go to a cafĂ©.  He ordered a Coke and they delivered it to him warm.  He took a sip.  Peter asked me if I have ever had a warm Coke.  I said no.  He said, “if you have ever had a warm Coke, you would never drink a Coke again.   It’s awful.”  Peter immediately changed all of their marketing to “Drink Coke Cold.” (from their usual “dancing bears and balloons” feel-good type campaigns) and the rest was a great success.  The moral of the story is clearly that you sometimes need to experience things yourself to understand them, develop a feel for them and be able to soak up information to make those critical gut-feeling calls that entrepreneurs and business leaders need to make everyday.

So, I’m doing just that.  I vowed to get out of the office.  The first step was to change my role internally.  I was spending a lot of time doing things like editing press releases, product roadmap reviews, putting together presentations, etc.  It was too “in the weeds” and it was preventing me from taking an external perspective on the business looking in.  I was also slowing things down.  I would get involved in a project, then I’d have to leave on a press or customer tour for weeks.  In the meantime, the project would stall.  I became a bottleneck.  That was the first thing that needed to change.

Fortunately, I already had a strong leader within the company, my co-founder and our COO, Craig Roah.  I shifted all internal responsibility and day-to-day management to him.  Everyone in the company now reports to Craig directly.   Not to over-simplify business operations, but it’s like baseball.  Throw the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball – that’s baseball.  Business is: build great product, sell great product, support great product – that’s business.  There is no one better in this market to build and support great product than Craig.  Together, Craig and I decided that we needed to put someone in charge of selling.  Fortunately, we also had a great leader there, JT Batson (recently referred to as G.O.D. in the January 18th, 2010 issue of Forbes.)  We rolled up all revenue responsibilities under J.T.  In short, I simplified my internal responsibilities and lines of communication so that I would not be a bottleneck to the organization. 

This was a difficult transition.  It required great discipline to “get out of the way.” and to “teach people to fish” rather than bringing them the fish.  Some employees questioned my commitment to the business, wondered where I was because I wasn’t jumping in with them to solve every problem, I wasn’t sitting at my desk next to them like I used to and I also became much more selective with the meetings that I decided to accept.  It was absolutely the right thing to do and the business is much stronger as a result, but it was a somewhat painful transition personally.  I’m not a parent, but I imagine there are similarities to a parent sitting back and letting their kids make mistakes, knowing that it will only help them grow smarter and stronger.

So, my first goal was to make myself unnecessary to running the business internally.  I was successful in accomplishing this.  My next goal was to figure out what my role should be as “coach” instead of “quarterback.”  Here is what I came up with as a start:

1.    Right Team:
     a.    Make sure I have the right team managing the business
     b.    Ensure they work well together
     c.    Mentor the team
2.    Right Goals:
     a.    Set the vision for the company
     b.    Bring them perspectives from the market (financial and industry)
     c.    Ensure that the team is setting the right goals based on the above
3.    Thought-leadership:
     a.    Internally (managers and staff)
     b.    Externally (customers, press, analysts, financial community)
4.    Investor Relations & Board Communication:
     a.    Ensure the company has the capital accessible to achieve its goals
     b.    Keep all shareholders in sync so we have everyone marching toward the same goal in full force

In order to do this, it’s important that I have all of the information.  I can’t absorb this information by sitting in our corporate headquarters.  I need to go to every country that we either operate in or intend to operate in.  I need to absorb the cultures of those countries and explore the markets and economies.  I need to see how advertising works in each of those countries and compare/contrast them to the U.S. markets that we’re familiar with.  In some countries, I need to understand the government or legal impacts on the business, either operationally (e.g. employment laws, patent law or taxes) or advertising market-specific.  For example, in certain countries, people are bound to employment contracts (mainly for their protection) so they are required to give many months notice if they are going to quit to go to a new company.  Conversely, companies are also required to give them similar notice in the event of a layoff.  This can play a pretty significant impact when you’re planning on entering these markets (i.e. you can’t enter them as quickly as the U.S., for example) or the risks involved (i.e. you can’t unwind a mistake as quickly either.)  

Let’s compare communication, which is one of our cultural values.  There are cultural nuances that exist within regions or countries.  Just as New Yorkers (i.e. very direct) communicate differently than Angelinos from L.A.  (i.e. more laid back), the same exists from country to country.  Right now, I am in Australia and I’ve noticed that people are pretty direct and often don’t use pronouns in their writing or communication.  Personally, the lack of a use of pronouns in emails (e.g. “Hi Frank.  Wanted to reach out to you to schedule a meeting.” – omitting the “I” before “wanted”) is a pet peeve of mine.  I view it as a sign of laziness.  However, in Australia, that seems to be common communication.  This is a small example. There are larger ones, such as how the Japanese will politely say “That’s very difficult” and what that really means is “there is absolutely no way we are going to do that!” 

Market nuances are extremely important.  In the U.S., there is a big ad quality and content quality challenge for publishers and advertisers.  Publishers don’t want “belly fat ads” on their site and premium brands don’t want to show up next to them. In Germany, their standards are extremely high.  They consider an ad quality problem to be when a BMW ad shows up on the same page as a Honda ad (i.e. thinking that the Honda brand is of lower quality.)

Direct interaction with economies can also tell you a lot.  Since it was my first time in Australia, I did some site-seeing in between business meetings. I learned that it seems that Australians are concerned about the economy and have pulled back spending on things like eating out and entertainment, however, they still spend on travel.  Travel is important to them.  This is very different than the U.S.  This could be good information when deciding where to invest or focus in certain markets or regions.

Talking directly to employees in offices outside of headquarters is crucial.  You learn a lot about how they view communication with their sister offices, what they’re seeing in the market and you can absorb their ideas.  All of this information is important when trying to fill the logical part of your head with information that you need to develop that “gut feel.”

I have seen the company evolve quite a bit over the past six months.  As a result of the changes I’ve put in place, I believe the company is much more scalable and sustainable.  I am not a bottleneck and the team has become far stronger.  It is parallel processing and doing so in multiple time zones on multiple continents and has melded well with multiple cultures.  This is important to me for both geographical expansion as well as inorganic expansion through acquisitions.  We completed our first acquisition mid-2009 (of OthersOnline) and the culture mesh has been fantastic – they are some of our best people.  We anticipate doing more acquisitions, and proving that we can absorb one successfully was a good test for us.  I hope that by traveling and spending more time out of the office that I’ll be able to:

a)    Gain the direct information, exposure and knowledge that I need to make the right “gut calls” for the business going forward, globally
b)    Expose the team to new ideas, experiences and challenges
c)    Figure out what the next big thing is for Rubicon while the team is cranking away on our current big thing

I can go on and on… I think you get the point.  Get out of the office!


P.S. – While traveling, I’ve had to put my Pay It Forward events on hold…  I feel really bad about it.  I’m working on figuring out how to incorporate the events into my travels and will hopefully be able to turn it into more of a global event.  Stay tuned…

A Tour of the Rubicon Project Headquarters

By Frank Addante

I decided to try doing a video blog post. Here is a tour that I did of the Rubicon Project headquarters and all of the thought that we have put into things like culture, communication, efficiency, team development (and a little fun)... We have woven these things into our environment and I thought I'd share our thinking with you.



Some highlights to look out for:

  • Furnished on a low budget (IKEA furniture, etc.)
  • "No Office Policy" - everyone sits out on the open
  • Cultural Values
  • Metrics Driven Culture
  • Yammer - corporate Twitter
  • RubiCast - visual communications system
  • RubiRewards - peer rewards program
  • Video Conferencing - for daily/weekly team meetings
  • Group Lunch
  • Jack Bauer's Office...

"Pay it Forward" Event for Students & Aspiring Entrepreneurs

By Frank Addante

I receive an overwhelming number of meeting requests and would like to accommodate as many requests as I can. So I am organizing a monthly event called “Pay It Forward” that will give 10 students and aspiring entrepreneurs with common interests the chance to sit down with me and discuss the following:

  • Entrepreneurial Lessons
  • Team Development
  • Building Companies
  • General Brainstorming
  • Whatever is on your mind!

The setting is informal and will be held at the Rubicon Project’s Headquarters in LA (fun fact: It is the original set of the TV show “24”). To make sure we can organize the groups accordingly, if anyone is interested, please kindly answer the following questions and respond by end of day this Sunday, April 12th as we are looking to potentially host the first event next Wednesday, April 15th. If we can fit you in the event, then we will.

  1. Please tell us a bit about yourself
  2. What are you looking to get out of the meeting?
  3. One of my favorite quotes is: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Please describe your life dream.
  4. Please describe how you would take the information you gathered from the event and pay it forward.

The event will be video taped and shared with other entrepreneurs and students on this blog.

We will review all responses carefully and although we can’t promise we will be able to sit down with everyone who responds, we certainly will do our best!

Building and Developing an A++ Team

By Frank Addante

Recently, I was asked to present my philosophy and methodology toward building what I call A++ teams at the Startonomics conference. Below, you'll find the video recording of the presentation and the actual presentation itself.

My apologies for the lack of posting to my blog -- I broke my arm snowboarding six weeks ago which makes it hard to write. :-)






A Plus Teams - Frank Adante Startonomics LA 2009 - Get more Business Plans

Develop a Culture Roadmap

By Frank Addante


My (now former) assistant, Mallory Portillo, was the very first employee outside of the founding team at the Rubicon Project. We’ve grown quite a bit since she started just over a year ago. With our strong commitment to team development and culture, Mallory is now moving on to a new role. She’s going to be responsible for culture, training and communication (see our Cultural Values.) I did a Twitter post about how we do culture surveys and I got a lot of requests from people asking about the process and the questions that we asked. So, I asked Mallory to write a blog post about it, so here is her contributed post…

Contributed by Mallory Portillo:

Cultivating, maintaining and growing a motivating culture at a fast growing start-up company is not a simple task. When I joined here, we were a small office of six and now we are rapidly approaching 75!

As we got bigger, one of the major things we wanted to focus on was gathering culture development feedback and learn about areas for improvement. We knew our team was relatively happy, but we wanted to know what exactly we could do to make their daily experience better and not feel like “work.” We developed a survey to be administered to our entire team using a great survey generator and delivery service called Survey Monkey (you can access the survey builder and deliver it to your team at www.surveymonkey.com). We kept it completely anonymous because we wanted honest, valuable feedback and not what people think we “wanted to hear.” The survey asked our team to describe their daily experience, including why they get up for work in the morning, what they value about coming here, and what they would do to improve communication and the feeling of appreciation among employees at the company.

From the results of the survey, we learned that our team feels our overall company culture is high but wanted to improve on specific areas like communication between departments and employee appreciation. From this feedback, we improved interdepartmental communication with the adoption of Yammer, a new micro-blogging tool which allows everyone in the company to discuss ideas, post news, or ask questions to the entire company. We even devoted a large plasma screen in our office to the feed, which is constantly broadcast to the entire team and anyone who visits our office. It has become a great way for people to interact between departments, remote offices and traveling team members.

From feedback on employee appreciation, it became apparent that the feeling of appreciation across departments was the lowest. In order to encourage people in different departments to show that they value others outside of their own departments, we developed a program called Rubi Rewards. Each employee gets a $75 Rubicon Visa gift card each quarter to show their appreciation to one or more people in the company who they feel stood out in the organization. Examples of why people have given Rubi Rewards includehelp/assistance on a project, having a really positive attitude or inspiring them in some way. Both of these programs, which came as a direct result of the survey, have been in effect for only a few months but the feedback from our team has been extremely positive.

There were, of course, things that surprised us about the survey. We expected our team to rank our company culture a 7 out of 10 (I even thought it might be a 6!). Our average was an 8.44, which while is not close to the 9 out of 10 that we are someday hoping to achieve, it does mean we are headed in the right direction (we will never rate ourselves a 10 because that means we are no longer trying to improve). It is great to know that the time, effort and resources we are investing into maintaining our culture is valued by our employees. However, just like our technology, we are never going to stop improving and innovating!

These were our takeaways from this experience:

  • Culture is something you have to cultivate, reflect on, and constantly improve.
  • You cannot be afraid to ask tough questions and confront things that aren’t working.
  • The only way to know what would make people happier, more effective, and ultimately keep them around is to ask for their feedback.
  • Every group is different, as is every individual. Culture is driven by reaching and inspiring individuals to act together as a team. What works for some may not work for others.
  • A strong company culture is not mandated but rather created by the very people who live and breathe it everyday!

We have included the questions we asked our team for reference, in case you were interested:

Culture section:
1. Please pick four words that describe the term “entrepreneurship”
2. Please pick six words that you feel describe the Rubicon Project.
3. Please pick three things that you like most about working at the Rubicon Project?
4. Please pick three things that you like least about working at the Rubicon Project?
5. What motivates you to come to work each morning?
6. How would you rate our culture, on a scale of 1 to 10? Consider 1 to be the lowest and 10 the highest.
7. How do you describe the culture of our company to your friends and family?
8. How would you like to be able to describe the culture of our company?
9. If you were in charge of improving culture, what changes would you make?
10. Please suggest 3 activities for company bonding events (ex: bowling night or wine and cheese tasting).
11. Do you normally attend company events?
12. What suggestions do you have for improving company events?

Communication section:
13. Overall, do you feel that people in the company are supportive of each other?
14. How often do you feel valued and appreciated as an employee in your department?
15. Do you feel valued by others outside your department?
16. Do you feel comfortable approaching leaders in your department to discuss ideas or problems?
17. Do you feel comfortable approaching leaders of other departments to discuss ideas or problems?
18. Are you motivated by other people in your department?
19. Are you motivated by the other people at this company?
20. Are you motivated by the overall leadership at this company?
21. Do you feel that you always do you best to be positive and motivating to others?
22. How can we improve the process of getting feedback on company culture? (ex: this survey, anonymous suggestion box, etc.)

Given our commitment to transparency (also a key part of our Culture Values), below I have included the results of our survey (it's the exact presentation that we delivered to the team). It is a Culture Roadmap (just like you would have a business roadmap or a product roadmap)



the Rubicon Project - Culture Roadmap Q3/Q4 2008 - Get more Business Plans

Green Week - Save the Environment and Your Cash

By Frank Addante

Last week, our office manager, Lindsey Mitten, instituted Green Week. One of our Cultural Values is Community, which includes environmental responsibility. I thought I’d share with you what we did for Green Week (I'm actually re-purposing the email that Lindsey sent to the team.)

Each morning Lindsey sent out an email letting everyone know about the small “green” project for the day. She also posted some friendly reminders around the office.

So, staying with the theme of this blog, what’s the business lesson here? Well… First, going green can save you money (something critically important during today’s economic times.) Second, it brings the team together for a common cause and builds pride, mutual respect and purpose. Third, it’s simply just a good thing to do.

You could feel the energy (no pun intended) in the office change every day when Lindsey announced a new green initiative.

Rubicon Green Week Initiatives:

Monday:

  • Changed all of our light bulbs to CFLs (Compact Fluorescents)

Did you know?
“Compared to general service incandescent lamps giving the same amount of visible light, CFLs use less power and have a longer rated life. In the United States, a CFL can save over US $30 in electricity costs over the lamp's lifetime compared to an incandescent lamp and save 2000 times its own weight in greenhouse gases.”

Tuesday:

  • All disposable paper products that we usually use were replaced by 100% recycled or alternative paper products.

Wednesday:

  • Passed out individual recycling cans for every desk next.

Thursday:

  • Carpooling, biking, or walking to work. Everyone who did it got a prize.

Friday:

  • Switched all office cleaning products (general cleaner, dishwasher detergent, dish soap, hand soap, glass cleaner) over to eco-friendly products which will eliminate toxins in our company’s waste water. If you are interested in any of these products, please check out www.buygreen.com.


From Here on Out:
  • All paper in the office will be 100% recycled
  • All cleaning products will be eco friendly
  • CFLS will be used in place of regular light bulbs
  • Better recycling system (cleaners know that recyclables go in the white dumpster and trash in the gray dumpster)
  • All paper products (towels, napkins, plates etc) will be at least 25% recycled if not 100%
  • More recycling trash cans will be placed around the office
  • I will try to use more of the reusable bags for groceries

Looking Towards the Future:

  • Commercial composting
  • Setting up carpools

How to Help:

  • Consider printing out internal documents double sided
  • Shut down your computer! One computer left on overnight equals the use of an entire 60 watt light bulb.
  • If you are the last person leaving an office or conference room, remember to turn off the lights!
  • Try to eliminate “Vampire Energy” by unplugging devices that you aren’t currently using
  • Use those recycle bins I gave you and the ones placed around the office
  • Go green on your way to work

It was such a huge success; we will be doing a “Green Week” once a quarter from here on out…