What do you look for in your candidates?

How important is college?

Do you focus on GPAs?

Google homogenized it’s workforce by using an algorithm that measured people in terms of their similarity to current googlers (but I think that has changed).

Some managers are so naïve/dumb/lazy that they hire based on Klout scores.

EMANIO created a hiring manifesto to define its approach.

Some people think certain questions are the secret to good hiring, and while they are useful they aren’t silver bullets.

However, good questions asked correctly can tell you how the candidate thinks, which is far more valuable than where they went to school, previously worked, position held or even current skills. This is especially true if your goal is to increase creativity and innovation.

For those bosses who think that hiring is a waste of time, not to mention a pain in the patootie, I remind you that the only thing more important than acquiring talent is keeping what you have.

And if doing a good job isn’t enough, keep in mind that as a boss (any kind/any level) your reviews/raises are a function of your team’s performance not just your own.

For more how-to-hire knowledge read my Insanely series.

Flickr image credit: Kristina D.C. Hoeppner

The results of a new survey of 500 business leaders drives the home the importance of personality, which makes perfect sense, since it is “personality traits” that underlay “cultural fit.”

78% cited “personality” as the most desirable quality in employees, followed in importance by “cultural alignment,” and then finally “skill-set.”

“Skill-set” as a distant number three makes perfect sense considering the speed of change, especially when technology is involved.

Skills can be learned.

For a prime example, consider Declara CEO Ramona Pierson.

In 1984, at age 22, Pierson was hit by a drunk driver. The car tore her body apart, slicing open her throat, gouging her chest, leaving her heart and lungs fully exposed.

Pierson was in a coma for 18 months. She was totally blind for 11 years, though she has regained partial sight in her left eye thanks to a corneal transplant. It was the process of having to learn just about everything from scratch (including how to breath and walk) that made her realize how important it was to be a lifelong learner.

Which shaped her approach to hiring.

“We don’t hire people for a job. We look for very smart people and look for roles that let them continue along their path.”

KG Charles-Harris has a similar attitude and since I’m helping him with staffing I thought I’d share his Hiring Manifesto with you today.

It’s one I hope more managers/companies adopt.

QUARRIO HIRING MANIFESTO

Quarrio has used AI technologies (natural language processing & machine learning) to create the technology that enables natural language querying and analytics of structured and semi-structured data sources.  We believe this will change the analytics and enterprise software markets.   

We are seeking programmers to join our team who are willing to work for options until we are funded.  We expect funding to be in the coming 3-4 months.

Our compensation plan is completely transparent and we are happy to share it once we establish mutual interest.

WHAT WE WANT

Most companies, especially startups, look for “stars” with extensive experience in specific skills sets.

Quarrio has a different approach.

We seek people willing to work hard, constantly learn new stuff and who are diligent and dependable. People who perform at their peak because they care and constantly strive to improve. Our current team is truly world class and we plan on maintaining that standard as we grow.

We are a company of experience; our current team members are all over 40 with extensive and varied backgrounds. While their knowledge is deep they love learning; they know multiple languages and operating systems, are familiar with many others and have learned new ones as needed for our product.

WHAT WE NEED IMMEDIATELY

Programmers with

• Ruby or related knowledge
• Ruby on Rails
• HTML 5 & CSS3 & JavaScript

OR

• willingness to learn them coupled with a viable technical base on which to build.

WE DO CARE ABOUT

• Your attitude and
• fit with Quarrio’s culture.

WE DO NOT CARE

• If your experience comes from a formal background, working/OJT experience, self-taught at home or different tech background, but strong desire to learn and branch out;
• where you live (current team includes Seattle); or
• what you are.

One or another of our current team has faced and overcome every prejudice that is/was active in the workplace.

First and foremost, we care about getting the work done, so by hiring your mind and attitude as opposed to your body and proximity we have the luxury of finding talent that many companies miss. For example,

• wounded warriors and others with disabilities;
• minorities, including extraterrestrials;
• mothers re-entering the work force;
• “old” people;
• women;
• people with no interest in relocating to Berkeley.

In spite of the current prefunded status I honestly believe that Quarrio offers a unique and real opportunity or I wouldn’t post it here.

Yes, along with the right attitude you need to be willing to take the risk—but everything is a risk these days. And you owe it to yourself to take the time to evaluate this one.

I also hope you will share this post with your friends and network wherever they may be.

Please write miki@rampupsolutions.com or call me at 360.335.8054 for more information to discuss the opportunities.

Flickr image credit: Tim Green

I attended the Founder’s Showcase last Wednesday, and found it tremendously interesting from several perspectives.  As a founder who has started several companies, of which a couple have been successful, it is really interesting to see how the startup and funding environment has changed.

The basic format of the Showcase is that companies are selected to pitch to a panel of VCs who then provide them with feedback and advice after having had a chance to ask questions after the pitch.  Just hearing the feedback from the panel was very interesting, but also to see the different types of companies that were being pitched.  There are a lot of very interesting startups out there…

After sitting through a day of pitches, feedback and interacting with other founders, my main takeaway is that things are getting a lot harder out there for founders who are not well connected in the Silicon Valley environment.  There are a plethora of good companies out there that have created interesting businesses and technologies.

To get funding today, it is not enough to have an idea.  It seems that what is required is to have removed a significant portion of the risk factors (technology risk, development risk, team risk, market risk and business model risk) from the venture to get an investment from an Angel or VC.

Professional and semi-professional investors (VCs and Angels) have so many deals to choose from that, of course, they will choose the ones that will bring the highest potential return.  And this has a strong correlation with low risk and rapid turnaround to the next funding round.  Having a completed product and some customer traction implies that much of the risk has been assessed and surpassed, making an investment very attractive.  If you don’t have a product and paying customers, know that this is what you are competing against.

Some time ago, it was easier to get funding based on an idea or a prototype, but this seems to no longer be the case in the majority of companies.  So founders have to be willing to sacrifice all the way to product and customers before they receive funding.

Another main takeaway from the Founder’s Showcase was the glaring lack of companies doing deeply technological things.

Most of the businesses presenting were essentially new business models with at web/app frontend for a particular industry segment.  Almost none of the companies were working on difficult technological innovations.

But speculation as to why this is must be left for a future post.

KG Charles-Harris is CEO of Emanio and a special contributor to MAPping Company Success.

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

“It’s shocking we don’t see more engineers and entrepreneurs interested in enterprise. (…) In the last 10 years, there have been 56 IPOs in the enterprise space that have gotten north of a billion [dollars in market capitalization] and just 23 in consumer.” —Jim Goetz, partner at Sequoia Capital

I cited Goetz’s comment in a post last fall chiding entrepreneurs for trying to be the next Facebook instead of solving enterprise problems.

Six weeks later I asked Walter Paliska, marketing VP at long-time client EMANIO, to attend a Big Data conference and write about it. I turned to EMANIO because 1) I no longer live in the Bay Area and 2) EMANIO recently pivoted and is building a truly disruptive big data product.

Mobile is considered the hottest field, but many of its most innovative apps are a result of the explosion of big data; on the flip side mobile is feeding big data inspiring yet more innovation in that area.

When the Data 2.0 Summit came along I turned again to EMANIO and asked Randy Hyshiver, Director of Delivery and Services to give us an update on the effect of big data on innovation.

Big Data: Inspiring Innovation by Randy Hyshiver

It’s clear to me that the Big Data movement is inspiring a new wave of Innovation and the birth of a new set of entrepreneurs.  The pace of growth of ideas and the proliferation of new companies dedicated to solving big data problems is amazing.

The massive growth in data that is spurring the big data movement is leading to an increasing degree of interest not just from technologists, but also from investors looking to capitalize on the technological breakthroughs.

Big Data touches our lives in numerous ways in an effort to help improve how we work, how we live, travel and just about every other aspect of our daily existence.

The massive adoption of mobile devices has also been a huge driver in big data interest.  As mobile devices generate massive amount of data, a whole new set of applications has emerged in just about all business sectors, to take advantage of the data generated.

• The fitness industry is marrying concepts from the gaming industry and bringing portable sensors into the mobile space creating a dynamic data collection model that can be leveraged to help users accomplish fitness goals through competition with friends.
• The automotive industry is using sensor data to understand driving behaviors and to create better driving environments in new generations of vehicles.
• Big data is also helping the environment as ecological companies use massive amounts of sensor-generated data to help farmers, travelers and ultimately to help us understand how our actions impact our World every day.

The growth and rapid adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms during the past decade has also helped drive demand for the usage of evermore readily available data in new ways.

Concepts like Data as a Service (DaaS) are beginning to drive a democratization of data to help build radical new consumer and business applications using now widely available resources.

The World of technology and innovation has found a new impetus by the growth of data.

The collection of vast amounts of data is driving the adoption of new technologies and is inspiring a new generation of entrepreneurs.

Mobile devices, cloud services and the widespread adoption of sensor-based applications are all just the tip of the iceberg in the drive to generate more data – data that can be analyzed and leveraged to improve our lives.

Image credit: HikingArtist

I no longer live in the Bay Area, but as a center of entrepreneurship I am still very connected. Big data presents enormous opportunities for entrepreneurs, so I asked Walter Paliska, a senior marketing manager at EMANIO, Inc., to share intel what is means to the enterprise startup community.

By Walter Paliska:

Between November 13th and 14th I had the opportunity to attend the Big Data Business Forum in San Francisco, CA.  Over the course of two days several companies, both large and small, were able to display their wares and discuss how “big data” is impacting us.  Some of the key takeaways from the conference, especially for CEOs and executives in start up organizations, are directly related to how big data is driving innovation and on the opportunities available for startups.  The rapid growth of data is driving a core set of new problems that businesses are trying to both understand and cope with:

1. The technology part is growing, but the business value is not keeping up.  One of the interesting takeaways from conversations with a number of attendants was this: while the IT side of the house understands the problem that the rising amount of data is causing, the business side is having a hard time grasping the value that analyzing all this data will provide.  Some small software startups are beginning to try and address this challenge by deploying tools that are easier to use and that bring data analysis “closer” to the business user – but clearly there is still a large gap between IT and the business side.
2. Big data is hard – very hard – and expensive.  Once again a key takeaway from the conference was that solving big data problems is both technically and fiscally challenging.  While Fortune 500 companies are clearly looking for ways to exploit their copious amounts of data, actually doing so still requires an exceedingly high level of expertise and tools that are still costly and difficult to use.
3. The “platform wars” make things harder.  Should a business standardize on Hadoop? HPCC? SAP Hana?  How do available solutions work with any of these platforms?  What are the differences and business implications of each?  Depending on how one answers these questions and on the selections one makes, the available software tools and solutions vary.  The world of big data is not nearly as clearly defined and understood as server operating systems, enterprise ERP systems etc., and that means opportunity for new solutions that help bridge the gaps.

These are just some of the challenges that businesses have today with big data.  The implication for startups is clear, helping business users understand the value of their data and providing tools that make the process of using and benefiting from big data easier, less expensive and more uniform – regardless of platform – can begin to bridge the chasm between IT and the business side to finally realize the benefit of “big data” for everyone.

Enterprise startups are hot and ideas relating to big data will fuel many of them.

SUBMIT YOUR STORY
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Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.

Flickr image credit: Kevin Krejci

My second day here at the Stanford Summit confirmed my initial impressions from the cocktail party last Thursday. I have found that the age trend I noted in my earlier post has strengthened after interacting with a much larger cross section of attendees.

The cocktail party last week was for the AO 250, i.e., the companies selected as the 250 hottest emerging technology companies in the world for 2008.

At the conference I interacted with CEOs and venture capitalists from about 700 companies—a significant number of them with graying hair, confirming my initial impression.

After a day filled with excellent presentations and speakers and then chatting with various participants during the evening reception, I was truly impressed by the savvy and innovative ideas being brought to life by the “old timers.”

One of the most fascinating is Wyndstorm, lead by 54 year Marian Sabety. That very innovative technology companies are founded and led by women is an anomaly. That the woman is mature is even more unusual.

In Wyndstorm’s case, Marian is a long time innovator who has brought to the market a solution to the web advertising crisis.

Understanding that at the present moment only 7% of advertising budgets are spent online, advertising agencies and corporate chieftains are desperately searching for proven solutions that reach core and targeted audiences in an interactive environment.

Wyndstorm’s social frames pull targeted customers from other sites they frequent directly into an interactive, virtual place where the marketer controls the content, reinforcing image, brand and messaging on a one to one, razor targeted basis. Very impressive.

I believe that the graying of the executive suite in startups has everything to do with the need for execution, reliability and monetization in addition to innovation of technology. Companies need people who are not new to the game to succeed in this market.

Younger people may have many ideas, but they lack the experience to execute in a manner that allows ideas to be monetized rapidly in a variety of economic situations and enables the industry to execute from a strategic perspective.

Thinking about it, even the Google guys needed to bring in seasoned executives to grow the company from an idea to industry power player.

KG Charles-Harris is CEO of Emanio and a special contributor to MAPping Company Success.

In attending the AO 250 cocktail party last night, I was struck by something that differed significantly from the first ones I attended after moving to the US and getting involved with Garage Technology Ventures. Guy Kawasaki was a powerful force (he still is), as were the exuberance of youth in driving new technology and investment dollars.

This time around the surroundings were less lavish, as could be expected since we have all learned that spending money is not the same thing as making money. However, a significant difference was also the graying of the participants at the party.

Other than many of the people working at AlwaysOn (the conference co-host), most of the participants were over 35 years of age. Gone were the 22 year old CEOs that were the mainstay of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Now, the CEOs and management teams seemed seasoned and focused on clear drivers of value creation.

Not that I have anything against young CEOs; today they are creating significant value for investors—Facebook is just one example. However, the management teams are different today in that they are very business savvy, rather than having lofty concepts, ideals or delusions about how to create value.

Now, perhaps it is my perspective that has changed.  I’m 10 years older than the last time I participated in events like this and during that time I have been active in the investment banking, entrepreneur and venture capital arena in Europe and the US and consequently have matured slightly. At present, I’m running my fourth startup; Emanio is actually a restart from a European company I co-founded and brought from Scandinavia to the US in 2000.

Along the way I’ve learned a few lessons, especially during the past 5 years during which I not only raised money, but also did acquisitions in a difficult market. Doing this while bootstrapping the company (building it up without any outside investors) has taught me these lessons through considerable pain. Bootstrapping is definitely not for the faint of heart—everything takes longer and is more difficult than when one is well funded—but it does force one to possess a certain discipline.

Having become one myself, it warmed my heart to interact with all these entrepreneurs, as well as with Tony Perkins, Marc Sternberg and the others at AlwaysOn, and sharing in their stories. It was truly inspirational.

Come back for more of KG’s impressions tomorrow.

KG Charles-Harris is CEO of Emanio and a special contributor to MAPping Company Success.

Post from Leadership Turn  Image credit: Liquid Scenarios

I was unable to attend the Stanford Summit this year, so I prevailed on Emanio CEO and M3 Foundation founder KG Charles-Harris to go and share a story or two about the people he met.

From KG:

At the Stanford Summit I met a Lorenzo Carver, who impressed me quite a bit.  He’s 40 years old, plays base and studied music at Berkeley as a film score major.  His working to pay for school was affecting his playing and studies and as a consequence he started a business that did well and sold it after 18 months, then started another one that tanked.

Lorenzo’s entrepreneurial zeal didn’t end and when he returned to school to study finance he put together a leveraged buyout for a company in bankruptcy and used his portion of the profits to pay for graduate school. He ended up with a MS in Accounting, plus and MBA and CPA; all received while he was working.

During those times Arthur Andersen was the premier firm, but after a short stint there Lorenzo wanted to return to his entrepreneurial roots.  His new business was advising entrepreneurs; he wrote more than 200 strategic plans for biotech and software and assisted in raising more than a billion dollars in funding for these companies.

Then came the dotcom collapse, which gave him the seeds for his present company, Liquid Scenarios.  They are now 14 people and self funded, growing from the profits they produce.  The strange thing is that, instead of coming to the conference to seek investors, he came seeking investors as customers. (Liquid Scenarios’ tagline— “Because Time is Money”)

Liquid Scenarios is based on his having developed complex algorithms for calculating funding scenarios, especially for high-growth companies.

Anyone who has spent time calculating scenarios for more than one class of stock realizes the value of this tool for real estate, venture capital, private equity, and private investors.

The problem he solves is one that faces many investors (and entrepreneurs) in disparate industries—how to calculate funding structures that reduce uncertainty.

Previously there has been no simple-to-use software that helps reduce uncertainty for investors, entrepreneurs and creditors in financing situation by enabling modeling of complex scenarios and outcomes.

After reviewing his software, it is clear that it reduces the calculations from dozens of hours and days to just a few minutes.

(Pretty cool! Check out the product demo to really understand why this is so hot. Miki)

The reason I’m excited is because I’ve been on all sides of the table, as a venture capitalist or private equity investor, investment banker and entrepreneur and I know that calculating all this is so tedious and difficult that only experts can do it.

Liquid Scenario’s tool creates equality between the people on different sides of the table and is especially useful to entrepreneurs who may not have the training to work complex spreadsheets.

But what I found most interesting was Lorenzo’s comment on the most important lesson he’s learned as a manager or entrepreneur.

“This startup is the easiest one I’ve done of twelve where half were started by me.  The difference this time is that I’ve been exceedingly careful about the people I work with—I’ve only chosen the ones that are passionate and competent.  There is no B-team this time.”

(For more of KG’s impressions click here.)

Do you “settle” when you hire or do you slog on until you find an A-team member?

Your comments—priceless

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