Who is David Jackson?

My new boss is the CEO of Seeking Alpha. His name is David Jackson. But who exactly is David Jackson, I don't know. He is a mystery to me. On the one hand, he seems like your average friendly guy. But he is clearly also someone extraordinary and I don't understand how I had never heard of him before. When I first met him, I immediately knew I wanted to work for him and he was the main reason I accepted the position. He seems to be quite modest and it is probably how he's managed to stay off the media's radar for so long. Which, truth be told, is probably NOT the best quality for a CEO to have. But he's done amazing things with the company. Seeking Alpha started out as his hobby and it is now hugely successful and growing at leaps and bounds. He has this knack of just completely winning people over and his enthusiasm is contagious. He managed to get one of the top venture capital firms (Benchmark - the same group who funded Ebay, 1800 Flowers, and other highly successful companies) to invest in our company which, in those days, was probably a crazy idea. But every time he speaks, he really impresses me. Simply put, he is brilliant. He totally reminds me of a young Michael Bloomberg (only perhaps a little nicer). Will David build the next billion dollar financial empire? I don't know, but the few companies that make it to the top have some one like Michael Bloomberg or David Jackson at the helm.

Bloomberg was (and I'm sure still is) an absolutely amazing place to work. The caliber of employee they hire are really top notch and many of the best people I ever worked with were my fellow Bloomberg employees. Why did I start working at Bloomberg? It all started with a not so successful book called Bloomberg by Bloomberg written by... you guessed it, Michael Bloomberg. In hindsight, I suppose it was mostly a self aggrandizing account of Mike's life and the success of his company but hey, he is a self made billionaire so he must know what he is talking about. Regardless, I was completely captivated by this book and I decided right then and there that he was the man I wanted to work for after college. I sent out only one resume... to Bloomberg. I decided that is where I was going to be hired! Luckily, they did hire me or I would have been forced to send out some additional resumes pretty quickly.

At Bloomberg I was fortunate to have a lot of direct access to Mike. For one, it was the way he wanted Bloomberg L.P. to be. There are few walls and no private offices at Bloomberg. Everything is out in the open and Mike sat at a regular desk among everyone else and encouraged his employees to approach him. He used the same restrooms, ate the same food, even his salary was tied to be equivalent to the lowest paid employee in the company. Of course he owned 80% of a billion dollar empire so the impact of such a decision was purely psychological. But it demonstrated that he was in touch with the employees and their needs.

I saw him more frequently than just the chance encounters in the men's room though. Part of my job was to conduct exit interviews and analyze world wide turnover directly for Mike. I also ran the new hire orientation every Monday and when he had time, he spoke to them. But once each month, no matter how busy he was, he always made sure to have breakfast with all the new employees that had started that month. It was my job to organize and bring him to this monthly breakfast. At the time, I didn't even realize how unique I was that I probably had breakfast with Mike more often than many of his 10,000 employees put together. All I thought is how much I learned from this man during these meals. Whenever he would speak, we would drink in his words and totally believe that our company really was the best company out there.

Mike could be tough, or so I've heard. I never witnessed anything negative myself but heard some horror stories from other employees. And of course the news media has carried accounts of how he sexually harassed women or asked pregnant employees to get abortions. Some employees swear these accusation were all true and I suppose it wouldn't surprise be if they were. But it wasn't the total picture. Mike really cared about people and helped when he could at both the macro and micro level. On the one hand, he would give hundreds of millions of dollars away to charities and on the other, he would give individual underprivileged youth a chance at changing their lives by giving them internships at Bloomberg (another project I oversaw for a while). I remember one time an employee's home burned down and he called me and told me to get her family temporary housing arrangements and arrange for a local supermarket to provide them with food everyday and he didn't care how much it cost. I don't think most CEOs of a company that size would even have known that one of their employee's lost a home. David is the same way. It makes working here a pleasure on a whole different level and it's been a while since I felt that way about an employer.

A little history...

Okay, a little history about myself. I graduated from Binghamton University with both a BS and BA degrees. After graduating I began working at Bloomberg L.P. in Manhattan. After about two and a half years there, I was lured away by the big promises of the .com world. Interestingly, this was after the .com burst. I remember countless Bloomberg employees left lucrative positions in hopes of getting in at the ground floor of what might be the next Yahoo!. Most of them ended up unemployed. But in my case it was a safer transition. I joined an electronics wholesaler who had a brick and mortar business for 15 to 20 years and had only then decided to expand into the world of ecommerce. But it meant that their chances of going under were close to zero since the wholesale side was doing well. I was originally hired as a business consultant to create an online presence but after one year, they convinced me to stay on full-time as the director of online operations. I was with the company either as a full type director or in the capacity of a consultant for close to six years.

I've also founded a few small start up companies and was a business consultant to a few other companies, most notably Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings (AAWW). The company owns two airlines, Atlas Air and Polar Air and is the largest operator of 747 aircraft in the world. Afterwads, I decided it was time to pursue some higher education and I received MBA's from Tel Aviv University's Recanati School of Business and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business. Though pricey, I felt I received an excellent education with a strong international flavor.

Currently I work as the Director of Contributor Relations for Seeking Alpha, the leading provider of stock market opinion and analysis from blogs, money managers and investors. The company really has an amazing product which we feel very stongly about providing to the financial community completely free. Check them out: http://www.seekingalpha.com/. We have over 1300 contributors, print over 160 articles per day and have numerous other popular features such as free quarterly earnings call transcripts of over 3000 stocks, reports on Jim Cramer's picks, research tools and more. But I didn't mean for this to be a commerical for my company. I'm still relatively new and the euphoria hasn't warn off yet.

I am also married to a beautiful, charming and intelligent woman. Together we have (so far) one 14 month old son who always manages to bring a smile to the face of every one he meets. He is simply amazing. He's really come a long way from his first four months of his life where all he did was cry!

I'm thinking of Creating a Blog

So I'm thinking of creating a blog. Is that weird? It seems to be the in thing these days and I've read some pretty great blogs. But who will read it and why? Do I even want people reading my blog? Thoughts to ponder. But this posting will be my first test and we'll see what it feels like to hit the "publish post" button.