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You're only a first-time CPO once, but that first time can be a daunting challenge for startup leaders. Without a blueprint or a guide, you're in a tough spot to manage all the details of HR/People, set up the accounts and systems, plus build out your team. Startup CPO was written to help the first-time CPO navigate HR/People challenges and provide tactics and best practices for how you can grow a high-performing function.

Matt Blumberg and Cathy Hawley have decades of finance and leadership experience from founding a company, scaling it, and exiting. They cover a wide range of topics from values and culture, to onboarding, compensation, career pathing, employee engagement, recruiting, People operations, and more. The authors share how to collaborate effectively in the executive suite and with functional leaders throughout an organization. As an added bonus, Matt shares CEO-to-CEO advice on what a great CPO looks like, signs your CPO isn't scaling, and how to engage with the CPO.

Startup CPO will help you pinpoint gaps or weaknesses, turn those into strengths, and help you scale yourself, the People function, and your organization.

Matt Blumberg has spent his entire career creating startups, scaling them, and sharing best practices of what works and what doesn't work for other CEOs and team members in the entrepreneurial community. He is the author of "Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business" (Wiley, 2020), an influential book embraced by entrepreneurs, CEOs, founders, and board of directors in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Startup CEO was an outgrowth of his blog, StartupCEO.com. In 1999, he founded Return Path, an innovative email marketing company, helped it to $100m in revenues, and led it to a successful exit in a strategic sale to Validity in 2019. Along with colleagues from Return Path, Matt started Bolster in 2020, a company focused on helping startups and scaleups grow, develop, and scale their leadership teams and boards. Matt's second book, "Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company's Critical Functions and Teams" (Wiley, 2021), was a collaboration with Bolster's CXOs to provide a blueprint for scaling up each function. Before Return Path, Matt led Marketing, Product Management, and the Internet Group for MovieFone, Inc. (later acquired by AOL). Prior to that, he served as an associate with private equity firm General Atlantic Partners and was a consultant with Mercer Management Consulting. He also cofounded and chairs the board of Path Forward, a nonprofit created and spun out of Return Path. Path Forward's mission is to empower people to restart their careers after time spent focused on caregiving by working with companies offering mid-career internships. Path Forward gives women and men a path to a professional career, while giving companies access to a diverse, untapped talent force. Matt is currently Executive Chair at Bolster. He earned his A.B. from Princeton University.

Cathy Hawley is CEO of Bolster and has been an experienced fractional and full-time Chief People Officer passionate about building highly effective leadership teams and creating inclusive and people-focused workplaces. She has more than 20 years of experience in a variety of industries developing global People and Culture teams. At Return Path, she spearheaded the "return to work" program, spun it out to a nonprofit, and is on the Board of Path Forward, a nonprofit that helps companies create return-to-work programs for caregivers. Cathy contributed to "Startup CXO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Company's Critical Functions and Teams" (Wiley, 2021), sharing her experience, tips, and best practices for CPOs to build a resilient culture as they scale up the People function. Cathy earned a BS in business administration from the University of Colorado and a master's in European HR and Industrial Relations from Keele University.