Dec 21 2006

Hah, Most Newbie CEO of 2006

Category: General — Jeremy Wright @ 2:25 pm

As part of his 2006 wrap-up, Rick Segal (one of our VC’s) names me the “Most Newbie CEO of 2006“:

Most newbie CEO Award: Jeremy Wright, b5 Media

When Brightspark Ventures and JLA did the b5 investment, we talked a bunch about Jeremy as the CEO.  We decided that we were going give Jeremy the shot and set our expectations accordingly. What followed has been some oops, ouch (bet that hurt) and yowsa but to our extreme delight, Jeremy rocks.  In terms of personal growth, he has been amazing. In terms of the company, ahead of plan, below expenses are the summary points.  The VC community talks a bunch about “the people” and “investing in people”.  Jeremy is a pleasure to work with and simply reaffirms the notion that, in the end, it is all about the people.

I’m totally sure this is a compliment. I am, after all, a new CEO. Just that in gamerspeak newbie means someone incredibly naive who thinks he can do anything, asks others for help, tries things that should be impossible, doesn’t know all the rules, sometimes steps on people’s toes and…

Oh, wait…

Okay, newbie CEO it is ;-) I’ll take it not as “too stupid to know better” but more as “too much energy to sit still long enough to know better, but learns well enough given his energy levels”. It’s like in school when I got marks like “A-, would have been a B+ but he was just so darn cute”.

Okay, I didn’t get those kinds of notes. They were more like “B+, would have been an A- if he’d only clean his @Q#@#ing desk”, heh.

Anyways, thanks Rick! And here’s to newbie CEO’s who work their asses off, learn on their feet and don’t know the meaning of “impossible”!

3 Responses to “Hah, Most Newbie CEO of 2006”

  1. Jason says:
    December 24th, 2006 at 2:02 am

    Congratulations Jeremy! It’s an absolute pleasure working with you. I admire your openess with the bloggers of b5 and with your leadership and vision. Maybe one of these days we’ll actually get to meet in person.

  2. Nox Dineen says:
    December 28th, 2006 at 3:02 pm

    Hi there, Jeremy. I stopped by to thank you for your donation to a very worthwhile wish over at Robinhood Fund and this entry caught my eye.

    From my perspective it’s a huge honour. You were obviously impressive enough to convince your VCs to take a chance on an inexperienced CEO, and talented enough to overshoot expectations.

    Congratulations!