Tips for Getting Hired

The key to the success of a start-up is the people who work there. We are very picky about who we hire. Here are some tips to help stand out.

1. Write a cover letter. Don't write a fluff cover letter. The cover letter is where you point out how your resume fits the job requirements. If you don't write a cover letter, we have to figure out why you might be a good candidate. You know why you'll make a good candidate, tell us why. This is your first chance to demonstrate to us your powers of persuasion. If you're a biz dev professional, and can't explain to us why you are a good fit, why should we think you can explain our products to partners?

2. Spell check. Spelling errors pretty much immediately kill a candidacy. It might seem petty, but if you lack the care and attention to detail to spell check your resume and cover letter, it is also likely you lack the care and attention to detail to work here.

3. Do some research. Read our blog. Try the product. Ask questions.

4. Have a passion. Any passion.

VC Funding

After a year of bootstrapping, we've, closed a (slightly oversubscribed) series A round of venture funding. Our investors include CEI Community Ventures, Masthead Venture Partners, the Small Enterprise Growth Fund of Maine. They're joined by some angels and other private equity. Mike Gurau from CCVI and Steve Smith from MVP will be joining our board. There's a ton of people to thank and I know I'll forget some, so I'm not going to try to name everyone. There is one person I do want to particularly thank, my old friend and Yahoo! colleague, Matt Rightmire. Matt made the introductions for us to CCVI, MVP, and SEGF; all three invested (thanks Matt!).

Also we're hiring (and we can actually pay). More detailed descriptions will be available soon. But broadly speaking we need;

BizDev, particularly with experience in the news/talk radio space, or working with political campaigns.

Podcast community liaisons. People with contacts/cred in the podcast space to evangelize the power of what we're doing.

A product manager to lead Foneshow Groups efforts

Engineers with mason, perl and/or asterisk experience.

Really bright people who can bring things to the table that we don't see yet.

We've got a ton of work ahead of us and we're really looking forward to building out the team and executing the plan.

You don't have to be in the valley to raise Venture Capital.

An Observation

We recently posted a job listing on Craigslist Maine for an admin/operations person. We got a big bunch of resumes that we're reviewing this weekend. It seems that the vast majority of them (60-70%) are from people who are either currently, or recently employed in the mortgage industry.

I'm no economist, but to a layman, that doesn't seem to bode well for the mortgage industry.

No Time to Blog

Be back soon.

Here's some linky to Scott Converse and his great BigCo vs. Start Up post.

Why Not to do a Startup

Marc Andreessen (of Netscape fame) has recently started blogging and he's really good at it.

If you're thinking of starting (or working at) a start up, you should go read this.

Here's a taste:

Second, in a startup, absolutely nothing happens unless you make it happen.

This one throws both founders and employees new to startups.

In an established company -- no matter how poorly run or demoralized -- things happen. They just happen. People come in to work. Code gets written. User interfaces get designed. Servers get provisioned. Markets get analyzed. Pricing gets studied and determined. Sales calls get made. The wastebaskets get emptied. And so on.

A startup has none of the established systems, rhythms, infrastructure that any established company has.

In a startup it is very easy for the code to not get written, for the user interfaces to not get designed... for people to not come into work... and for the wastebaskets to not get emptied.

You as the founder have to put all of these systems and routines and habits in place and get everyone actually rowing -- forget even about rowing in the right direction: just rowing at all is hard enough at the start.

And until you do, absolutely nothing happens.

HT to Fred

Never wrestle with a pig ...

... you'll both get dirty, and only the pig will enjoy it.

Robert Scoble and ValleyWag are having a shit fight. I don't know if Scoble is looking for a job. I don't know if PodTech is running short on cash (although it wouldn't surprise me, they have a not insignificant nut). I do know that no one comes out looking good in these public peeing contests.

FWIW, we're hiring and if Robert wants to come work for us we'll find a place for him. I'll post job descriptions as soon as I finish writing them.

Talkers Conference

Nic and I had a table at Talkers Magazine's talk radio conference in NYC on Friday and Saturday. Pretty much everyone in the industry was there. We demo-ed to to lots of important folks and made some tremendous contacts. It's a fascinating industry. It is not at all what it appears from the outside.

One very important theme that some people there got and some people don't get is that they are not in the radio business, they are in the communications business. If you marry yourself to radio as a distribution platform you will inevitably become irrelevant.

We're looking to hire someone who has experience and contacts in the talk radio business (a solid rolodex) to do industry specific business development in the space. You'll have the opportunity to help take the platform of talk radio to a new level. When you're this early in a company you'll be writing a lot of your own job description. If you're interested and experienced, get in touch.

Rabble Rousers

There's a Japanese Proverb: "Deru kugi wa utareru." It translates to "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down." Nowhere is this proverb more true than in big companies (speaking as one who has been a nail standing proud in a big company). Working at a start-up is a whole different world. In a start-up everyone needs to be the nail that sticks up. While doing your job is necessary, it is not nearly sufficient.

Foneshow will soon be hiring our first non-founders. Those first few hires are key to defining the culture of the organization. We want people who get pissed off at things in the world that don't work well. But they can't just rant about them, they need to at least try to do something about them. We want people with strong opinions who will make cogent arguments supporting those opinions. We want people who will passionately argue their position. I'd be surprised if we hire people who don't have their own blogs or podcast. There's no room for standing on past achievements, it's all about what comes next. It's not about following instructions, it's about getting stuff done. Getting rich can't be the goal (although it might be a nice side effect). The goal is to change the world.

In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." If you're good at suffering evil, then you're likely not a good fit in a start up. We want rabble rousers.

Your Google Reputation

I Google everyone. If you cold call me on the phone, I'm Googling you while we talk. I Google all meeting participants before every meeting or conference call. I Google everyone who I interview or who interviews me.

Valleywag (yes, I read Valleywag) has a rather tongue-in-cheek (as is their style) article on managing your Google reputation. However, there are some good lessons there.

Hire Fast, Fire Fast

I blog about start up teams quite frequently --- and poking through our logs, the posts about building start up teams are among the most searched for. The reason we talk about it is that there is nothing more important to success of a start up than having the right team. Michael Cerda at Jangl had an interesting post the other day on the topic. Dick Costolo at Feedburner hits it on the head.

Dick talks about a "hire fast, fire fast" approach and this great quote:

"The hire fast, fire fast approach basically can be boiled down to 'it's really almost impossible to understand whether a person is going to be a killer A+ match before they start working with you day to day, so best to find somebody that seems close enough, and then remove them quickly if they don't work out.'"

This is so true. Until you're in the start up trenches with someone, you don't know if they're for real or are just puffing. While you certainly want to avoid bad hires, it is absolutely essential that you also give yourself an out in case someone isn't working out.

What makes it harder is that the traditional metrics one uses in hiring for a big company don't apply when you're building a team for a start up. In fact, success in big companies (where office politics have set in) may be a contra-indicator for start up suitability.

Joe Kraus also has some great thoughts on hiring.