It can be hard for a startup to find senior executives that meet their needs without spending a fortune on a search firm. Plus, that route often takes too long, leaving a leadership vacuum for critical projects. Matt Blumberg joins Startup Savants to discuss Bolster, his executive talent startup that helps startups locate suitable leaders quickly and for a reasonable price.
- Startup Savants is a business podcast that tells the stories behind up-and-coming startups.
- Matt Blumberg joins Startup Savants to talk about his executive talent startup, Bolster.
- Bolster helps startups locate suitable leaders for a reasonable price.
Former Management and VC Executive Turns Founder
Blumberg started out in management consulting and venture capital. Both of these, he said during his interview, helped prepare him to found Bolster. “Those two things taught me a ton about business,” he said. “One of the things they taught me is that I wanted to be an operator, not someone on the outside. Advisor [and] investor were both really interesting, but I wanted to build something.”
During the mid-1990s, Matt worked for Moviefone, an ad-supported, interactive phone service through which people could order movie tickets. There, he ran the company’s internet business. “Those were really formative years for the commercial internet as we know it today,” he says. “It was great. I woke up one day at age 24 or 25 or whatever it was, and I was running a top 25 internet property, which I kind of had no business doing. But it was a great experience.”
America Online eventually purchased Moviefone, after which Matt co-founded an email marketing business called Return Path. That company was quite successful, growing into a $100 million business with 500 employees over 20 years. After selling Return Path in 2019, Matt co-founded Bolster with seven other co-workers.
Improve Executive Talent Search for Startups
Through Bolster, startups and scaleups can access a marketplace that connects them with a variety of executives who can meet different needs. A startup may require an executive to perform interim work, a fractional executive for an ongoing project, someone to provide advice and coaching, or a candidate for the board of directors.
“We are building … a really interesting and very impactful and hopefully somewhat disruptive business in the talent space,” Matt said during his interview. “We’re a marketplace that connects founders and startup CEOs with senior executives. We believe that there’s got to be a better way to access executive talent than the way it works today, which is either very ad hoc, like you know someone or you know someone who knows someone, or it’s very expensive and very slow. You hire a search firm, it costs a lot of money, it takes a long time. You end up with a very expensive person.”
Although the traditional approach can work for many companies, startups are in a unique position with unique requirements. “The needs of startups are really, really different from the needs of larger companies or even middle-market companies,” Matt said. “Being able to get good executive talent on demand if you need someone for an hour for a project, for a day a week, or a day a month, this is a better way of doing that. And if you need someone full-time or you need someone to be on your board, it’s a much lighter-weight process that we go through … Bolster makes it a lot easier to do that, a lot more comprehensively, a lot faster, [and] a lot cheaper.”
Startup Savants Podcast
The Startup Savants podcast is a business podcast created by The Really Useful Information Company (TRUiC). Listeners can hear the stories behind startups, as told by their founders, that are in the midst of growing their companies.
Ethan, an entrepreneur, and Annaka, a branding expert, host the Startup Savants podcast. They bring disparate skills and life experiences to their interviews, providing listeners with important business insights and a holistic perspective on the startup ecosystem.
Hear from a variety of real startup founders from around the globe and with varying backgrounds, making their startup idea a reality. Learn from experts sharing their industry knowledge on venture capital, securing funding, and more on the Startup Savants podcast.
Final Thoughts
In his interview on Startup Savants, Matt Blumberg discusses his journey in founding the Bolster. He discusses his prior career path, how he got the idea for the startup, and how Bolster is disrupting the executive talent space.
You can find the Startup Savants podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
