Hey this is ian hogarth. I first presented a version of this essay at an event at a place called Ditchley which had brought together various ML researchers and politicians from North America and Europe to discuss this topic. One of the things that really struck me was the similarity between the U.K. and Canada in terms of their depth of academic talent around ML but the paucity of independent “domestic champions”.
thanks! the biggest thing that will change for you as a Songkick user is that you'll now start seeing a lot more presale inventory directly from artists inside the Songkick app.
I agree with that. I think from a titles point of view it's also worth noting that BD roles at start-ups is 99% about selling, whereas BD at big companies is often more about being a filter for things that a PM might want to 'buy', and shielding them from what they don't. That's part of the reason that the most badass start-up BD people don't come from big company biz dev teams.
i thought it was worth a try. one thing i realised when i made a list of people who really fitted this description is that in most cases they came inbound vs being recruited. as a result i've been prepping a series of posts on distribution/partnerships to see if I can get the attention of the white whale.
I'm a developer by training and I always felt the same way about the term hustler. I think people who self-describe as hustlers are often not what I describe in this post. I just couldn't think of a better descriptor.
I'm with you on this. I'm not a fan of any sort of salary bonus scheme. I hope if we ever hire a sales team we can avoid doing that. We have so far. I'd prefer to make your nX factor something that you prove to the rest of the team and that is rewarded by increased equity. Doesn't matter whether you're an amazing developer, member of our customer support team, doing hiring, or working on partnerships. What matters is that you're hacking the status quo for your role in a big company and helping us be more exceptional.
That's a good point. I'd be curious to learn what the variance across the average corporate sales team is.
I think there are basically 2 forms of distribution at start-ups that multiply together. The distinguishing factor seems to be whether relationships can make a real difference ie talking to people (partnerhips, PR etc) or are not needed (growth hacking). There is a ton of interplay e.g. you could do all sorts of smart stuff to hack a big social platform, but propriety early access to new platform features via a great relationship with one of the platform team will give you a differentiated toolbox.
For the first type of distribution a great salesperson who is also highly intuitive about product, growth hacking, scalable systems etc, can have even more impact than if they are just selling as part of a traditional sales team.
I'm not looking for a machine to summarise text for me. I'm looking for a human to help me become a better writer. Have you seen any examples of the latter?
Sean - thanks very much for stepping in and for the suggestions. We can send some people along to the careers fair today but have also fliered over the college. In general Imperial Careers have not been very responsive so perhaps there's a CS focused liaison we should be talking to instead? Thanks
We are, and have contacted a large number of list moderators for careers/CS/entrepreneurship etc. I'll double check if we have reached out to that one. Thanks
Great feedback, thanks. I think some kind of on campus event is the next step and I love the idea of making it about product demos not standard booths.
I'd be curious to hear how you found the last event? Our goal was that all the start-up booths would be staffed by developers at the start-ups, so you'd be able to find out what the culture and experience of their start-up was like, directly. Did that happen? Sounds like it was much like a typical recruitment fair for you, which is a failure on our part.
For this event, all the start-ups are London based, but there's no reason this couldn't be replicated nicely at Nottingham and other emerging UK start-up hubs
I think many of the current registrants (of which there are thousands) are people who are 1-5 years into their career post uni and are realising they maybe went in the wrong direction by joining a bank/microsoft etc. So we're actually doing a good job of reaching that community.
I really like the idea of using alumni as an awareness vector.
what could we do in the next 3 days to really crank up awareness at UCL? We have posters, fliers and can send someone from Songkick or another start-up down to speak about the event and the start-ups that will be represented. Thanks!
I think we'll start looking into it. Should be possible. Maybe create a rota scheme where a couple of founders staff each table which would allow us to hit hundreds of milkround events over a year.
These are all great points. On a) perhaps we need to use the milkroundabout brand to start sponsoring stuff during the year, similar to how the larger corporations do. On d) I totally agree with that. My main hack around that has been to try to have dinner with the parents/partners of those joining us to try to get them to buy into the opportunity and people behind the start-ups as well. That's also one area where in the UK, having brand name investors like YC and Index behind you really helps.
Paid summer internships is a smart point. Many of the companies exhibiting at the event are keen to having summer tech interns, and perhaps if we packaged that up better we'd get more engagement from university tutors. Maybe we should create a listing of all the summer internships available as well. Thanks for a helpful idea.
We've reached out to a ton of university career services and CS & engineering departments. Some have been very helpful, for example the team at Queen Mary have been amazing and probably 50% of their CS students are coming down. But many of the others have been a lot less engaged and willing to promote to their student body, vs the tried and tested options of banks & consultancies.
Do you think we should take the siliconmilkroundabout on tour? I'm wondering if part of the issue is that we don't have our own stall alongside the usual suspects you name.
We have set up a twitter about the event, and would love if you could help retweet it to your coursemates. It's here: http://twitter.com/#!/milkroundabout
Which university are you currently studying at, and outside of twitter, what would have been the best way to help make you and your classmates aware of the event?
I think that's somewhat mitigated as the UK develops a few more household name brand start-ups like Moshi Monsters and Shazam but I agree it's an issue.
I think the key point we need to make there is that as a developer you want to go wherever you'll learn the most, and start-ups credibly offer that - both by exposure to the broader aspects of building a successful business and also by density of talent.
That was my experience too. I studied machine learning at Cambridge and didn't know a single person from my class or years above me doing anything other than a phd, joining microsoft research (who were aggressively for computer vision grads then) or joining a completely different field like management consultancy or banking. Looking back I would have loved to join Skype or Last.fm then, but had no idea that they were hiring for people like me.