Billions With Zero Knowledge - Austin Hill, Entrepreneur & Angel Investor

I love Twitter and am fascinated by the ecosystem that Evan, Biz and the team at Twitter have created around the popular microblogging service.  While many people on the sidelines are obsessed with when Twitter will make money, I see nothing but great opportunities ahead for the Twitter team.  (Disclosure: I’m an investor in Identi.ca - an open source microblogging service.)

Twitter is also undeniably the hottest startup out there today. It’s got plenty of money, and more mainstream press than any startup has received in a very, very long time. The times I’ve met Evan I’ve been impressed with his ability to stay out of the echo chamber that surrounds the popular service (As an entrepreneur Evan’s got class).

My affection for Twitter is also the source of my concerns for the Twitter team as I saw the signs of fail whales to come on their recruiting page.

Let me explain.  During the last Internet boom & crash I was the CEO of Zero-Knowledge Systems, a company that was also a media darling with tons of money and attention to go with it.   Like Twitter we defied the trends in the industry when we raised $22 million at record valuations nine months after the dot com crash had begun to sweep through the tech industry.   (This was after having just raised $25 million the year before. Unlike Twitter we did not have a successful product and it took us a number of years to turn the company into the success it is today.)

Throughout 1998-2002 we had employees from around the world desperately trying to join the company to be part of our dot.com dream.  One of the many mistakes we made was hiring too quickly as our staff rolls grew to over 200 people.

The Problems with Twitter’s Recruiting Drive

Twitter no doubt needs to hire.  Here’s Twitter’s career site: http://twitter.com/jobs

Twitter has almost 15 open positions listed which according to reported numbers would be a 35% increase in their current headcount.

Despite their ability to recruit people like high profile people from the Google campus Twitter falls far behind its Mountain View rival for talent in a critical aspect of HR: employment branding.

Google has a long history of strong employment branding. They’ve won awards for being a top employer, and received plenty of press – not just for the lavish perks, but also for the way they recruit.  Google may have many problems inside the Googleplex (crazy cash flow hides many problems), but their attention to advertising what it takes to be hired by them has served them well as they grew.

Google’s attention to its employer brand started very early on, and has been pervasive throughout its growth. Even as the most popular darling of the Internet world, it remained focused on its brand – a rigorous recruiting process, lots of perks, unique value proposition and only hiring the absolute best.

So what about Twitter?

As one of the hottest startups in the Valley hiring while unemployment rates continue to rise Twitter needs to be vigilant about guarding their culture.  To do this they need a concerted effort to ensure only the best candidates enter their hiring funnel.

Despite this attention in the middle of an economic downturn Twitter appears to have a lack of any focus on employment branding.

Some might argue that given Twitter’s popularity they don’t need to focus on their employment brand; they don’t need to promote their internal culture more effectively and focus on publicly attracting the best. I’m sure Twitter wants to hire the best (and has the dollars and buzz to help them do so), but it takes a more concerted, ongoing effort. Just look at Google…

Much of a company’s public-facing employer brand starts with its career site. (Disclaimer: I’m an investor and co-Founder of Standout Jobs - http://standoutjobs.com - which helps companies with their career sites and recruitment. But this post isn’t about vendor selection or products as much as it’s about the importance of strong employer branding and developing a rigorous culture of recruiting.)

Although Twitter’s made some effort to include cultural content on the site, it’s lacking. As much as I think I know what it’s like to work at Twitter, or I can imagine it, I don’t really get the picture I want from their site. They don’t even provide a roll up of recent tweets from their employees like Zappos & employee culture genius Tony Hsieh does.

Worst still, are the job descriptions they use. They’re about as generic as job descriptions come looking like they were haphazardly copied from some other boring job advertisement on some average job board.

If you look at the job posting for Product Manager or Software Engineer (arguably two of the most important roles in a software company) there is nothing there that discourages anyone with the minimum requirements from throwing their hat in the ring.   The amount of investment that goes into a unique & specific job description tells candidates how important you take finding the best fit.   When you copy a weak job description you send the signal that you are too busy to take hiring seriously.

As important as the cultural information and the job descriptions is the need for more information on the recruitment process and what Twitter wants to see from applicants. One of the goals with this kind of information is to help job seekers self-select. I’m sure Twitter doesn’t have a problem getting a large volume of applications, but quality is another story. Allowing applicants to self-select by making sure they understand more about the recruitment process and expectations can help weed people out before they even apply.

Compare the Twitter job descriptions with the job descriptions I recently posted for a UX Designer for my company Akoha.   Another great exampleis the job description that my friend Alistair Croll listed for a Program Manager.  In both cases candidates have a clear picture of what will be expected of them, hopefully a sense of the companies mission and most importantly a number of explicit requirements that allow candidates to self-select whether they believe they are qualified for the role.

Twitter has changed the way many of us communicate on a daily basis. You can pack so much into 140 characters. And yet, the Twitter application process is multiple steps and driven almost exclusively by a person’s resume. Boring. Twitter can’t be hiring based off resumes, I’m sure they’re looking for so much more, and yet that’s not reflected in the application process. There’s so much opportunity for creativity when it comes to recruiting, but too few companies – Twitter included – take advantage. And it’s not enough to rely on their own popularity to attract the best, they need to publicly cultivate and promote a strong employer brand that’s pervasive through everything they do.

Hiring your next fail whale.

I’m sure that Twitter can’t keep up with the volume of applicants attempting to get in on the ground floor of the company.   With the only requirement to apply being a resume and basic qualifications there may be a few incredible candidates in their funnel, but I’m sure for the hiring team it is like finding a needle in a haystack.

Having set the bar so low publicly puts all the burden on Twitter to screen and find the best candidates.   Many candidates will probably never get a call back or hear from the company (In my test attempt to apply I didn’t even get an automated thank you email, one of the most frustrating experiences for candidates applying into a black hole)

This overflow of candidates means that Twitter will,

• Spend too much time reviewing mountains of candidate applications using resumes as the way to screen candidates.
• Miss potentially great candidates who get lost in the noise and are not elevated to the top of the hiring pool by the hiring process.
• Invest too much of their teams time on 2nd tier candidates who can write fancy resumes and may have been in the vicinity of success instead of the creators of it.
• Stretch out hiring time frames which makes topgrading a difficult exercise since candidates cannot be ranked during a constrained timeframe allowing you to pick the best.
• Reduce the amount of time you can spend assessing cultural fit in your interview process.
• Start to make compromises on hiring candidates as the time to fill critical positions continues to increase.
• Increase the chance that a few bad apples will enter the company at a critical time.

While the momentum of Twitter may seem unstoppable, I know first hand how quick a few bad hires can contribute to a company losing its way. Many of the worst mistakes I’ve made in my career can be traced to making compromises in my hiring practices.

At a time when Twitter needs to be accelerating to fulfill their potential their public hiring practices seem to be indications of future fail whales to come.

A great example of hiring practices is how my friend Andy Nulman screens candidates read this interview or this great story of his hiring practices.

On Fri 10 Apr 2009. [12] Comments

I liked it so much, I bought the company.

- Victor Kiam

Ok, well I didn’t buy the company, but I am an investor and co-founder of Standout Jobs. At Akoha we are also proud customers of Standout Jobs.

My involvement in the company was based on my own experiences with hiring, promoting jobs, managing the difficult task of finding great people and building a talent base to hire from.

There are a lot of great productivity tools including on of my favourites which is the browser bookmarklet that allows us to source & track the many great candidates I research for contract, intern and employment opportunities @ Akoha.

When hiring, our team spends hours on LinkedIn and Search Engines checking out candidates online portfolios, blogs and public work (such as contributions to open source & community projects). 

Instead of a spreadsheet of candidates being emailed around and having 30 tabs opened in my browser we can now collaborate, share comments on candidates and maintain active relationships with people we might work with in the future.

Akoha today launched our own career site powered by our sister company Standout Jobs.

We have some intern positions open for web and python developers (Apprentice Ninjas in Akoha speak) - we will be updating the site with new positions in the coming months so subscribe to our site.

On Thu 7 Feb 2008. No Comments

The road to DEMO 08 is paved with a lot of hard work.

I had forgotten how much work, until I was able to see the Standout Jobs team firing on all fronts to get ready for their 6 minutes on stage, get RECEPTION (our service) launched and get their customers prepared to launch with them.

I was really proud to accompany my co-founders of Standout Jobs Ben & Fred when they did take the stage last week at DEMO.

The entire team pulled out all the stops to launch with more then 20 customers, a whole bunch of great media coverage and a killer DEMO presentation.

Ben and Fred’s presentation took them a lot of practice, but it’s the kind of great presentation I wish I could see more often (I know I’m biased - but other Demo presenters also did a great job in the format, while some frankly bombed).

I sit through many venture capital meetings, pitches and demo’s and you rarely see someone show you value, make a clear statement about the market and product in a succinct way.  I think Ben & Fred did a great job.  You can watch yourself and let me know what you think?

While launching at an event like DEMO is a great opportunity, it is just the first step in many in building a great company.   Ben (as usual) has a great post on how launching a startup is only the first step.

The company also announced a $2 million dollar financing from iNovia Capital.  There is more news upcoming in the financing area.  As mentioned in the release there was some great participation by angel investors in the round which the team will be announcing additional details soon.

There was great coverage of their release from many sources including GigaOm, Maple Leaf 2.0, Montreal Tech Watch  Mashable, TechCrunch, TechVibes, Venture Beat and JobMatchBox.

Congratulations to the entire Standout Jobs team. I encourage anyone who is hiring staff to explore the tour and sign up for a trial to see how Standout Jobs can help you.

On Thu 7 Feb 2008. 1 Comment

It seems everyone I know is spending a lot of time on hiring.   At Akoha, I’ve been very busy working on finding some talent for our open positions.  Finding great people takes a lot of time, especially if you are a small company where ensuring the right personality fit is crucial.

While working on hiring, I’ve been running upstairs to the Standout Jobs team (we share offices in the same building) to vent about how much easier my hiring efforts will be once they launch some of the really cool features they are working on.

To help that occur even faster, Standout Jobs is currently looking for Ruby Developers and I want to help spread the word.

It’s not just for them (they do need the help though), or me - but also for the countless HR managers, hiring executives and who like myself could save a lot of the time and costs that go into finding good people. 

So if you know Ruby or can recommend someone, and have run into the pains of hiring and think there is room for improvement in the tools you use to find great people then please help us - help you

The team is also hosting the upcoming Montreal on Rails meetup on Tuesday October 2nd.

Marc-Andre Cournoyer, wrote a great blog post detailing a day in the life of a Standout Jobs hacker. A must-read before you apply!

The guys upstairs also put together this collage with pictures of their new office and some of their recent adventures.

On Mon 24 Sep 2007. [3] Comments

Akoha is looking for an apprentice python developer who can charm the python language like a master snake charmer.

You don’t have to float or be able to play a Pungi. (In case you were wondering what Snake Charmers played, it’s a Pungi or Been according to Wikipedia)

If you have experience with Python and are looking for a great team to join and share your skills & passion for development please introduce yourself.

The job description is up at the Akoha site.

On Tue 28 Aug 2007. No Comments

Akoha is looking for a talented graphic artist & illustrator to join our team.

If you have a passion for illustration and design, an interest in Web applications or gaming and strong creative design skills then please reach out and contact us.

The job description is up on the Akoha.org site.

On Tue 28 Aug 2007. [2] Comments

I wanted to congratulate my Standout Jobs partners Ben and Fred on the recent announcement of the angel round of financing for our project.

I’m also pleased to welcome our new partner Garage Technology Ventures Canada who is joining me in the financing of the project.   As Ben mentions in his post we didn’t originally set out to raise this money when we started the project.

Part of what makes a startup so interesting is how many times it changes, and how quickly. We didn’t start out looking to raise such a large amount of money, but the opportunity to move quickly and change the game in recruiting was too important. And Garage’s interest in working with us as a team, and in our product ideas, means we just added a great partner.

“Go big or go home,” is the philosophy behind Standout Jobs. It’s not the way every startup should be imagined or run but it works for what we’re doing.

What’s critical for any startup is to find your own philosophy and approach. Believe it. Focus on it. Live it. Drive everything towards it.

I couldn’t agree more.  Although I provided the initial financial support for Ben and Fred to get going, we were going forward on a plan that required very little capital.   Both Ben and Fred has made strong financial commitments to the project with their own savings, and we were moving forward with our plans in a bootstrap mode.

As we began to understand the opportunity and got feedback on our early prototypes we saw the opportunity to do something much bigger then we had initially thought.

With the large changes occuring in the online recruiting and job marketplace (this is just a few of the changes) we decided to explore raising some additional financing to allow us to get a core team together faster to build a product that was worthy of the opportunity.

I’ve raised a lot of money for my various companies and unfortunately the angel technology market in Canada isn’t active enough for rounds to come together quickly.  

Tom Sweeney and Louis Desmarais at Garage Canada recognize this fact and are working to develop new programs to help early stage companies like Standout Jobs accelerate raising angel rounds.

The ability to move quickly and work with Garage made our discussions quick, and we ended up not shopping the deal around with other investors.   I’ve done auction sytle fundraising in the past where I’ve maximized valuations by spending months getting competing term sheets to be sure I got the best deal. 

I know the market for this stage of financings and have sat at both sides of the venture capitalists table enough recently to know that there was a good fit and deal with Garage.

The speed at which Standout Jobs is moving made it an easy to decision to work with Garage and not spend the normal time associated with fundraising.  

To put this in context, we took about 3 weeks to sign the term sheet from our first meeting with Garage and Standout Jobs.  My partner at Akoha, Alex and I spent about 5 months working on a smaller sized angel round last fall when we brought outside angel investors into Akoha.

Unfortunately the density of angel investors in the Valley allows these angel rounds to occur quite quickly as syndicate of experienced angel investors can close up to a million dollars in about 2-3 weeks for a qualified deal with the right team attached.

In some markets, speed is critically important and Canadian companies are at a disadvantage if they can’t raise the capital to execute as rapidly.

I’m really excited that Standout Jobs is on this track, and happy to be working with Garage Canada on this project.

Look for more news this Fall when the company launches our offering.   In the meantime if you are interested in how companies are using video and social media to improve their employment brand check out the Standout Jobs blog. 

Here is a video that wasn’t done by us, but is a great example of showing the team and culture of a company.

Michael Arrington (who I had a great time with at Mesh) picked this up and mentioned “…they should use this as one of their primary recruiting tools.”

We wholeheartedly agree.  What a great idea for a company

Side Note

Ben and Fred were both great in the fundraising process. 

I coached them on how to present the company, and assisted in how we describe the offering, especially in planning how to approach to market.  All I really did was coach though, they became experts in financing decks on their own which lead Fred to joke that he can always rent out his newly developed powerpoint skills on eLance if things didn’t work out and we needed to bootstrap

Thankfully things worked out just fine.

On Tue 5 Jun 2007. [4] Comments

While I was on vacation last week, my partners in Standout Jobs prepared a little video explaining the type of person we are hoping to have join our team as a founding employee.

I’m sorry I missed the filming because it looks like they had a great time.

If you know of anyone (include yourself as someone you know if you fit the bill) who has startup fever and is a great ROR developer then please introduce yourself.

Click To Play

Here are some more details from the job listing.

Standout Jobs is a new Montreal-based startup founded by Fred Ngo, Benjamin Yoskovitz and Austin Hill.

We believe:

• The job market is broken.
• Online job sites don’t work.
• Hiring people should be an ongoing process.
• Hiring people is about having conversations not bureaucracy.

Standout Jobs will change the face of recruiting.

But first, we need to build a core team of entrepreneurial-minded people, ready to change the game.

Standout Jobs is hiring a Ruby Guru.

We want to know if you:

• Love Ruby.
• Thoroughly familiar with the Rails framework.
• Believe in clean code, iterative development and quick prototyping.
• Love architecting and designing systems from scratch.
• Have experience launching 1.0 products.
• Have startup experience.
• Won’t crumble under pressure.
• Believe in the value of social media and networking, but not the hype.
• Dream of running your own startup someday.
• Believe in giving back, participating in the community and doing good.

How many of your answers were “yes”?

As our Ruby Guru you’ll be a core contributor to the success of Standout Jobs. You’ll be building great applications and have a significant role in launching a startup company from the ground up.

Before you send your resume over, ask yourself, “How will I stand out as a Ruby Guru?” Then send us what you’ve got. We want to start a conversation with you and see if you’re the perfect person for the job.

Send us your stuff at rubyguru@standoutjobs.com

Note: This is a full-time position in Montreal.

On Fri 11 May 2007. [2] Comments

I’ve been spending a lot of my time on recruiting lately.  It’s long and hard work to find and assess how great people will fit within our culture. Even though it’s hard, I love to recruit. Creating great teams is part of what I love doing as an entrepreneur. 

At Akoha we hired 5 developers in the last month including a python wrangler, human cannonball, javascript ninja, drunken master and UI jockey.  We have an incredible team shaping up at Akoha. We are still getting everyone familiar with our tools and experienced at releasing software together, but I think this is one of the best teams I’ve ever put together. We’ll be introducing the team in due course over the summer.

Recruiting takes a lot of time to do right.  Throughout my career I’ve been involved in the recruiting and hiring of hundreds of people. Having recently used most of the recruiting tools, and jobs boards out there I can say honestly they pretty much all suck.   I’m not the only person to notice this. 

Based on my experiences, with the exception of LinkedIn, most of the money spent on online hiring tools is ineffective. 

Companies pay to use these services because they don’t know what else to do, and they are so desparate to find people they throw away a lot of money on postings that don’t work.  They rotate from niche job boards, to big job boards.   From contract recruiters, to in-house recruiters.   The entire time many of the best people never appear on the ‘job market’ as friends, recruiters and referrals drive the best people to the best jobs.

During all of this huge sums of money are wasted, and the entire process is repeated each time a new search is started.

At Zero-Knowledge Systems we were pretty infamous for our approach to hiring and recruiting.  Our old recruiting site showed the personality of the company and the people who worked with us.

The video job ad we did for our python wrangler and my blogging were two very effective tools that helped tremendously in our hiring.

There is a big difference between recruiting top talent and advertising a job opening.  One treats humans as resources looking to fit people into narrow and boring job listings.  The other focuses on people, culture and personal relationships.

Announcing Standout Jobs

I’m really proud to announce that I am a co-founder and investor behind a new startup founded by, Ben Yoskovitz and Fred Ngo.  Standout Jobs will be bring a new concept to recruiting that I believe will help companies change how they find, and hire great talent.

There is a funny story how I came to be involved in the project, but for now I can say that it had just as much to do with the chance to work with Ben & Fred as it did our joint belief that there is a great opportunity to change how recruiting is done.

We will be announcing more details over the summer.  Ben posted his announcement on his blog.   Fred has the announcement up on his blog as well.

Look forward to more news from us in the coming months.   If you are a CEO, or hiring manager interested in working with us to fill a critical position feel free to contact me or Ben.

On Tue 8 May 2007. [2] Comments

Stories aren’t just for kids, or storytime at daycare.

I love a good story.  In fact we all do.   Stories are the means that we entertain, learn, teach, explore and play out the adventures of our lives. 

In business we have the stories we tell ourselves in our heads, stories we tell investors, customers, employees and co-workers.

A great story can change the world, or the way you percieve it.

Stories are about change and the best ones affect the audience of the story, and create some meaningful impression. 

A leaders job is to create stories that are worth believing in.  A vision, a series of small successes that give confidence and a story that carries passion and is worth figthing for.  Passion is something you can’t pay for, it has to be something that is shared - and stories are the ways we have shared our passions since we grunted our way out of our painted caves.

What are the words of your organizations story? 

Do the words you use include fullfilling your brand promise to reward employees and shareholders.  Please, kill me quickly before your story bores me.  I’m tired of boring stories.  I’ve heard entrepreneurs pitching me who can’t tell their stories, candidates applying for jobs who can’t tell their story and surprisingly many CEO’s I know can’t tell their story.

Stories need adventure, good guys and bad guys, drama and danger.   Most of all they need hereos, they need some epic injustice being addressed or help being offered to the needy.

You have as much luck finding passion in many companies as you would find a hollywood blockbuster based on the story of a CEO who increased shareholder value by implementing six sigma management techniques lowering operating costs while increasing market share by double digits over a five year period.   If that’s your organizations story then you need a new storyteller.

As an entrepreneur if your story is about how you can use mashups and the wisdom of crowds with a new AJAX api for a relationship management tool that used web 2.0 techniques and user generated ……….. sorry - the story was borying me too.  You can guess the result this story gets with investors, media or even employees.

Most organizations have great stories, but lousy storytellers.  Every struggle, sacrifice, win with customers or change in direction is rife with drama and opportunities to create stories and legends that shape culture and build your organization. 

Every story in business needs to follow the hearts, minds, wallet rule. (My version is win the heart, challenge the mind, and the wallet will figure itself out easily).

Here is a great story from Kodak that made me laugh. It’s great marketing and has people sharing Kodak’s story.

The power of blogs and social media is being able to tell your story with employees, partners, customers, competitors and the whole world.  In fact the more people you share your story with and the better you tell your story, the more you succeed. 

With the dropping cost personal publishing I’m continually surprised had how few companies, employers or leaders take the time to tell stories to their market.  

Ask youserlf, is your organizations website still a corporate brochure or a tool for telling your companies story?  How often do you update it?  Who writes the content?  What story does it tell week by week, month by month.

Here are two of my favorite articles that I found on Google on the role of storytelling in leadership.  

• Harvard Business Review - Telling Tales - from Steve Denning, Organizational Storytelling author
• Harvard Business Review - Storytelling That Moves People: A Conversation with Screenwriting Coach Robert McKee

On Tue 17 Apr 2007. [13] Comments