Many people consider September 7, 1998, the day Google was incorporated, to be it's birthday. Google has a birthday logo on its home page today as well as a blog post about the the company's birthday. When is the born on date of a startup? When you first file papers of incorporation? When you move into your first company-specific office? When you hire your first employee? When you close your first deal? I consider the birth of a startup to be the first time you solve the problem you set out to solve. It might be the first time…
I created a new weblog focused on technology jobs in the San Francisco Bay area. The process of potential employees with potential hirers seems so inefficient I just had to try to better connect the two sides. The economy is improving and there are many interesting jobs available at technology companies building cool new things that push the boundaries of conventional wisdom, behavior, and code. The new weblog provides a way for me to experiment with various forms of advertising, connect people, a provide a pulse on industry employment movements to all who are interested. I am currently using FeedBurner…
Brad Feld's recent post about signs a board of directors should replace the company's CEO got me thinking about a larger issue. Why not apply the same problems to a worker's role in the company? The main difference is the middle manager or line worker usually has less money and capital invested in the success of the enterprise but many of the same ideas hold true. The list below is modified from Brad's post to focus on the role of an individual worker. Signs you should consider replacing your company I never hear from my commanding officer (other than at…
Today is Labor Day. A day for every man and woman in the United States to take some time off, sip some ice tea, and spend time with friends and family. The tradition began with coordinated unpaid day off of work and became a part of the national scene under political pressure and a mid-term election in 1894. The work environment of the late 19th century heavily favored the employer. The Pullman Palace Car Company company was one example of a company where you assumed not just a job, but a lifestyle. Founder and CEO George Pullman created the town…
Yahoo! and Microsoft are definitely paying attention to emerging forms of data transport such as RSS. It is evident not only in their product roadmaps but also in the essential tools to help potential candidates succeed in their jobs. Microsoft mentions RSS in 15 current job descriptions across product groups such as portable media center, marketing, and MSN. Looks like Microsoft has some plans for RSS on mobile devices. Yahoo! mentions RSS in 12 current job descriptions including what they are calling their "open content (RSS) platform." Google currently has no job listings for feed technologies RSS, Atom, or even…
Would you like to contact people listed on business networking site LinkedIn without a paid account or even an approval? I have received a few calls from recruiters lately using LinkedIn as a prospecting service but not paying anything for the service. How? They simply look at my current company and search the web for corporate contact information. A quick call to a receptionist at a small company like Technorati and the recruiter asks to speak with me. It's not too difficult, and the recruiter just avoided the LinkedIn InMail cost of about $5 an e-mail. The practice seems to…
On May 18 I saw Jeff Hawkins speak at Stanford. Full video of Jeff's talk is available on Stanford's website if you are interested. Jeff referred to entrepreneurship as "a tool of last resort." An entrepreneur is not a thing to be, it is an intermediary thing. If you succeed as an entrepreneur you transition out of that job into a success. Jeff became an entrepreneur out of desperation because he could not accomplish the things he wanted to accomplish with his current employer or an existing major player. In 1987 Jeff decided to not take the entrepreneurship route when…
Anil Dash appears in the Thursday, June 2, edition of The New York Times posing in the Six Apart offices wearing a goatse t-shirt. I think it's in bad taste to appear in a national publication in your employer's offices while wearing apparel promoting pornography but that's just me. (via Boing Boing)Tags: goatse…
Yesterday Joi introduced me to Mitchell Baker, President of Mozilla. We talked about the Mozilla community, gathering feedback, and planning new products that build upon or extend existing features. Mozilla's two main products are Firefox and Thunderbird, used by millions to interface with the Web, e-mail, and RSS. Sunbird currently a community project but not a Mozilla product. The Mozilla Foundation has been very successful gathering the technical talent it needs to develop its open-source software. It is currently in need of good product managers to identify critical features and keep everyone on track to release a competitive and innovative…
NewsGator Technologies has purchased Bradbury Software in a cash and stock deal. Bradbury Software is develops FeedDemon, a feed aggregator, and TopStyle, a website editor, for the Windows operating system. Nick Bradbury lives in Franklin, Tennessee and is the sole developer and runs his entire business from the top floor of his house. Nick develops in Delphi. I used FeedDemon from its first beta until I moved to Mac last May. NewsGator develops free feed aggregators for Windows Media Center, and online as well as a paid aggregator for Microsoft Outlook. NewsGator is currently developing an enterprise server ("Dino") for…
Tim Draper broke into song during yesterday's speech at Stanford. I have never before seen a high-profile venture capitalist prance around on stage, play air guitar, and slap his ass, but luckily I had my camera ready to capture this unique moment. Tim Draper recently attended an event with a very unique auction prize: Scott Cargo of The Eagles would produce a song using your original lyrics. Tim won the auction and wrote "The Riskmaster." Draper Fisher Jurveston sent a CD of the recording to 5,000 business associations last December, and I happened to get a CD from Tim. The…
On Wednesday I attended a lecture by Tim Draper of venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurveston at Stanford. Tim talked about new ideas that will change the world and solve common problems of humanity in the process The Draper Fisher Jurveston logo was designed to symbolize change. A globe is at the forefront, representing the referenced but uncharted world. The delta in the background symbolizes changing that world through new investments, ideas, and support. Tim likes to think in terms of "cyberspatial" competition. Given an environment of perfect information a new idea or breakthrough will spread throughout the world…
Last night I saw Paul Graham speak at PARC about how to sell a startup. Eventually the text of the speech should be posted to Paul's site. Paul sold ViaWeb to Yahoo! in 1998 to create Yahoo! Stores. Paul believes startups should be created and quickly sold for profit. Below are some tips shared by Paul last night. The most powerful motivator is the fear of loss. Startups get bought for one of two reasons: revenues or strategic purpose. You have to convince people at big companies that not buying you would be a big mistake, either as a…
Yesterday I attended the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar to hear Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit and corporate coach to startups such as Google, interview Danny Shader, CEO of Good Technology. Stanford posted a video of the seminar. Danny Shader has an interesting background including companies such as GO Corporation, Collabra Software, Netscape, and Amazon.com. Danny was an entrepreneur-in-residence with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Benchmark Capital before joining Good Technology. Bill Campbell was an economics major and a former football coach before his highly successful software career. Good Technology originally developed audio hardware for the Handspring Visor…
Harvard Business School hosted an Entrepreneurship conference on March 3. Sean Silverthorne of HBS Working Knowledge summarizes the themes of the conference and provides choice quotes from speakers.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings claims "one of every nine residents of San Francisco is a Netflix subscriber" in tomorrow's New York Times. Seems a bit high to me.
Amazon.com introduced a membership program called Amazon Prime that provides free two-day shipping for a yearly fee of $80. You can invite up to four family members in the same household to share the same Amazon Prime benefits at no extra cost. The household option is especially interesting. I might sign-up and share the account among members of my work family….
I just finished reading "Quitting the paint factory," an article by Mark Slouka in the November 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. Mark looks at the history of the American worker, the pursuit of money over the value of time and mind, and questions what we value. Mark talks about the value of idle time, how we now spend money to have busy leisure time, and he shares the stories of literary figures struggling with some of the same questions about life. (via BoingBoing) What it says, crudely enough, is that in order to be successful, we must not only work…
Howard Rheingold is teaching a class titled Toward a Literacy of Cooperation at Stanford on Wednesdays from 4:15 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. from January 5, 2005 until March 16. The class covers the economics of cooperation and will utilize weblogs and wikis to communicate between classes and with people from all over the world. Syllabus readings include Smart Mobs, Eric Bonabeau, Joi Ito, and Micah Sifry are all required readings. Non-students who live in the area can show up to the course without signing up.If you live outside the area we hope to be able to deliver a videostream to…
Chris Anderson wrote an awesome article for Wired about the power of the Long Tail. I had heard the basic ideas behind the article before, with the exception of his take on MP3.com. Andersen argued that you cannot have a successful business containing only Long Tail elements. The problem with MP3.com was that it was only Long Tail. It didn't have license agreements with the labels to offer mainstream fare or much popular commercial music at all. Therefore, there was no familiar point of entry for consumers, no known quantity from which further exploring could begin. He believes that you…
Eilene Zimmerman of The New York Times writes about the use of weblogs to attract employees and employers. It provides a more human process and gives you a better idea of the people you will be working with. Weblog entries also provides future candidates a better idea of corporate lifestyle….
Stephen Dorgan and John Dowdy of McKinsey & Company researched factors influencing productivity growth focused on the period from 1994 to 2002. They looked at 100 manufacturing companies in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States and found that increases in IT spending has little impact on productivity unless it is accompanied by first-rate management practices. The 100 companies were evaluated on a scale of 0 to 5 for their use of three important productivity tools: "lean manufacturing, which cuts waste in the production process; performance management, which sets clear goals and rewards employees who reach them; and…
