W: What are three ways that leadership in e-businesses differs from leadership in traditional bricks and mortar businesses?

DG: I’ll talk about the leadership challenge that we have at Campus Pipeline in the internet business here. The talent you attract is tremendous because it’s such a great opportunity that represents an enormous economic revolution that’s occurring, so I think you attract the sort of people that are pioneers, those with pioneering spirits, entrepreneurial spirit. You also attract very motivated, intelligent people. What that means from a leadership perspective is that you can’t manage, you have to lead. Talented people can’t be managed. They don’t want to be told what to do. They don’t want to feel like there’s a whip to be cracked and they have a boss. They want to be led. They want to have examples shown to them and they want to be motivated and inspired, and they want to feel a spirit of teamwork and collegiality rather than a dictatorship. So that’s the biggest difference I would see, that you really need to focus on leading, not managing, especially in this talent rich environment. If you can do that well and give people the creative challenges that they seek and desire, you can create a very intoxicating, fantastic culture because you have a lot of people that surround the company that have the same sort of value and ethics. It’s exciting and fun to come to work. Nonetheless, it’s a very significant challenge. I often think that it would be much easier to manage a factory floor where you’re able to encourage people to punch time clocks and live by a code of conduct that you can mandate. Leading in a talent rich organization -- that’s an adaptation you have to make.

W: What are the necessary qualities of a successful leader in an Internet economy, especially with respect to leading in a fast growth environment?

DG: One is this teamwork ethic. A leader has to very much instill the notion of teamwork. You have to be good at teambuilding, be good at collegial and good at sucking out the best that people have to give and have to offer, because there’s a lot that they can offer. I mentioned before, there’s so much talent and positive things that people have to contribute in this space. That’s what a leader needs to do is figure out how to cultivate the cooperative and teamwork spirit.

Then I’d also say the leader needs to be disciplined as well in making sure that you are able to keep the organization focused. Because you have so many talented people around you, those talented people’s minds tend to wander. They always want to be exploring the new opportunity, the new thing. As a leader, your job is to make sure that people feel like they’re being stretched and challenged, but at the same time they’re staying in the box so that you can execute against the current opportunity. I’d say those are the two critical qualities of a leader; keeping the organization focused around the opportunity when people’s inclination would be to migrate and wander. And then to develop this cooperative teamwork spirit that is so necessary.

W: Given the capabilities that you’ve described as being so essential for leading an e-business, how or where have you been able to develop and acquire them?

DG: As I look back over these past 18 months or so, I feel like I’ve undergone tremendous growth and it’s been the most professionally challenging experience I’ve ever had. What I’ve become better at is leading and managing in general. I think I’ve come to understand that much better. I developed a lot there. I think I developed a lot on public speaking, frankly. I speak in front of the company on a regular basis so it makes you good on your feet and articulate, which is a nice thing. I’ve developed my appreciation for business in general. I came from a consulting background so I saw pieces of business, but I’ve become really good at seeing the big picture and how it all comes together, all the important elements and all the important players. I’ve gotten good at delegating. My inclination before was to try to do everything myself, but I’ve learned how to delegate responsibility and then hold people accountable for the things that I delegate to them. I still need to get better at that, by the way, because I still work too much. [chuckles] Those are a few things.

W: Going forward, what criteria would you use to measure leadership success?

DG: I would measure success by what the people that I lead say. How do they perceive me as a leader and how much respect to they have for me as a leader? That’s very intangible but I really do think that’s where the proof is. Would people follow me into battle as a result of the way I’ve led them in this battle. More tangibly, I think great leadership should result, ultimately, in great performance in the market. You should be able to look at our market capitalization as a company and say, "That’s a well run, well led company. Look how successful they are." It’s not a good concept that makes a market cap, it’s good execution on that concept, and good execution results in good leadership. So that’s what the ultimate measure is.

W: As a leader, what are your top three priorities, in order of importance if possible, and why?

DG: My top priority is people, making sure we have the right people in place and the right organization structure to make sure they can be successful. That’s my top priority. My second priority is focus and accountability. Once I’ve got the right people in place and the right organizational structure for them, I need to make sure that everybody is focused and everybody is held accountable for the results that they’re expected to deliver. That’s really critical and I spend a lot of my time in meetings and sessions driving accountability, requesting work plans, checking up on work plans, all that. Then I think third, my priority is strategy and strategic direction. I need to make sure that I’m looking forward and able to take these people, this organization, these focused minds in the right direction. So that’s where I spend my time when I’m not holding people accountable and dealing with people issues, making sure that we’re thinking strategically and positioning ourselves for long term success.

W: What tools do you find necessary in seeking to motivate these individuals?

DG: For us, it starts off when people come into our company. We all sign a code of ethics, or conduct, or as we call them "Pipeline Principles." Those are the rules of how we want to work together. We try to articulate the sort of environment that we want to have. That’s a key tool for us, all buying into a common set of principles and beliefs and many of the things I’ve expressed, the notion of teamwork and mutual respect and all that are articulate in our principles. That’s one tool I think is important. Many companies have their mission or guiding principles. We definitely have that and we live by it and reinforce it on a regular basis. That’s one tool that’s critical.

Another tool that is critical is real key communication tools, keeping everybody informed so that they feel like they know what’s going on, they feel like they’re part of the important decisions being made. This is where the executive team spends a lot of time communicating in the form of executive messages that go out to the company on a fairly regular basis. Team meetings --once a month we hold a team meeting and give a download on what's happening. That's a very important and effective tool. Also, informal tools that we have are company gatherings where people can just rub shoulders and get to know each other. We have a golf course inside our office. Once a month we have a golf tournament and it’s just a chance to have fun and enjoy the culture and the collegiality that exists. Back on the formal tools, we have systematic meetings. I, for instance, will conduct a weekly meeting with all the senior leaders of the company to make sure that we’re all synced up and that we all know the direction that we’re headed. Again, making sure that we’re executing appropriately and that people have accountability and they come on a weekly basis to account for the activities that they’re group is responsible for.

W: How do you build a leadership team?

DG: Strategically and organically. It’s difficult when you’re growing as quickly as we are to anticipate the sort of leadership team that needs to be in place because at different stages of the company’s development, really different skill sets are required. It’s hard. For instance, if we would have put in place from the very beginning of our company a full leadership team, then I would hypothesize that six or seven months down the road half of them would have been inappropriate for the challenges that we faced as a little bit more mature company. So what we did is, the early leaders of the company wore many, many hats. I was the CFO, COO, President of the company for a while. By wearing a lot of hats, I made sure that we didn’t invest in filling positions too early. This is what I’m talking about, strategically planning the way you need to hire. Six or eight months into the process as we got traction, we brought in a CFO. The caliber of person that we were able to attract because we’d waited was much higher. We also had a much richer appreciation for the skill sets needed as we felt like, "We’re going to be a public company, we need to attract a CFO that has public company experience and can help lead us to that process of being a public company." So we had much clearer vision about what we needed in our leadership team. Same thing goes for our general counsel. My partner here and CEO of our company, he wore the hat of general counsel. He had a law degree and not qualified necessarily to serve that post, but because we had a lot of needs in general counsel. But again, ten months into the venture we brought in a general counsel who, again, had great experience, a great quality and offered a perspective that we wouldn’t have been able to attract had we not waited. So that’s a key thing, being very strategic and careful about how quickly you build your leadership team, and appreciating that the needs are going to change and evolve over time. So that’s the first thing.

In terms of organic growth -- I, for instance, from my business school relationships and from my previous relationships with the business world, was able to pull some of the very best people I knew into this venture. Then, for instance, three of the vice presidents of the company were three people that I knew very well and had a deep relationship with. They, in turn, did the same thing with their professional experience. They drew on the best that they knew out there and pulled in several people into their organization and other areas of the company to contribute. So it’s been an amazing organic process of "I bring two friends and they bring two friends, and they bring two friends.." But I think what’s important is that we set a standard and the people that come to the company have to be absolutely world-class. That’s one of our principles. We associate with world-class individuals. Having that as a standard sets the bar for the way we grow organically. It’s not like you invite your fraternity brothers to join the company. It’s not like that. These are people you know who have deep experience and we need them. We have someone now with six or seven years as a full time recruiter. We knew we were going to go quickly and so she focused on bringing in hires for us as well. If you get success, it’s interesting the sort of resume flow you start to get. People flock to the companies that are successful. In the early days we had more difficult time attracting and now we’re having a difficult time turning away so many people.

W: How do you integrate new people?

DG: We’ve grown from 15 people this time last year to about 160 people right now. A ten-fold increase in personnel is pretty challenging. What we’ve done to integrate them is try to push responsibility downward to the divisions of the company, so making sure that each of the divisions are very clear about the roles and the responsibilities that people will fill. It starts literally in the offer letter that the person receives. It very clearly delineates the mission that the person is bringing in to accomplish, and objectives and responsibilities. We spend a lot of time up front trying to be very clear so that when people arrive on the scene they know what they’re doing. We require people to spend a lot of time in the offer process because we think that’s a great investment. We make sure their integrated seamlessly into the company and have a clear vision for what they’re here to accomplish. So that’s one thing, the divisions have a lot of responsibility to make sure things are clear. The other thing is that we’ve increased our human resources department to facilitate the integration and facilitate the recruiting. Our HR department conducts a one-day orientation when somebody is hired to help get them up to speed. They’ve prepared a welcome manual and just help make sure that they know what’s going on. I think it’s conducted in a very professional way that makes people feel like they’re being well received. I spend, personally, an hour with each of the new hires, which I view as one of the most critical things that I do. I talk about our principles, I talk about our values, I talk about our vision and strategy so that everybody has that common grounding. It requires investment but if you do it well I think that’s what creates a focused organization that’s excited and it builds a culture from the beginning. It’s a team effort on the part of Human Resources, on the part of each of the divisions, and then opens up the individual to be aggressive and become a part of the Pipeline family.

W: How do you compensate your employees?

DG: A mixture of salary and equity and other benefits. That’s the compensation value proposition that we offer. On the salary front, given our pre-IPO status and scarcity of cash – not scarcity of cash but we’re not making money, we’re still losing money – I’d say our salaries are below market. Most people here could probably be earning more at other jobs at more established companies. But we feel that the equity component is, over the long term, and hopefully even over the three year horizon, the equity component that we offer to employees makes this opportunity, even with risk adjustment and discount the cashflow, it would represent… economically it would come out ahead of the game here versus at more established companies. So, salaries are lower than market. We have a good equity quotient. And then our benefits have been meager in the beginning but over time have gotten better and better. So we started out simply providing health care benefits. We thought that was the most important benefit and so we covered it 100%, but we didn’t offer many other things. Now we’re trying to layer in dental, and some out of the box benefits like concierge services and Mobile Oil change services, and different things that come on site here. Then I’d say there’s an intangible benefit too which is just our culture. We have fun, we have a golf course in our office, we have a killer break room that has ping pong and video games, foosball, softdrinks, free drinks, the whole bit. So that’s kind of an intangible benefit because people say, "Oh it’s a cool place to work. I have fun when I go here." That’s, in general, how people are compensated for being here.

W: What kind of culture exists at your company, how did you establish this tone and why did you institute this particular type of culture?

DG: I’m a big fan of culture and think that it’s a huge intangible competitive advantage if you do it well. Actually, go back to the book Built to Last. It’s a fantastic book that talks about what great visionary companies do to be distinctive, and one of the things they talk about in the book is creating a cult like culture which is this real passionate group of people around the company and around the opportunity. So we’ve taken that. How can we create at Campus Pipeline a cult like culture. So that’s what we’ve done, as I mentioned some of these things. We established Pipe Principles up front. For every new hire that comes in the company we not only do this orientation session, but then once a month at our team meeting, we have what we call Campus Pipeline inauguration where all new members get inaugurated into the company. We have a fun little ceremony and people take the Pipeline Oath and they are welcomed with tears and applauses. It’s a real fun thing and it’s cool. We mentioned this golf course in the office. It’s kind of become a fun little trademark, so when we get inaugurated, everybody gets their official Pipeline putter and the Pipeline Team ‘P’ golf shirt. So it’s doing fun things. The important thing is to create a spirit of team and camaraderie, and then we reinforce that with these monthly golf tournaments. Not everybody golfs, but everybody can miniature golf. It’s just a chance to rub shoulders and be friendly with each other. It’s reinforced with company activities that we do. We have holiday parties, the summer picnic, and a Christmas party. It involves the family as well. They work long hours trying to get a lot accomplished so we try to involve the families as much as possible so they feel a part of this experience as well. The founders of the company, one in particular, plays is really sensitive to how important this is and he’s just really passionate about that, which is great. He’s the designer of the golf course and he swears people in when they come. That’s a great role for our founders to play. But I think that the most important thing is spend a lot of time up front thinking about it. Don’t underestimate the power of culture because it’s an investment that pays huge dividends. People honestly have a great passion for the company, always are wearing the different pieces of clothing that the company puts out. People feel a lot of pride in that. We start that when we give an offer to a new employee. We don’t call people employees, by the way, we call them team members and we send out, with their offer letter, their Team ‘P’ T-shirt, give them a bumper sticker for their car that has our logo on it, and just try to get them right from the beginning a lot of pride around our company and who we are. I think focusing on those things has made a real difference.