SWF (Sassy Woman Founder) Seeking Technical Soulmate
escapingthe9to5.com
escapingthe9to5.com
2. While I think many posters here have focused too much on the the job-posting-as-dating-profile approach, the reality is that something like this will send the wrong message to the type of person you want to avoid, and may hurt your credibility with the type of person you want to attract. I don't need to know that you like long walks and are feisty; I do need to know that you have a solid product and a viable business model.
3. The number of experienced developers who will jump at the opportunity to work long hours with a person they don't know in the hopes that their equity in a startup that hasn't been funded will one day be worth something is fairly limited. If you are going to find a person willing to do this, it will probably be somebody you already know, or somebody you meet locally and build a relationship with.
Now that I think about it though, sadly, it might.
I know my technical soul mate is out there somewhere – it’s just a process of kissing enough geeky frogs to get to the geeky prince charming i.e. technical co-founder of my dreams.
Ew. Really? Obviously she can use her hotness to get geek boys to rally to her cause, but ultimately shouldn't it be the strength of her ideas that sells the position?
How is what she's doing (if that's what she's doing) particularly different? Especially considering I bet there's at least a couple founders on here who have occasionally turned on the charm to help reel in female investors.
I wouldn't be offended if a guy had buff arms in a picture or his shirt opened a little & you could see his abs - the picture was meant to represent me (someone my CTO would be spending a lot of time with) and I simply liked it - thought it looked cool w/ the Instagram lens I chose to use.
Again, apologies if it offended you.
That said, if I saw a startup founder posing in any sort of check-out-my-body way in order to convey the culture of the company, I would find it entirely unprofessional. Well unless it was an exercise company I suppose.
A little unsolicited advice from a technical founder on his fourth startup? What I look for in co-founders first and foremost is their ability to execute, not culture. In a small startup, everyone shapes culture. I'm looking for someone who is respectable enough to bring into a VC, looks like they're on top of their game, is fearless, is absolutely passionate about their idea, can convince other people that their idea is great and has some sense of what they're doing.
Good luck with your search!
In particular, I've come to enjoy playing a sad little game called "content creator or attention whore" where I predict what a journalist's website will be like before I actually visit it.
I am very good at this game. It helps to illustrate the difference between people who care about and are knowledgeable in videogames or technology versus those who just want to get their name and voice and face out there and are just using whatever they can get to springboard into having a sit-com on NBC or hosting Entertainment Tonight or something. These are the people who make me feel icky, because either they are misleading the audience and the reader by pretending to give a damn about something that is just part of their path to fame or they have so little faith in the reader that they can't win them over with words.
So, you have your Jeff Gerstmans, Veronica Belmonts, Scobles, Pogues, Sarah Lanes, Ngai Croals, Justin Mcelroys, Ryan Davis. These are people who clearly care about the things they cover and the focus of their sites are their content. Yeah, you might catch a series of goofy candid photos from Scoble now and then, but when you visit their sites, the primary focus is content.
Then you visit the site of some other people who supposedly do the same thing and their sites are just massive walls of devotion to themselves. They're filled not so much with -- you know, content -- as they are with headshots and glamor shots.
The most recent example of this game being played was when I listened to a gaming podcast where someone was a guest that mentioned they have about four shows that they do. Video podcasts, audio podcasts, producing content and so on. I just knew what I was going to find when I went to the website they mentioned. Sure enough, the site had a list of all the shows they do that was dwarfed by the 70% of every page that was consumed by multiple enormous headshots of themselves.
I'm not knowledgeable enough w/ technology - hence why I'm looking to fill that void in my new company.
Glamor shots? Any pictures you see on my site are taken via phone using Instagram - hardly glamorous. I added a picture of myself because that's who the person who fills my position will be working with - ME - not because I'm self-involved.
I've been blogging for over 2 years & have put almost 250 posts out there - whether they are quality or not is for the reader to decide but I'm definitely done my best to put good content out into the world, for no other reason than because I love what I do & I love writing.
Sorry to offend but I guess attention whore is a step up from just plain "whore" so I'll take it :)
Also, I'm not sure why you would take particular note of the "whore" part of the phrase "attention whore". One who seeks attention through deliberately meaningless or provocative tactics. Meaningless seems inaccurate, but provocative is appropriate and clearly intentional. And, again, I'm talking more about the pattern in the industry of attention-whoring rather than your specific instance. You know, like someone who has a hundred thousand twitter followers and the first thing you find on google when searching on the name of these "journalists" are bikini photoshoots for men's magazines.
But I'm still not getting the need for cleavage.
I knew it. My dreams of hacking with a beautiful girl have once again been dashed on the rocks of virtual reality.
//After reading actual article.
Why was I right? :(
Keep up the good work! I'm sure that despite the odd comments here you'll find someone to help :)
You seem to have passion, and that means a lot; but, I fear you might attract some talent that might cause trouble down the road using, what I would call, somewhat provocative methods to attract talent. IMHO, dress conservatively.
That's two parties in hard to reach timezones who are more senior and have some influence on the tech? I wouldn't touch that with a bargepole unless I get some written agreement that I would be given free reign to fix this if it becomes a problem (which it most likely will).
We're bringing in a designer in S.F. but for now - since we're bootstrapped I have outsourced the design to a team in Moldova - this is just a temporary thing and I do agree, it would be a problem if it was permanent
Also, it sounds like you're at risk of getting too hung up on the old-fashioned way of strictly splitting design and code (recommended reading: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1061-why-we-skip-photoshop).
The other thing that I note is that the founder wants everyone to read Atlas Shrugged. I'd take that seriously, don't apply unless you're comfortable with that brand of politics.
This is going to be my future job ad: You recognise the importance of a fit body and mind. You work out. While at work, the words "Facebook" "Kongregate" "Hackernews" sound like jibberish to you. 'Being right' just means 'delivered a successful product' to you.
I think 8 like a normal job is great, if someone gets excited about a project & wants to work late w/ me I'd enjoy it - that's the only point I was trying to make.
"Let’s face it, only a fraction of your day is spent on the tasks and projects that directly effect your bottom line." - http://zirtual.com/how-it-works
It should be "affect". Personally, I'm looking for a C3PO (Chief Proofreading, Pudding and Panties Officer) because I like for my people to multitask.
I remember an interview, from long ago, with Peter Sellers, who played Chief Inspector Clouseau in "The Pink Panther" film series. He said something to the effect (<--!!!) that he didn't wait around for jobs in Hollywood to become available. Instead, he created situations out of which roles tailor-made for him would come into existence. In other words, he did what it took to make jobs for which he was the best choice. From that, I now have the philosophy of "One Job, One Applicant".