Twitter/Evan Williams is hiring a "Founder Associate"

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About Us

Twitter is defining a new form of communication that is touching people's lives across the world. We are small but well-funded and building a company to last. We are currently a team of 25 and looking for a few key people who will help take us to the next level.

About this Job

This is a unique opportunity for an ambitious, multi-talented individual who wants to see the inside of a fast-moving startup and work closely with the founders. The ideal candidate is a future entrepreneur or executive who is willing to work hard and do a wide variety of non-glamorous tasks for a year or two in order to get their foot in the door, learn, and make connections. You will work directly with Twitter CEO Evan Williams and co-founder Biz Stone with the simple goal of saving them time. Which means: The level of work you'll do is only limited by your capabilities. Are you capable of: Designing a presentation? Researching a market? Creating a financial model? Great, as long as you're also willing to make copies and run errands. Essentially, you should be overqualified to be an assistant, but not have a problem doing assistant-like tasks. In exchange, you'll get unique visibility into a unique company, a great learning experience, and the chance to move on to do many other things (in Twitter, or elsewhere—with a strong endorsement).

Requirements

* Excellent written communication skills

* Strong computer skills (spreadsheets, word processing, presentations, email)

* Highly organized and efficient

* People person with tact and diplomatic instincts

* Track record of trying things

* Extreme trustworthiness

* Strong interest in business and, particularly, technology startups

* Broad knowledge of the Internet industry

About working at Twitter

Twitter offers competitive salaries and full benefits, including health, dental, vacation, 401k, and stock options. We work in a bright, sunny office in San Francisco. And you'll be joining a unique group of experienced folks who are doing their best work to create something great.

The position is full-time and is based in San Francisco and will report to the CEO.

The mention of making a financial model cracked me up.

"... Essentially, you should be overqualified to be an assistant, but not have a problem doing assistant-like tasks ..."

Startup founder qualities.

"... People person with tact and diplomatic instincts ..."

Qualities not usually found in hackers.

I would be interest in what kind of applicants you get for this kind of ad, especially from your posting HN (assuming evn=twitter.com/ev). Seems like a nice chance to work with senior people, but it seems like it would be a rare hacker who doesn't mind running errands and fetching coffee.

I hope jobshare tracks referrer URLs so you can see where applicants are finding the ad.

I think twitter isn't looking for an admin assistant but a really smart would-be entrepreneur with most of the capabilities that the founders posses but at a lower level. Hence ready to do some leg work or dont-know-value-add-yet work which the founders aren't sure of spending their time. This is a great opportunity to tune ones self, better than joining twitter as a developer, marketer or anything else.

The most you get out of any job depends on whom you work with and how much you extend your profile. 1. What better than direct interactions with the founders. I can imagine one stopping to read all these pep material around startups as you a have a real people telling you their tales first hand on and off. 2. This can very well be what Marissa Meyer did for the Google founders to save their time.

Unfortunately I am in India!

Well, I'm 18 and I'm interested in tech startups... this seems like it could be a great way to get my foot in the door and get to a place where I can meet people I could found my own company with. I also feel like I have every quality listed there... so I'm updating my resume tonight.

There's a separate Office Manager. This isn't quite like that, and the benefits are better than doing YC. ;-)

No, I'm another Evan.

>This isn't quite like that, and the benefits are better than doing YC. ;-)

The revenue models are similar, however. ;P

I don't understand why they have advertised this position given the network of people they know, talent they already have access to, and lists of exceptional that must be referred or apply all the time.

I hope they find that hidden rough diamond. It will be very interesting to see the person that is taken on this position and how they fare.

That sounds absolutely miserable. These kinds of opportunities can not be forced.

The candidate who seeks this role is the wrong candidate to hire, in my experience.

Would't the experience of actually founding a start-up be a more valuable way to spend two years then working as an intern/executive assistant in a successful one?

Think of it more as an investment of time, in preparation of founding your own start-up. Accelerated networking, powerful names associated with you, etc.

It's not bullet-proof, but there are worse ways to prepare yourself and your reputation for launching a new venture.

the real evan williams: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=evhead

Did they just not remove the creator of Twitter .. possibly get rid of him?

Maybe this is a coy way to bring him back on?

I think they switched jobs, ev become CEO and the other guy became chairman. I guess neither of them is good at fetching coffee.

Seems like an internship, only full-time.

On another note, Twitter makes financial models??

More like "Founder's Bitch"?

Seriously though, what a euphemistic job title.

Andy Grove's executive assistants often became Intel executives.

the plus side is that you get your foot in the door; the minus side is that it sucks, you won't have any autonomy or creativity, and if twitter never really makes anything happen you are really, really fucked.

that being said, i have a strong intuition that twitter will succeed and this would be a great way to get some equity. but at employee count=25...

Even if twitter fails, you will still have a a network of people/friends/contacts and experience that will be invaluable to you.

Even at employee #25+, given a significant rise in twitters value, you will still do well (e.g. the first employees at other services such as Amazon/Ebay/Paypal/other, which engaged in alternate or disruptive technology in thier time, did very well).

Beside all that, it is much more fun to do things that can fail and walk a differnt path.