Path 101 is hiring a developer: What we want out of both the person and the resume...and who we are.

Path 101, the company I started with our CTO and Co-Founder, Alex Lines, is looking to hire a developer.

Over and above anything else, here's the kind of person we want:

• Someone with a sense of ownership and pride in their work.  We get that nothing can ever be perfect, but you need to constantly strive to make things better.  This means not only making stuff works, but that it's easy to use and makes sense--and that you try to make it easier to use and more interesting everyday.
• You see the bigger picture--you realize that there are really exciting things to work on and then there's bug fixing--but at the end of the day you're happy we're moving forward as a team, as a company, and as a product. 
• You really hate when stuff breaks or it sucks and it keeps you up at night.
• You're friendly and/or interesting and are just cool to hangout with--not too uptight to break for a snowball fight in the park or to randomly pass funny images to the rest of the team on chat.

As for the tech stuff, an intelligent, curious, ambitious person can learn anything, that's true, but ideally you'd be an intelligent, curious, ambitious person AND be as much of the following as possible:

• experienced web developer
• very strong understanding of python
• extensive experience with django - you know its strengths and
  weaknesses, its ecosystem of libraries and components, participate in
  django community <-- This is ideal, but if you're strong in python, let's chat.
• obsessed with performance
• you can talk for hours about caching <--Alex's criteria, not mine.  Don't talk to me about caching... ever.
• experience with mysql
• know how to properly normalize a data model as well as the costs and
  benefits of denormalization
• strong unix/linux background
• conversant in html/css/javascript
• familiarity with column-oriented / key-value stores is a plus

We'll accept a resume but prefer a link to your blog and linkedin profile.

Here are some things you might what to know about us:

• We're helping people figure out their careers.  While this might not be feeding the poor, helping someone figure out what they want to do that makes them happy can really make a significant impact in someone's life. 
• We're doing it in an innovative way--by crawling the web for resumes and laying on interesting user data, like personality, blogs, tags, anything you want to tell us about yourself--in order to figure out what everyone's really doing with their careers.  This way, we can help you put your career in a context and figure out what "people like me" do for a living.  There are around 10 million resumes out there and we're going to crawl every last one of them.
• We're funded by some seriously smart and successful angels like Roger Ehrenberg, Fred Wilson, Brad Burnham, Scott Heiferman, Jeff Jarvis, Hunter Walk, Jeff Stewart, Peter Hershberg, Joshua Stylman, Brian Harniman, Shripriya Mahesh, and others...
• We were the first company to ever get an investment by the recently launched NYC Seed fund. 
• We're really passionate and dedicated to what we're doing.
• Team:  Charlie (@ceonyc), Alex (@alexlines), and Hilary (@hmason), as well as some super awesome contract folks.

 

So, tweet @ us, e-mail us, or leave a comment.   But please, no recruiters.  We can't afford a recruiter, so there's really just no point to reaching out.  We're really serious.  Really.  Serious.

 

 

EnergyHub: The coolest NYC company you've probably never heard of raises money

New York City based EnergyHub just received it's first round of venture financing, from Physic Ventures and .406 Ventures.   News on the financing from NYC journalists: conspicuously absent.  Wake up, folks!  It was on VentureBeat last night! 

That's exciting to me for a number of reasons.  First of all, what they do is very cool.  The company makes information systems that help you monitor your energy usage.   This way, instead of a bill with just the bottom line of how many Kilowatt hours you used last month, you can get an in-depth view of how you're using energy.  This is key to reducing peak consumption and lowering your costs.  It would certainly be nice to know how much money and power my computer is costing me each day.

What's very cool is that I got the opportunity to work with the founders, Seth and Tom, at ITAC's FastTrac class, where I am the Entrepreneur-in-Residence.  (In this case, EIR is a fancy way of saying that I'm the class instructor and good utility guy to have close by to help startups working with ITAC).  If you're interested in future FastTrac programs given by ITAC, you should contact Veronica Price at vprice@itac.org.  There are a lot of programs, consultants and advisors for startups in NYC--

They come out of Honeybee Robotics, a New York-based company that builds hardware for NASA’s Mars missions and the Department of Defense.  Who said everything in NYC was about finance, advertising and media?  They're really awesome guys and I'm glad to see them get their funding.  I can't wait to be able to buy an EnergyHub system for my apartment.

What's also great is that they got money from .406 Ventures--making this .406's 2nd investment in Brooklyn (they're also in Kaltura).  I had the opportunity to talk to Larry Begley in the fall and he was super smart and extremely approachable.  Hopefully, there will be more NYC-area based investing from .406 in the future. 

BTW...  Good thing Ted Williams choose to play that final day of the season.  .39955 Ventures just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Who is teaching young entrepreneurs in NYC? Getting NYC educators interested in entrepreneurship together.

In any given week, I meet with two or three entrepreneurs who want to talk with me about their business--just to get some feedback.  They know that I used to be on the venture capital side and vet business plans and ideas on a regular business.  I'm happy to do it when I take some interest in the idea, mostly when I feel like I can add some value.  Plus, I feel like it's actually useful for my own business--to see what technologies and processes other people are using and to help generate new ideas.  I've been very fortunate to learn from folks like the guys at Union Square Ventures, to see successful companies get launched and grown, and to have the opportunity to run a business on my own, so I do feel like I have something to add.  That's why I'm teaching entrepreneurship at Fordham University.

However, I'd imagine finding me as an up and coming entrepreneur must feel a little bit like finding the A-Team--especially if you weren't in established innovation networks.  You can't even go see Mr. Lee at the Chinese laundry first.  (If you don't get it, you didn't grow up in the 80's.)  I don't put myself out there as an expert for hire or have a fancy nickname for myself like Dr. Startup.  In fact, a lot of really good people in NYC to talk to about your startup idea are totally under the radar--just helping give feedback to whoever just happens to stumble into their network.

On the other hand, a lot of the people most above the radar on this kind of thing aren't exactly people I'd recommend to go see.  I have to assume every city has this, but I like to call them the "Venture Vultures"--various startup strategy folks with murky resumes who will promise to connect you to capital, technology help, strategy help who simply don't have a lot of there there.  In the Web 2.0 boom, tons of people hung up shingles offering to up startup businesses, and I'm hoping the recession will weed out most of these folks, because I think a lot of them do more harm than good.  When entrepreneurs with real potential run into these pseudo-virtual incubator strategy consulting types and get bad advice or no real results, and that's who they see trumpeting themselves in the community, it gives the community a bad name. 

The reason why these folks can self-promote their way to noteriety, however, is because of an educational vacuum for new businesses in NYC.  If you had an idea for a new business, or you had already built a product, service, or technology and you needed business strategy help, where would you go?  What about if you were a student?

If we really wanted to improve NYC's ability to support innovation, more so than money or space, I think putting more effort into educating students about entrepreneurship would be worthwhile.  The bottleneck for creating new companies in NYC isn't desks or angel capital--we have plenty of both--it's the fact that there just aren't enough entrepreneurs with good ideas who know how to execute on a business.  We need more students learning the technologies that allow innovation and more students taught how to turn their passions into ideas--and then into businesses (or just find their passions in the first place).

EDIT: Let's be clear on what I'm saying.  I think NYC is a great place to start a business--I just think that not enough of the best local minds are in the mindset that such an endeavor is possible or worthwhile.  On top of that, those that really want to learn need more access to the experienced people who can teach them best practices.  I actually think the infrastructure for a startup here in NYC is pretty good--we're just not getting enough new entrepreneurs at the top of the funnel.  New York City schools don't exactly pump out lots of students with the business or tech wherewithal (or interest) in starting a new company (athough perhaps that might change now that they can't just assume they'll get hired by big banks anymore).  NYC students are taught how to work for big companies, not to start small ones. 

I'm specificially interested in programs for students.  It's an entirely different thing to take someone who has already established themselves in a career and help them with a new business idea.  They at least have networks.  They know people in their industry and they have a sense of how to create value. 

I want to meet whoever is working with local students.   In fact, Fordham has generously donated space for about 100 people during the day from 9-5 at their Lincoln Center Campus on Tuesday, April 28th to bring everyone educating local students interested in entrepreneurship together.  I'd like to hold a small conference to share ideas, solutions, best practices, and step one is figuring out who is out there.

If you are involved with a university incubator, tech transfer office, entrepreneurship program, degree, or certificate, or if you just teach students in programs and subjects likely to create innovators, please get in touch with me.

I've created a form to gather all the interested parties.  Even if you can't make it on that day, please let me know who you are and what you do.

You can find the form by clicking this link.

10 Ways to Improve Your Startup Pitch

1. Be confident and realize that you are pitching at all times.  I can't tell you how many times I'm at a social event and someone tells me about their startup with the pitch equivilent of a "wet noodle" handshake.  Everytime you tell someone what you do, that's a pitch.  Knock it out of the park every time. 

2. Tell me something you learned about the market or your users--shows you are adaptable.  The worst thing an entrepreneur can do is be "strong and wrong".  The best ideas are iterated on constantly--and the last person an investor wants to talk with their company about is someone who can't take feedback.

3. Tell me who you can partner with and why this is a priority for them.  It is so incredibly difficult to build traffic or revenues from scratch.  Partnerships are often the key to your uptake--so help investors understand who else in the market would be willing to work with you.

4. Who currently supports what you're doing with real action?  Has anyone made a bet on you, or does the investor need to be the first one in the pool?  Employees working for sweat equity, customer committments, family and friends willing to break their piggybanks for you--anything to make it so that the person you're talking to doesn't feel like Will Ferrell--naked in the town square with no one running behind him.

5. Show investors that you understand how to get users economically in a way that supports the model.  For example, I can't tell you how many products I've seen that offer $10-50/month subscription fees and the company tells me about going the direct sales route.  That would only work if your salespeople are willing to eat bread and water... and not particularly often. 

6. Convince investors that you are obsessed with the problem you are solving.  This needs no explanation, but is often lacking.

7. What have you learned from your competitors--know them like the back of your hand.  If an investor asks you, "Do you know the folks doing "x"?" and "x" is anything having to do with your business whatsoever, the answer better be yes, and you better know how you're better than them, can learn from them, or can work with them... and preferably you already have spoken with them.

8. Know your realistic, addressable market.  If you're selling potato peelers and only 10 million people in the country eat potatos, don't say you're going to sell 8 million peelers in year one.

9. Appreciate the feedback.  If you tell someone about your business, expect a reaction.  You might not like the reaction, but all feedback is good.  Don't try to debate people--just respond cordially with facts or assumptions that answer their question.  If you don't have those, don't start shovelling and never, ever, dismiss anyone's feedback.

10. Come see David Rose at Fordham this Thursday, March 12, 2009:

On Thursday, New York's most active community participant from the investment side, David Rose, will be at Fordham talking about pitching and raising angel capital.   David is the founder of NY Angels and runs RoseTech Ventures.  RoseTech also operates an incubator on 23rd Street and is a renowned pitch coach as well.

We will also be letting 5 companies give their two minute elevator pitch (and we really mean two minutes) for David to critique.

Date:     Thursday, March 12
Time:     06:00 PM to 08:00 PM
Organizer:      Fordham TEC

Location:
Fordham University Graduate School of Business
   33 West 60th Street 12th Floor
   New York, NY - 10023, USA

RSVP here (req'd):  http://gbadirect.bnet.fordham.edu/vo/fbd1/cal/rsvp0.aspx?ID=3839

What does the self organization of nextNY mean for professional societies?

nextNY is doing three awesome talks in February.

On Thursday, February 5th, Jason Schwartz is running an event for community managers.  Just what is community management?  Who should be doing it?  What are best practices?  Find out from the folks who do it for startups like Etsy,

Then, on Thursday, February 19th, Jeff Stewart and Mark LaRosa are going to help startups figure out their sales strategies, sales hiring, and incentive programs.

Got an idea for a web startup, but have no idea about the technical implementation?  Some CTO's and technically inclined founders from local startups are making themselves available on February 23rd for an event on technology for business people--helping you cut through the buzzwords and rumors to help you focus and get your idea built.

Here's the key:

All of these events are free.

All of them cost us nothing to provide.  The venues and the time of the participants were donated.

 

So what does this mean if you're a professional society?  If you're in the business of essentially charging for live content, business connections, and professional development?  How do you compete with a self organized group of professionals who are providing, for free, similar resources that you do using the resources they already have--each other?

We have a free job board and a blog, too.  A paid professional society of young entrepreneurs would really find it hard pressed to compete against free.

So how did it happen and what does it mean for the professional society model?  Sure, we're all tech geeks and it's going to be easier for us to self-organize, but when you can find people on Meetup, LinkedIn, and Twitter, how long before other industries catch up?

About three years ago, I wanted to meet more members of my professional community--that being the emerging members of the NYC technology and innovation scene.  I was working for Union Square Ventures, a local venture capital firm, which enabled me to meet a lot of smart entrepreneurs, developers, and industry folks in my peer group, but nothing really brought us together as a community.  At the time, in February of 2006, we had a growing Meetup, but was basically about showcasing companies.  There was NYSIA, but that was an industry group with an expensive fee that most entrepreneurs and startups couldn't afford.

I decided it would be cool to invite some of the peers I had met out for a drink.  I thought it would be cool if 20 people got together once a month at a bar.

As it turned out, 75 people showed up that first night.  Since I didn't have time to manage these people (not being in the business of community myself), I threw everyone on a Google Groups listserv.  For our website, rather than use a centrally managed platform that I would have the burden of populating, we used an open wiki.

Eventually, the growing group clamored for more than just social events.  They wanted their professional questions answered.  How do I raise money for my startup?  Do I need a patent? 

Out necessity, not having a budget and knowing my hungry entrepreneur audience, I tried to put events together for free.  It was surprisingly easy.  Law firms and real estate firms were more than willing to lend us conference rooms for space, since they wanted to get in front of our community, and experienced entrepreneurs and businesspeople were more than happy to share their knowledge. 

It's really an interesting group.  We have no legal entity.  There are no titles and there is no hierarchy.  A few of us have various passwords to the web stuff, but that's about it.  Our blog has an editorial policy and it aggregates the NYC tech related posts of the members--no central voice.  There is a pretty strict no self-marketing rule on the listserv to prevent spam and to encourage selfless participation.

What's key to the group now is that we've really turned a corner in terms of leadership.  The fact that we're doing three events this month, and that I came up with the idea and am the lead person behind exactly zero of them is an accomplishment--one that groups and organizations should really aim for.  If your platform can't inspire those participating in it to want to take a leadership role, what are the chances anyone's going to want to pay for it?

Will NYC be Pittsburgh or be Detroit?

"Detroit should take a page out of Pittsburgh's playbook. In the 1980s, the state used local universities to pour funds into technology research. What blossomed was a thriving entrepreneurial community. The largest industries? Computer software, biotechnology, education and health care, all of which have held up well of late.

To be sure, Pittsburgh reinvented itself during a run of prosperity. It didn't happen overnight and it didn't happen without a tremendous amount of federal, state and local support and vision. Skilled workers who couldn't make a living in Pittsburgh moved elsewhere, to thriving cities like Phoenix and Vegas."

L A Z E R O W . COM: Will you be Pittsburgh or will you be Detroit?

 

So I've been chatting with a lot of local city government folks about ensuring that NYC thrives as an innovation center--and I've yet to hear how any of these plans tie into education at all.  All the governmental types are worried about money and space, but if there are no brains to feed with the money and no brains to put in the spaces, what good will it all do?

#nycsnowball

Pics and clips from an awesome impromptu tech community snowball fight at the Shake Shack at Madison Square Park.  Props to the Shake Shack employees who participated in the fight and also gave us some hot chocolate.

Alex and I and our ill-fated attempt to charge the line.

Check me out this Thursday 12/18 at 2PM ET on our own Path 101 BlogTalkRadio show

You can call in (646-929-1686) or check out the show online...   be there!

Topic:

With over 2700 blog subscribers, 1700 Twitter followers, 1000+ LinkedIn connections, and 600+ Facebook friends, not to mention IM buddies, 100+ blogs in my RSS reader, and 3000+ e-mails in my address book, you'd think I'd be a bit overloaded!

I'm going to talk about how I "manage" all of these and also take some questions around the following...Friend everyone or keep a velvet rope? Can you develop authentic relationships at scale? Where does networking cross the line to self promotion?  

(Poking the bear) An idea for the NY Tech Meetup: Disband it

When Scott Heiferman announced his abdication from the NY Tech Meetup throne at the last Meetup, he said that he had asked himself the question of whether the Meetup could be more than just a once a month pitch meeting.

It's exactly the same question I asked three years ago when I started nextNY.  At the time, Meetup.com didn't have listservs, so it was much more of an event than it was any kind of community.  Twitter wasn't around, so even during the event itself, people seemed kind of disconnected from each other.  There were no afterparties either.  I actually wanted to meet the people at the event, particularly the up and comers who were in my peer group, so I asked Scott if it was ok to form another group and he was fully supportive.  Now, we're at 2,000 people and growing, and our @shakeshack event was the hot community event over the summer.

But nextNY didn't solve everyone's needs.  Some people wanted more of a direct connection to financing, and so David and Yao created a unique business opportunity for themselves by founding the Hatchery around that premise.  They throw pitch meetings and investor matchups--and that obviously wouldn't be relevant for all the members of the NY Tech Meetup.

There have also been more focused groups, like the Video 2.0 Meetup group, which itself supports almost 2500 people, and industry meetups like the Fashion 2.0 Meetup, where over 200 entrepreneurs at the crossroads of fashion and technology are gathered.

And, of course, for even longer, we've had tech user groups, like NYPHP and the Linux User Group, etc.  These organizations have been holding events and running online listservs for years, connecting the technologists of the Big Apple.

So, as the NY Tech Meetup scaled to 7500 people, it inspired people whose needs it wasn't fulfilling to go off and create their own groups--creating lots of new community leaders.  Seems to me that it's more than serving it's purpose.

Scott, however, positioned the NY Tech Meetup as falling short--so when he asked for new leadership, those who answered the call came new ideas ablazin', writing manifestos, blog posts, etc... and the theme was the same... more, bigger, structure. 

This is typical.  No one ever wins this type of thing by promising more of the same.  Change is sexy, as are big visions.  However, as we should know from the web, focus and reduction are more likely to improve the quality of a product than adding more features. 

And now, we're going to be forced to choose between these new visions, when the community never actually asked for any of them.  I mean, this whole time, any one of the people running for Meetup organizer could have proposed any of their suggested changes and ideas, and totally ran with them, and we could have seen whether or not they got any traction in the community.  That's the way nextNY works.  If someone wants to run an event, everyone is free to, and if only 10 people want to go, it's fine, those 10 people meet.  If 150 people want to go, it naturally gathers more momentum, focus, and effort.  That minimizes the amount of community distraction and misallocation of resources.

No one, except Scott, was asking for more overhead, a board, or more structure, because whatever they weren't getting out of the NY Tech Meetup, they were getting out of one of these other community organizations... and now we're going to put the weight of 7500 people and a board behind someone's agenda--an agenda that didn't earn that following in the first place.  I actually think this could be dangerous--because it has the potential to distract other resources and the community itself on issues and efforts that aren't really being driven by the community. 

For example, a lot of people have been saying that there needs to be more venture investment in NYC.  Whether or not that's the case, something like 2% of all startups are ever really appropriate for venture investment anyway.  Still, that's something that everyone will support, even though it really isn't relevant.  Need we waste the NY Tech Meetup's time and energy on trying to work to get more investment in NYC when it doesn't really apply to most of its members?

Plus, a lot of what bothers me about this "election" is that the people running so far have either never tried to show leadership in the community before, or whose leadership efforts haven't garnered anything close to the kind of success the current NY Tech Meetup has.  And now we're going to throw the weight of 7500 people behind them?  That's going to set off a legitimization of someone's ideas that never got traction otherwise.  That person will undoubtedly be looked to as representative of the community when they really aren't.  I might think differently if anyone gets a majority of the votes, but what are the chances of that happening?  I'll bet you that "turnout" isn't even 50%, not to mention the fact that all the people in NY Tech aren't in the Meetup group, obviously, so this person isn't really going to be very representative of very many people at all.  They'll likely be treated as such, though, because elections create that perception. 

Instead, why not keep things a liquid market of smaller, focused groups--representative of what the community actually needs.  This way, if there's a group that wants to get together around investments, like the Hatchery, they can, and they'll naturally rightsize themselves around that need.  Let's not forget that the 7500 people joined the meetup as designed--to meet once a month, check in with others in the community, and see some interesting new startups.  It was simple, and not surprisingly, simple got traction.  There was no groundswell of people saying "This sucks, we need to do more."  In fact, it was quite the contrary.  Tickets to the NY Tech Meetup sellout in minutes. 

Have we not learned anything from AOL and Yahoo?  Kludging disparate factions of a community together in an attempt to be its center never works.  In fact, it goes against the very essence of Meetup itself--a loose collection of groups centered around focused interests, with lots of cross pollination but no central hub.

So, after giving this a lot of thought, I think I really only support two options here.  Let's keep it exactly the same--because it works, and because anything different or with more structure isn't really what the community asked for or needs or can't be found in other groups.

Or, let's just disband the whole thing before it trips over its own structure and overhead and wastes a lot of effort and resources.  Yeah... that's right.  Let's stop the NY Tech Meetup and see how many new efforts pop up in its place and how many new leaders are created.  I would hope that it would create at least a few--because there were a few people running I had never seen or heard from before. 

Or how about just spinning out the monthly meetup and keeping that exactly the same--run by someone currently on the organizing staff--and have some side "ideas" group coming up with new things to try out and incubate within the community?

Do I actually think the NY Tech Meetup should be disbanded?  No, I don't.  But do I think we are in danger of forming the next NYNMA, which failed under its own overhead during a downturn?  Yes, I do.  (something that nextNY, for example, can't do, b/c it's just a group of people... no finances, no costs... as long as there are two nextNYers who want to meet and talk to each other, it will always be around).   I'm also looking at the NYSIA model, with a paid director that, while more focused on the enterprise side, really hasn't galvanized the community either--despite the good efforts of very qualified people. 

Meetup proved that the grassrootsy, low overhead model worked.  The NY Tech Meetup inspired a generation of new community leaders who have packed the Gary's Guide calendar full of tech community events.  I'd rather see it disappear than see a new vision haphazardly bolted on to a community that never asked for one.

My Socially Speaking Interview

If you didn't happen to catch the live show, here's my interview yesterday with Sumaya Kazi of Socially Speaking on BlogTalkRadio.  We talked about social media, startups, and even the New York technology scene.