Posts tagged tech

One more thing…

I just read MG Siegler’s post about the new biography on Steve Jobs and saw this passage:

“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant,” Isaacson wrote. 

 

Isaacson continued: “‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’”

I am bursting at the seams with excitement.

Be interesting (and other ways to help land a job/internship at a startup)

dear everyone who asks me about getting experience at a startup - listen to the guy who did it with us… 

chriskurdziel:

Now that I’m back in my second year at business school, I’m getting a few questions from classmates on how to go about getting an internship at a startup.  In a selfish attempt to not repeat myself too many times, I figured it might actually be a good idea to blog about this so I have things documented for eternity on the internets.

Though my internship this summer was really obtained via a pretty organic process, I think there are a few common threads between my experience and the experiences of a number of other startup interns (both MBA and otherwise).  I’m no expert, but some of this stuff should help if you’re not sure where to start with applying for startup jobs (or your money back!).

1. Be authentic & have an opinion. I’ve touched on this before in a previous post, but just be yourself.  Cultural fit matters a TON if you’re going to land a startup internship or job, so that overly formal cover letter or “to whom it may concern” email is really going to alienate you in the eyes of most companies.  
2. Instead of spending a ton of time on your resume, be active on social media.  As Brad Burnham says, “You can work really hard on crafting a well written, organized, resume with bullet points of accomplishments – but you can’t fake 500 blog posts.” Not much more that needs to be said about this one.
3. Know the product.  I can’t stress this one enough.  Most early stage startups are almost exclusively product companies.  Chances are no matter what you’re doing, you’ll be interacting with the product, so make sure you know it from top to bottom.  Know what you like and what you don’t like as well.  Both are equally valuable and will help you relate to the customers and users of  business.
4. Know the market & business model (or potential business model). This is important whether you’re in a technical role or a business role - if you are going to be a successful company, you’re going to have to figure out a way to generate revenue and get paid! If you’re a business guy at a pre-revenue company, have ideas about this and an action plan of how to make some of them happen. If you want to work for a post-revenue company, make sure you understand the different ways revenue comes in the door and how you can help increase that revenue.
5. Know the technology.  As a business guy at a startup, it’s easy to just focus on the dollars and deals that need to get done, but if you don’t understand the basic technical challenges, you’re at a disadvantage.  Asking about technical aspects of the business (“what stack are you running on?”) up front can be a great way to set yourself apart from other “MBA” style candidates and demonstrate the kind of holistic view that startups are looking for.  If founders can teach themselves how to code and build an MVP while surviving on ramen, you can take 30 minutes to understand what Node.js and Ruby on Rails are and how they’re important to a startup’s product.
6. Don’t suck at email. This one is pretty underrated.  My experience at Shelby taught me to be much better about how I approach people via email (I’m still far from perfect).  Keep emails short and to the point (no more than a few sentences) and include something that’s personal in each one.  If you’re trying to get on someone’s calendar, propose a number of times that work and let them pick - they’ll suggest something if a time doesn’t work. Remember, the more you can illicit a response from the person you email, the better chance you’ll end up in their priority inbox when you email them down the road.
7. Sell yourself. Startup internships (and jobs, by extension) are a totally different experience than a formal internship program at a large company.  You’ll be expected to hit the ground on day one and make things happen for your company.  As part of landing the job, you’ll probably have to sell how your skills can be useful to advance the state of the company during the time that you’ll be there.
8. Get intros from VCs. VCs know their portfolio really well - if you know investors, you get intros to portfolio companies.  Guess what? If they are taking VC money, they’re probably thinking about hiring. Oh, you’re looking for a job?
9. Expect nothing, earn everything. This is one of the mottos we really embrace at Shelby, and I’d say that going into an internship with this kind of attitude is a great way to get the most out of it.  Sure, you can worry about a paycheck, whether the internship “looks good on a resume” or what your title is, but at the end of the day, your internship should be about growing personally and professionally and helping the company grow too.  Worry about that, and the rest will take care of itself.

Alright, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, go off and get some jobs! If you work hard and have a little luck on your side, hopefully other people will be saying this about you.

your startup has to crawl before it can walk, run, sprint… and be a platform

Lee Hower - a VC at NextView Ventures - has a good post entitled “Odds Are Your Startup Probably Isn’t A Platform.” It was even reblogged by CNN Money. In it, he argues that many startups are throwing around the term platform when they really shouldn’t be.

Countless startups pitch themselves as “platforms” these days, in part because it’s become a buzzword in the last 18 months or so…

But the reality is that most software-based startups aren’t really platforms.  At least for me, pitching a business as a platform when it really isn’t tends to degrade what might be a really interesting vision and story in and of itself.

While I definitely agree with Lee’s point about exuberant founders throwing around buzzwords, I’d venture that Twitter - notably missing from his examples - didn’t know how it would be a platform when it started, only that it could be a platform. They then kept those aspirations in mind and executed extremely well.

For that matter, only a few of the platforms Lee lists as examples started out as a platform from day one. Google? Nope. Facebook? Noooope. (Trust me, I was on Facebook in its 2nd month in existence… it certainly wasn’t a platform then, though it was great for figuring out who the hot girl was in your anthropology class).

Traditionally, multi-sided platforms are structured by building one side as a product/service, creating value for a given set of customers, then opening that up to another, distinctly different group of customers who may create their own value. 

In other words, one step at a time… baby steps. 

In his defense, Lee isn’t saying “if you’re not a platform, you suck, don’t pitch me” he’s just saying, don’t try to be something you’re not. But hell… we’re all trying to sprint to be real companies and let’s face it, most of us aren’t even walking… yet.

back to school @internzero

Sometime back in January, this guy Chris Kurdziel started following me on Twitter/Tumblr. I didn’t think anything of it, but he was interesting enough (via his own accounts Tw/Tu) that I followed him back.

A month later, we’d started TechStars and I wanted some support in planning for SXSW, so I posted looking for help. I talked to a bunch of candidates with shiny resumes, business school jargon, and alleged “passion for tech,” but none of them really ‘got it.’

Chris did.

He jumped in and worked remotely (from business school at Cornell), helping organize a great event for us at SXSW, taking a huge weight off my shoulders so I could focus on TechStars and endearing himself to us in the process.

So we brought him on this summer and affectionately dubbed him Intern Zero (among other nicknames), but let me be clear that Chris was anything but an “intern” in the traditional sense.

For starters, he wasn’t around to get us lunch and do menial work [ok… maybe we made him deliver cupcakes to Gary et al at USV once]. We also didn’t micro-manage. Sure, we coached and gave direction, but it was usually at Chris’ request. Hell - he even emailed us at one point with the subject line “i can haz moar badass.” Here’s an excerpt…

I’m writing this as a sort of “call to arms,” asking you all to help push me where you see opportunity for improvement.  Hold my feet to the fire, put me through hell, and demand things from me that may appear to be unreasonable (even if I have no idea how the fuck to do them).

You gotta love that! So we put a little more pressure on, let him loose and “moar badass” is just what we got. Proof?

[Chris with Dan and Myles]

Today we are proud to officially announce hackday.tv - a 24 hour hackathon dedicated to showcasing innovation and creativity in the world of video. From booking the venue, to finding sponsors, API partners, et al… Chris is the man making it happen.

On top of that, Chris has done some solid blogging on his experience with Shelby and thoughts on our space in general. His post on Apple’s Tv Strategy blew up on Hacker News…

1. What I’m doing this summer and why the heck you should care 
2. Apple’s TV Strategy 
3. Getting Ads Right in a World Where Bandwidth Isn’t Unlimited 
4. Keyboard Cat is Cool, but Changing Video is Cooler

All this stuff, on top of helping us every day as we closed funding, built product recruited team members. Hell… he even held an event with another stud tech intern - John Exley - bringing together all the interns in NYC to talk about how to make the most of their experiences.

It’s not surprising that Chris lead that event as he has certainly made the most of his time with us. And though he won’t be around day to day anymore, we’re excited that he’s going to keep working with us from school. Thanks for a great summer, Chris. 

A few takeaways:

Trying to break into tech?

1. Be good online. Have an active blog/Twitter account etc.
2. Be willing to do anything, but also be able to focus on one thing and do it well.
3. Execute like a mofo.

Bringing on interns?

1. Find awesome people. Their resume is probably bullshit. You want the hustler.
2. Set a general direction on a couple projects.
3. Get the hell out of the way and let them show you what they’re made of.