Wow, can't believe all the negative talk, perhaps I read it in a different tone, but the story delivers what the headline says, unless you want to be really critical on the word hack. If you are persistent and prove yourself, you can go anywhere. It didn't sound to me like they treated him like crap, yeah sure they told him No, they brushed him off, and they did what any other person running a start up or even what any other HR person would do. If a guy continues to practically stalk you, you either ignore him or are forced to deal with him, and when you are 'awkwarded' into a situation or you see someone trying hard, what are you gonna do, tell him to fuck off or throw him a bone? Dude kept coming back and incrementally proving himself, asking for what he could do, and what do you say? "Sorry you'll never be good enough?", you don't know that, you just know he is currently right for that role, but he still might be able to prove he's a valuable person to hire. The stories of 7-year over night successes are because of persistence, dude had that and those are the people you want along with you on the ride.
How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
61–70 of 81 posts
Re: How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
#62Re: How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
#63Is this the end of the current startup era? How did we get from "Make stuff people want" to the current obsession with funding, SEO and "Growth Hackers" (!). This sounds like the same sort of nonsense I was reading in January 2000. Just like the 90's tech boom, the community has become inward-looking, stale, and it's feeding on itself (c.f. this article, which isn't about how to start a company but to be hired by a "…
I'd agree that while I really dont have a full picture of the economics of the current startup atmosphere (does anyone?), the culture right now is a pretty strong indicator to me that things are going to stagnate or trend down. IMHO there is a pretty toxic layer of culture that has built up from all the hype that for the most part is adding negative value. I dont really give a crap if people think it fits their defin…
I agree with many of the points being made but I don't believe that we're actually in a bubble. Speaking to serial founders and investors it's actually a much tougher time to raise money right now than six months ago. There was no pop, just a decrease in the market. In fact overall venture capital investments didn't rise significantly over the supposed 2010 - 2011 bubble. It also costs less today so it's tough to compare with the millions being raised by most startups in 1999. Which leads one to believe that many are talking but few are executing on this talk.
If you actually want to build something valuable for the long term. Now is the perfect time to start a company. If you want to raise a seed round and sell fast then you're probably too late or will be shortly.
Re: How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK. Now I'm curious. What would be the sort of things you would try to corner me into?
I am fond of design questions, both on the receiving and asking end. I drill down until you take a branch that I would distinctly choose not to. Then I press you for reasons. E.g., why would you write your web app in C++? edit: Note that someone who is genuinely very close to me in opinions won't challenge me in ways that really produce a useful diversity of opinion. They would, however, likely agree with my sense of…
Haha! I had a great interview recently where we sketched out a design for an online game on the whiteboard. Got to explore lots of interesting questions like API versioning, REST vs sessions, and basic security problems. The good natured discussion of the various options was a big part of why I decided to join the company.
Re: How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
#65Is this the end of the current startup era? How did we get from "Make stuff people want" to the current obsession with funding, SEO and "Growth Hackers" (!). This sounds like the same sort of nonsense I was reading in January 2000. Just like the 90's tech boom, the community has become inward-looking, stale, and it's feeding on itself (c.f. this article, which isn't about how to start a company but to be hired by a "…
Michael was speaking at the KWB2B Marketers Meet Up I hopped in my dad’s car and drove to Waterloo. Do founders usually prefer hiring someone who stalks them? Even if they quote: "lacked any and all experience we were looking for." Don't get me wrong, I think what Amar did shows a lot of hustle, and his case on them showed that he was willing to learn and is passionate. But still, I think ajross hit the nail on the e…
>Do founders usually prefer hiring someone who stalks them? Even if they quote: "lacked any and all experience we were looking for."
I imagine it's an ego thing. First-time founders are probably just pretty excited that someone's noticing what they're doing.
Re: How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
#66this article was terribad internet 2.0 stuffed shirt middle management corporate hot garbage.
i wiped my ass with everything that ceo had to say. join our moustache hipster 'hot startup', it'll take you 9 interviews but we're worth it. really? it's 2012 how about f you and your viral marketing video cloud service startup. you are parasites upon humanity making video spam and viewing metrics stats for car companies, penis pills and gambling. just admit you are shameless hucksters that are one peg above a spammer, ditch the synergies and ridiculous pretense.
if this guy enjoys the starbucks latte macfag synergies promoting corporate work environment that's great but this isn't 'hacking' this is pleading and begging to get a shitty job in yet another corporation that's just pretending to be super kawaii cool and awesome but when it comes down to it they'll lay this guy off in a heartbeat, sell the company to some megacorp and screw every employee royally. all startups do this. the guy who owns it buys back all your shares before he lays you off as a favour then keeps the money and sells out faster than Jay Leno in front of a bowl full of Doritos.
I bet they do excrement inducing "team building exercizes" at this way super coo startup. No matter what hipster clothes and mac products you put in front of the CEO he's Bill Lumberg from Office Space demanding TPS reports.
Finally the worst of this entire article was the buzzword 'growth hacker' which is newspeak for a spammer. Look at the definition article they link, some guy who basically manipulates CL ads to punt his junk, a marketer with coding experience, in other words, a fcking spammer. Protip: all of India and Pakistan are chock full of marketers who can code. This is not a revolutionary concept.
I would've shown up and given this guy a USB drive with 3 OSx exploits on it to corrupt client side memory and my "resume", then sold myself to him in person using balls not limp social media or stalking around linkedin and twitter. If they didn't hire me I'd have their source code to sell on blackhat SEO forums anyways so who cares.
Re: How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
#67Is this the end of the current startup era? How did we get from "Make stuff people want" to the current obsession with funding, SEO and "Growth Hackers" (!). This sounds like the same sort of nonsense I was reading in January 2000. Just like the 90's tech boom, the community has become inward-looking, stale, and it's feeding on itself (c.f. this article, which isn't about how to start a company but to be hired by a "…
Michael was speaking at the KWB2B Marketers Meet Up I hopped in my dad’s car and drove to Waterloo. Do founders usually prefer hiring someone who stalks them? Even if they quote: "lacked any and all experience we were looking for." Don't get me wrong, I think what Amar did shows a lot of hustle, and his case on them showed that he was willing to learn and is passionate. But still, I think ajross hit the nail on the e…
While I agree that the end is near, I don't think Pintrest will be the harbinger of the fall. I actually think that they are going to rake in money on the scale of Google. They have intent (from the pins) and targeted advertising, and Google have proved that the model works. Additionally, Pintrest is about stuff, and if you think something is cool and want to do it yourself, you're far more likely to actually click and convert.
Personally, I think the end will come when the free money the Fed are handing out at the moment stops, and not a moment before.
Re: How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
#68Wow, some really big mistakes... Explains why it took 5 months to get the final interview. >but I will put in 12 hours a day, 7 days a week until I get there. >Vidyard being one of them, even if I work for free. >I'm even willing to work for free for a period of time. Never, ever, ever do this stuff - Free If you say you're willing to work for free, that tells me one thing: You think your work is of no value to me. A…
>I'm even willing to work for free for a period of time.
I've done that. For a week, after that I pretty much could dictate terms. It's a lot harder to argue someone isn't worth what they're asking for as long as you haven't seen them work or worked with them. And one of my terms was that if they kept me on after the week they had to pay for the week as well.
Giving free samples works very well for drugs, it works just as well if you're good at what you do but are not so good in communicating that as you are in showing it.
There is nothing desperate about it, just limit your exposure by limiting the time you'll do that and if you're as good as you think you are you even get the risk paid off.
Re: How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 4 whole months? I didn't state 4 full months. It was however something that I spent my free time researching over the course of 4 months. I also did a lot of other things though :) >Read about the Dunning-Kruger effect and avoid coming off as overconfident at all costs, when interviewing young developers/technical people that is a giant red flag in my experience. Don't worry, when doing interviews a bigger risk for…
This is clearly in the fuzzy definition area since your argument is that you have gained enough experience in this area to give subjective life advice, the argument against simply has to involve a judgment of your level of experience. In the same way that I can't meaningfully ask "am I attractive enough to professionally model?" and respond to every "No" with "ad hominem!", when you bring your person into the argumen…
>your argument is that you have gained enough experience in this area to give subjective life advice
Nowhere do I use my "authority" to try and support any of my statements. I give a list of what I thought are his mistakes and then I go off into giving some advice (the snippet) based on my own (successful) experience doing phone screens.
> In my experience if you also use that confidence and directness to preemptively address potential weaknesses in your argument
I think that is very sound advice. But one my motivating factors is to stir up a conversation. If I leave some of the thorns on, I tend to get more replies as people inevitably find themselves caught up in them and feeling the need to reply :)
Re: How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think you can make such a broad claim. I've been working at startups for a few years and I don't lack job offers, but they come mostly from my past experience and industry ties. I've "launched" (as in created) two small web apps in the last 6 months and even though one has a few hundred users I still only got a 15$ donation and some interesting conversations, but no job offers. Not to mention I have tens of g…
It depends on what you launch and where you get exposure. Obviously whatever you launch is going to have to get exposure with the people you are interested in getting interviews/offers from. But most of my Random Offers (tm) have included some variation of "So I've been reading your blog" or "So I liked that cool thing X you had on HN frontpage last week" To the point that one such Thing X was mentioned by half the p…
That is indeed some of my point - exposure is what you really need, not launching. I can launch stuff all day and never get on the front page of anything. I think it's important to be accurate about the real causes and in this case it is not "launching" but marketing and exposure (which are important skills to have).