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- Esports Organization: A Different Kind of Startup?
- A source for comparable valuations
- Devops/Linux sysadmin with 2+ years professional experience, looking for a chance to work for a ATX based startup for stock
- How to incentivize hair salons to help me with regularly uploading data?
- How to get the best experience out of a startup?
- Having the first meeting for potential M&A deal with an acquirer
- Designing a Hiring Pipeline at a Startup
- Keeping costs low- at what expense?
| Posted: 29 Mar 2018 07:56 AM PDT |
| Esports Organization: A Different Kind of Startup? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 10:40 PM PDT Hello all! I am currently on the path to finishing my bachelors degree in business administration, and I'm also on the path to starting an esports organization. A lot of what I've learned, both through my degree and through business subreddits and websites can be applied to an esports organization, however the startup process is a little different. One key issue is around financing it, as the esports industry, while growing oh-so-rapidly, is a bit of a grey area in business where investors take more risk than usual - and without a clear product other than a brand and some hope, most don't take that risk. I'm wondering if there are any decent resources out there in terms of the start up process for an esports organization, perhaps learned through mistake or success. I'm also open to any resources you guys may have on general startups that may benefit an esports organization. Thanks in advance! [link] [comments]  |
| A source for comparable valuations Posted: 30 Mar 2018 01:09 AM PDT I have been asked to put together an investor package (shame on me for not having one already), and a template was suggested by the person asking. One of the sections I am struggling with finding comparables for valuations for companies in similar stages.
Thanks. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Mar 2018 12:36 AM PDT A few things about me. First of all my name is Paul, I'm a 28 year old guy who lives in north Austin Texas. I can send you my full resume if you want, but the bulk of it is:
Here's what I'm looking for out of you:
A few other details: I know the legalities to actually set up the paid in stock thing can be a pain. So you don't need to sort out that sort of compensation until we're a few months into things. I'll want stock backpay for the months which I was working though. If you're interested you can contact me here, or also call or text me on my phone. [link] [comments]  |
| How to incentivize hair salons to help me with regularly uploading data? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 08:42 PM PDT I'm a high school senior with a diet of ramen noodles and vienna sausages, and it's been hard executing my idea. Essentially, I'm trying to convince as many hair salons as possible to share me certain data periodically. It's not really private or anything, but I have nothing to offer them in return for their service. I have found that some stylists are willing to help me out because they like the mission, but I can tell some stylists aren't interested and do not take me as seriously because of my age and childish appearance. I realize that there needs to be an exchange of services from my end. Any advice on how to keep my current helpers interested or convincing new ones to join would be appreciated. In order for my venture to succeed, I need a massive amount of data, so it's crucial that I grab as many people as possible. [link] [comments]  |
| How to get the best experience out of a startup? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 10:10 AM PDT I am a 26 year old that is fortunate enough to have landed a founder type role at a funded medical software startup with a serial entrepreneur as our CEO. On a team of 4, I have found myself being involved with every aspect of the company while being given responsibilities and projects I have no experience in (everything but actual coding). While I have been doing a good job, most of how I manage various projects is what I have learned from my boss, or my instincts. I am nervous that I may be a jack of all trades and a master of none- especially since we do what works, and don't conform to particular processes that one would find at a larger corporate organization. Because we are expanding the team, my boss asked what I would like to double down on. I was hoping that others here could offer their advice on how to make this startup the best experience for career, regardless of the outcome. Cheers! [link] [comments]  |
| Having the first meeting for potential M&A deal with an acquirer Posted: 29 Mar 2018 07:18 AM PDT Hello, We (founders) are having our first meeting with an acquirer for a potential M&A deal. We have no prior knowledge in this and would love to get some advice from this sub. What's the dos and don'ts? Should I be giving them too much information? Any websites or pages to read about this would be really appreciated. I plan to do the following - brief talk about our company, our business - our team - potential opportunities - brief description of our proprietary tech and operation - why they should be interested in us? How should I go about this meeting without sounding so desperate for a deal? Thank you so much. [link] [comments]  |
| Designing a Hiring Pipeline at a Startup Posted: 29 Mar 2018 12:57 PM PDT When hiring for an engineering position, most people would turn to the Internet to get up to date on the latest best practices. Most of the guidelines and advice on the Internet comes from large companies, so their advice is aimed at similarly large organizations. For example, the hiring process at a big-name software company might be a full day of five or six whiteboard coding interviews with a lunch break in the middle. Afterwards, the hiring committee would meet to vote on whether the candidate passed the hiring bar. In the case of a startup with fewer than 15 employees total, some of whom are non-technical folks, this hiring process does not work. We simply don't have enough engineers to do all-day interviews. Even if we did, engineers would spend a disproportionate amount of time interviewing and not working on our technical tasks. So, what can we do? How do we design a pipeline to spend the least amount of time interviewing? How do we write questions that can give us the clearest picture of the candidate? How do we enable the candidate to reveal enough about their skills that we can accurately imagine what it would be like to work with them? I was recently tasked with designing the hiring process for NLP Engineer at Agolo, my place of work. I set out to find the latest and greatest ideas in hiring practices to design a process that is fair, effective, and efficient. After some research, I came up with the following guidelines. General principlesThe interviews should only cover what the candidate will directly apply in the role if they are hired. For instance, we should not use logic puzzles as a proxy to measure problem-solving abilities. For more details, please see this interview with Laszlo Bock, an SVP at Google. The interviews should allow the candidate to reveal a breadth of knowledge and an understanding of deeper nuances. The candidate will need to have technical and non-technical skills regardless of how technical the role is. We distilled these principles down to three types of questions: breadth questions, depth questions, and non-technical questions. Let's take a look at each one. Breadth questionsBreadth questions, ideally, should be short but numerous. By testing breadth, we are trying to ensure that the candidate has no glaring holes in knowledge. Even though the candidate may not be an expert in everything, they should be able to contribute at a basic level to solving problems in multiple related areas. We took inspiration from this classic Steve Yegge blog post. From that post: Please understand: what I'm looking for here is a total vacuum in one of these areas. It's OK if they struggle a little and then figure it out. It's OK if they need some minor hints or prompting. I don't mind if they're rusty or slow. What you're looking for is candidates who are utterly clueless, or horribly confused, about the area in question. Depending on the role, we may not want to test the specific areas that Yegge outlines in his post. However, the idea behind the Breadth questions is the same — we are asking ourselves, "will this candidate be completely lost if presented with a problem slightly outside of their specialization?" For example, for our research scientist roles, we want candidates who can code quickly as well as think on their feet to solve research problems. So, we would give them several 5-minute coding problems and a few 5-minute research problems to discuss. We would write these questions by simplifying real-world problems we have solved in the past. The goal is to cover as many areas as possible with these questions. We want to see how the candidate approaches these problems, gauge their level of comfort with each topic, and test their instincts. We can learn a surprising amount about a candidate's abilities by looking at their initial response to a problem. Depth questionsTesting for depth of knowledge is tricky because we only have a limited amount of time to talk to the candidate. The best ways to test whether the candidate has depth of knowledge are:
If the candidate can solve a complicated real-world problem in a short period of time while explaining it, then even better. Our depth questions are designed to mimic as faithfully as possible the real problems the candidate would solve day-to-day if hired. The candidate for the NLP Engineer role would not only plan, scope, and execute experiments end-to-end, but also work on wrangling noisy data, presenting results, and productizing the system by working alongside software engineers. We want to test whether the candidate is adept at all parts of the plan-execute-refine cycle of bringing an experimental approach to production. When solving these real-world questions, the interviewer tries to imagine what it would be like to work with the candidate every day. By removing the pretenses of interviewing as much as possible, the interviewer can get valuable insights. We need to see: the way the candidate approaches a problem, how well they can design experiments and estimate the time and effort needed, and whether the candidate can anticipate multiple outcomes at each step of the plan. Each of our depth questions may take 20 minutes to solve. They allow us to keep digging deeper to simulate the process of working on a project, start to finish. They also simulate a real brainstorming and project-planning meeting that the candidate would lead if they were hired. These deep-dive questions allow the interviewer to more accurately imagine what it would be like to work with this candidate on complicated projects. Non-technical questionsRegardless of how technical the position, nobody at a startup works in a vacuum. The interview process should test as deeply as possible the ability of the candidate to accomplish the following: discuss deeply technical concepts in semi-technical language collaborate within a team comprised of members of varying technical skills, staying level-headed to work through conflicting opinions speak thoughtfully about a wide-ranging set of topics, including the societal impact of the industry demonstrate an ability to objectively analyze their own strengths and limitations We have found that the best way to test these skills is to isolate some non-technical questions into its own interview. For this interview, we use interviewers who aren't fully familiar with the concepts within the candidate's expertise. In a small startup, the candidate would be working closely with team members of varying backgrounds, so it's crucial that we see how well they can adapt their communication style. These are some other guidelines that we have found useful in designing our pipeline: Kindness and empathyWe should support the candidate and enable them to succeed as much as possible. The candidate and the interviewer are on the same team because they both want the position to be filled by someone who is a good fit. Furthermore, the interviewer is representing the company, and the candidate should walk away with a good feeling about the company regardless of how well they did in the interview. Kindness is key. InclusivityThose who are designing the interviews should put effort into making the process as inclusive as possible. By neglecting inclusivity, we are unconsciously eliminating entire groups of people from being able to pass our interviews, even though many qualified individuals in those groups may be a good fit for the role. This is bad for the company and bad for those who are often excluded. These are some articles and blog posts that I found useful to get me started thinking about this: 1, 2, 3. Take-home interviewsTake-home tests are unfair to the candidate unless we pay them for the work. The issues surrounding take-home tests are covered in this op-ed. Non-verbal communicationWe should try to meet with the candidate in person as much as possible. If that's not possible, we should video chat with them. Non-verbal communication is a large part of collaboration. If we only use phone calls, we eliminate entire channels of communication like gestures and eye contact, which makes it more difficult for both the candidate and the interviewer. Interview lengthsThe interviews earlier in the pipeline should be shorter than ones that come later. This way, we can more quickly filter out candidates who are not a good fit for the role without too much time invested in the process. Ideally, we would do a quick phone chat early in the process to gauge how well the candidate would do in the rest of the interviews. Closing thoughtsThe overarching philosophy of designing this pipeline, for me, was to start with the actual role and work backwards. I started by asking, "one year from now, what kind of person would we consider a successful hire for this role?" Then, I tried to design a pipeline that this person would pass with flying colors, while most others would at least show some red flags. By keeping the questions as close to the real problems as possible, we are removing possibilities that the questions are a poor selector of candidates. It's challenging to talk about an interview pipeline I designed without giving away too many details about the actual questions and topics we cover. However, I hope that by talking openly about the ideas that informed my decisions about the pipeline, it helps others in the startup community to design effective and empathetic interview pipelines for whatever role they need. Originally published at premgkumar.com on March 25, 2018. (for working links): http://premgkumar.com/startups/hiring/2018/03/25/designing-a-hiring-pipeline/ [link] [comments]  |
| Keeping costs low- at what expense? Posted: 29 Mar 2018 03:49 AM PDT Hey guys! So I'm starting up a specialty coffee roasting business and I'm currently making a decision on the "where" of my initial startup. My father in law has a large piece of land with an extra large garage/apartment on it and he has opened it up to me at the cost of only my utilities/initial investments into it. He says I can do whatever I want to it/with it. It's actually great. It's so beautiful and picturesque and would be a wonderful place to call your 'office' everyday. The main problem is that it's an hour from the city center out in the country. It's 20 min from my house which is fine, but for the forthcoming days of delivering to cafes, markets etc, I'm nervous about being that far away. But then again, keeping costs minimal while getting this business of the ground is crucial... So from you who have been through the back and forth debate of choosing locations, please chime in! Cheers P.S. one trivial perk is that the land is where he keeps his 25 classic cars, so I would have the unique ability to ooh and ahh at those everyday haha [link] [comments]  |
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