David Teten's blog

Best Job Boards for Recruiting Startup Engineers

David — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:39:21 +0000

One of our portfolio companies asked me this week, �Do you all have a list of job boards your portfolio companies have had great success with in recruiting high quality engineers?�

The unemployment rate for quality computer scientists/engineers in the major cities right now is zero; everyone who�s not pursuing his/her own startup can easily get a good job.� Therefore, the best candidates are rarely perusing job boards.� Part of the genius and success of LinkedIn is it�s by far the best tool for soliciting passive jobseekers, i.e., those who are currently employed.

I�m a firm believer that the best way to recruit great talent is to make yourself a magnet for people to come to you, instead of the other way around.� In a Dreamit talk I gave on recruiting star engineers, embedded below, I discuss a host of ways to do this.� In a HBS Angels panel I spoke at last week, Chris Fralic of First Round Capital quoted Chad Dickerson of Etsy on this topic. Speaking at a First Round-organized event, Chad said Etsy requires 100% of their engineers to be active in the technical community: give talks, blog, etc.� As a result, they�ve had no problem attracting great talent to Brooklyn.

That said, while largely cumbersome and cluttered with spam, job boards still accounted for nearly 25% of hiring in 2010.� Nathan Hurst made a useful comparison of tech job boards based on cost/post, headhunter/confidential posts, company size, and word frequency. �Accolo uses its database of thousands of placements to identify the most effective job boards for its clients (Disclosure: I'm an Advisor). Social Recruiting Report ranks the top tech job boards by Google Page Rank. �Smashing magazine and Sociable Blog have lists of IT/Tech job boards, but don't do a detailed comparison�.� ��Engineering Recruiting promises to put you in touch with the appropriate engineer recruiter, but I'm a bit skeptical of how effective or worthwhile a service like that is, given the conflicts of interest.

What do you find are the most effective recruiting job boards?

Recruiting Star Entrepreneurs (Download presentation.)

Thanks to Joan Xie for research help.

Links for 2012-01-18 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

Startup Financial Forecast Model #OfficeandGuyK

Founder Institute Startup Fundraising Hacks

David — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:56:01 +0000

The Founder Institute recently posted a video from a talk I gave a little while ago on Startup Fundraising Hacks. Although my focus in this talk is raising capital, the ideas and technologies I discuss will also help you in recruiting star developers, sales, and even dating. The talk is dated in one respect: at the time I gave it, AngelList hadn't yet hit the level of visibility that it does today, so I didn't discuss it at all.

How to Raise Capital for Your Startup with Social Media

Flashpoint Demo Day, January 18, at Union Square Ventures

David — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 16:42:31 +0000

ff Venture Capital and�HBS Angels of New York are happy to be co-sponsors of Flashpoint's upcoming New York Demo Day, Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 2:30 PM to 6:00 PM, held at�Union Square Ventures. �Flashpoint is a startup accelerator program at Georgia Tech. Some of their portfolio companies look very promising. The current crop includes:

I hope to see you there! RSVP

MIT Enterprise Forum of NY: Digital Commerce Startups

David — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 23:30:23 +0000

I'm one of the judges for an MIT Enterprise Forum of NYC�Pitch event on January 31 focused on Digital Commerce companies:

Panel Speakers:
-�Eric Nordlander, Engineering Partner @ Google Ventures
-�David Teten, Partner @ ff Venture Capital
-�Albert Wenger, Partner @ Union Square Ventures
-�Sim Blaustein, Venture Investor

Participating Companies:
-�Agnik - data analytics company for distributed, mobile, and embedded environments
-�Echoer - finalist at the Le Web competition
-�Moviecom.tv - Red Herring Global 2011 Winner
-�Megawatt Hour - decision-making platform for energy purchasing
-�WishMash - The social wishlist platform

Panel Moderator:
-�Lori Hoberman, Partner,�Chadbourne & Parke LLP

DATE:�Tuesday, January 31, 2012

AGENDA:
5:30pm - 6:00pm: Reception
6:00pm - 7:30pm: Business Plan Presentations
7:30pm - 8:30pm: Networking

PLACE:
Chadbourne & Parke LLP -�Directions
30 Rockefeller Plaza,�New York, NY, 10112

REGISTRATION:

Free to members of MIT Enterprise Forum
$50 non-members, $10 extra at door
All members and guests are welcome.

How Investors Are Increasing Their Returns Through Collaboration and Technology

David — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:54:26 +0000

We also have a great panel coming up next Thursday night, Jan. 17, on �How Investors Are Increasing Their Returns Through Collaboration and Technology�. � This is another joint event between HBS Angels of NY and the HBS Club of New York.

Panel 1 - How Social Investing is Disrupting Traditional Investing in Public Securities
The�first panel will focus on public markets and will discuss the use and effectiveness of social media tools and data mining technologies in harnessing the wisdom of crowds to generate investment ideas.

Howard Lindzon is Co-Founder and CEO of StockTwits, a social network for traders and investors to share real-time ideas and information. Mr. Lindzon has more than 20 years experience in the financial community acting in both an entrepreneurial and investing capacity. With a unique vision for starting and successfully managing innovative companies, he is the Managing Partner of Social Leverage, a holding company that invests in early stage web businesses.�Mr. Lindzon�continues to manage a hedge fund he started in 1998. He created Wallstrip, and more than 400 original web video shows, which was purchased by CBS Corp. in 2007. He is an active angel with many successful angel investments including: Rent.com, (purchased by Ebay in 2005 for $415 million), Golfnow.com (purchased by Comcast in June 2008), and Lifelock (lead investors include Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers). Mr. Lindzon's new media and internet business investments also include: Limos.com, Blogtalkradio.com, Buddy Media, Ticketfly, Assistly, Bit.ly and Tweetdeck (purchased by Twitter in June 2011). Mr. Lindzon received an MBA at Arizona State University and an MIM from The American Graduate School of International Management.

Michael Parekh, a Wall Streeter for over 20 years, former Partner at Goldman Sachs, and Founder of its Internet Research effort in 1994, Michael has been living online since the early days of CompuServe in the 80s and AOL in the '90s. Michael was the lead research analyst for the IPOs of Internet companies like UUNET, Yahoo!, eBay, DoubleClick, Webex, Real Networks, Exodus, Equinix, amongst many other pioneering companies, as well as covering companies like America Online and Netscape. He was an�Institutional Investor ranked analyst for several years.�Mr. Parekh�started his career at Goldman Sachs, developing the firm's equities business in the Middle East, with high net worth family offices and sovereign wealth funds.� He got his MBA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1982, and BSc at Auburn University in 1980. He joined Goldman Sachs & Co. in 1982. Mr. Parekh serves on various advisory boards of start-up internet companies.

Christopher Ahlberg is the CEO and Co-founder of Recorded Future. Before co-founding Recorded Future,�Mr. Ahlberg�founded Spotfire (acquired by Tibco) based on his research on information visualization at the University of Maryland under the guidance of Ben Shneiderman. Mr. Ahlberg earned his doctorate from Chalmers University of Technology and has worked as a visiting researcher at the University of Maryland. He has lectured and consulted extensively for industry, academia, military, and intelligence communities. He has been granted two software patents, and has multiple patents pending. He was named among the World's Top 100 Young Innovators by�MIT Technology Review and received the TR100 award in 2002.

Moderator: Robert Savage, CEO, Track.com
Before joining Track.com as Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Savage served as Managing Director of FX Macro Sales at Goldman Sachs, where he published widely-read and insightful research focused on the foreign exchange markets and the macroeconomic environment. As well as twenty-three years at Goldman Sachs, Mr. Savage worked as the head of New York Foreign Exchange trading for Lehman Brothers and as a Director of Proprietary Trading at Bank of America Securities.� Mr. Savage earned a BA in Political Philosophy from Yale University.

Panel 2 - How Social Investing is Disrupting Investments in Hedge Funds, Private Equity Funds, and Other Alternatives
The second panel will focus on collaborative investing in non-public alternative investments (private equity, venture capital, receivables, etc.).�

Nic Perkin is the President and Co-Founder of The Receivables Exchange. Prior to this, Mr. Perkin was Executive Vice President at EmSense Corporation, a leading next generation media measurement company. Previously, he was Vice President of Global Business Development for Massive, Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corporation in May 2006. In addition, he held the position of Head of Strategic Business Development at Kestrel Technologies, a leading Wall Street developer of technology solutions for fixed income trading. He also worked in mergers and acquisitions at Veronis, Suhler & Company and Cowles Media Company and held various operations positions at The Black Book.� He holds a Master of Science in Finance from the London Business School and a Bachelor of Arts from Tulane University.

Alex Vukajlovic, is CEO of Zurich based asset management company Cape Capital which he set up in 2002, and Chairman of DealMarket which he founded in 2010. Cape Capital is an independent wealth management firm, employing 14 staff in Z�rich, with approximately USD2bn of assets under management, investing across all major asset classes and geographies. Mr. Vukajlovic was born in Germany, grew up in Serbia and studied in the US and London. After graduating from the ACL in London, he began his career in financial markets in 1995 as an equity and portfolio manager at Standard & Poor in London, taking up further posts at Alfred Berg/ABN AMRO in Moscow and PBS in Switzerland. Mr. Vukajlovic has two kids and lives with his family in Zurich, Switzerland.

Alex Bangash is the founder of Trusted Insight, an institutional investor marketplace and social network for Alternatives, and Rumson, an adviser to institutional investors focused on venture capital and emerging markets. Since 2003, Rumson has helped clients invest over $1.0 billion in more than 50 funds, including some of the very best VC funds backing the marquee companies of last decade. Rumson clients include top ten foundations, endowments, pensions, and sovereign wealth funds. Prior to Rumson, Mr. Bangash held various positions at Bell Labs, AT&T, Lucent in Optical and Wireless Networking and Supply Chain. He also worked in the ecommerce division at General Electric. Mr. Bangash holds an MBA from The Wharton School, an MENG in Operations Research and a BA in Computer Sciences, Eng. Lit., and Economics, both from Cornell University.

Moderator: Joseph W. Reilly Jr., President, Family Office Association
Mr. Reilly is the President of the Family Office Association. Previously Mr. Reilly helped to start a single family office and foundation in New York where he was an investment manager for six years. He was an energy specialist focused on options and futures trading at Cr�dit Agricole Indosuez in New York prior to that, and started his career at Salomon Smith Barney. Mr. Reilly has spoken on family office issues at many conferences and been quoted in the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Dow Jones and Private Banker International among others. He is a member of the Family Office Council at Princeton University. Mr. Reilly has an A.L.B. from Harvard University.

Tuesday, Jan 17th, 2012

Location: Cooley, LLP, The Grace Building, 1114 Avenue of the Americas, 46th Floor, enter from 42nd St.
Time: 5:30pm Registration and Reception, 6:00pm Program
Cost: $15/Members of HBS Angels of NY and/or HBS Club of NY; $40/Non-members & Guests
Organizers: Sameer Gupta '09, David Teten '98
Sponsor: Cooley, Co-sponsored by the HBS Angels of New York
HBSCNY members register here�$15.00

HBS Angels of NY members register here $15.00

Non-members register here $40.00

To join HBS Angels and learn more, visit�hbscny.org/angels

How Top Venture Capitalists Create (and Sometimes Destroy) Portfolio Company Value

David — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 20:51:25 +0000

I hope you can join us Thursday night at a joint event of the Harvard Business School Angels of New York and the Harvard Business School Club of New York, on "How Top Venture Capitalists Create (and Sometimes Destroy) Portfolio Company Value". �I'll briefly discuss my research study on this topic, and then we'll have an all-star panel speaking.

Panelists
Christopher Fralic, Managing Partner, First Round Capital
Dave Tisch, Founder & Managing Director, TechStars NYC
Mike Yavonditte, CEO, Hashable

Moderator
Nikhil Kalghatgi, Senior Associate, SoftBank Capital

Christopher Fralic is a Managing Partner at First Round Capital�s New York office, and has focused on a number of the firm�s investments in Advertising Technology, Social Media, Ecommerce, Gaming, Mobile and more.� Mr. Fralic has 25 years of technology industry experience, with significant Internet business development roles since 1996.� Prior to joining First Round in early 2006, Mr. Fralic was VP of Business Development at social bookmarking and tagging company del.icio.us through the Yahoo! acquisition.� Mr. Fralic was also one of the early employees and VP of Business Development at Half.com starting in 1999, and after the eBay acquisition, spent six years with eBay in a variety of entertainment, business development, and media roles.� Mr. Fralic earned his BS in Finance from Villanova University and his MBA from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.� You can reach Chris at www.nothingtosay.com and @ChrisFRC.

Dave Tisch is Founder and Managing Director of TechStars in NYC and is an angel investor through the BoxGroup.� BoxGroup is an investor in companies like Boxee, Flavors.me, Goodsie, fab.com, art.sy, Coursekit, Skillshare, GroupMe, DataMinr and many more.� You can reach Mr. Tisch at�Tisch@techstars.com and @davetisch.

Nikhil Kalghatgi is an early-stage Venture Capitalist at SoftBank Capital and is based in NYC. He focuses on evaluating and sourcing seed and series A opportunities and has special interests in mobile, e-commerce and social platforms. Mr. Kalghatgi was Founder and Fund-Manager of Partner 6 Investment Group, a micro hedge fund in Boston, and then joined the founding team of Localytics, a mobile application analytics provider. Mr. Kalghatgi is a recovering engineer with several years of experience in front-end design and development focused on mobile and web UX before completing his MBA at Harvard Business School. You can reach Mr. Kalghatgi at nikhil@softbank.com and @nikhilkal.

Michael Yavonditte is CEO of Hashable, a New York startup backed by ff Venture Capital and a number of other leading VCs. Previously he was CEO of Quigo Technologies, a contextual ad network, which he sold to AOL for a reported $340m+. Prior to joining Quigo, Mr. Yavonditte served as vice president of sales for USA Networks Electronic Commerce Solutions Group in New York. Prior to that he was Managing Director of the strategic alliances group at AltaVista. In 1997, Mr. Yavonditte joined Juno Online Services, Inc. as a director in their business development group. Mr. Yavonditte started his career at Ziff-Davis Publishing in New York where he held various sales and management roles.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Location: Cooley LLP, 1114 Avenue of the Americas , 46th Floor (enter from 42nd Street), New York, NY
Time: 6:00pm Registration, 6:30 pm Program,�please register by 3pm on Wednesday, January 11th
Cost: $15/Members of HBS Angels of NY and/or HBS Club of NY; $40/Non-members & Guests.� Includes buffet dinner
Organizers: Nikhil Kalghatgi MBA �11, David Teten MBA �98
Sponsor: Cooley LLP

HBSCNY members register here $15.00

HBS Angels of NY members register here $15.00

Non-members register here $40.00

To join HBS Angels and learn more, visit�hbscny.org/angels

Links for 2012-01-09 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

Links for 2012-01-07 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

Photo Pin : Add Photos to Your Blog Posts

Links for 2012-01-03 [del.icio.us]

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST

TheFunded.com: 2012: the Year the #Startup Playbook Changed
startup financing
how to forecast the future
forecasting
Dan Rodney's List of Mac OS X Keyboard Shortcuts & Keystrokes

Links for 2011-12-29 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST

Stanford School of Engineering - Stanford Engineering Everywhere

Holiday Video 2011 - The Circle of Startup Life

David — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:44:14 +0000

From all of us at ff Venture Capital:

Wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year, and a little cheer with our 2011 Holiday Video, a tribute to our startups and partners - The Circle of Startup Life:

Links for 2011-12-17 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST

Links for 2011-12-16 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST

Headline Hacks | My Wordpress Blog | Headline Hacks

Tuesday, 12/6-Entrepreneurs� Pitch iEvening

David — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:11:37 +0000

I hope you�ll join me and some other investors for a quarterly meeting of entrepreneurs, VCs and execs. The iBreakfast series has helped start-ups raise over $40 million.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011, 3:30 - 8:30 pm

New York, Herrick Feinstein, 2 Park Ave.

Power Pitch� Workshop 3:30 - 6:00 pm

Entrepreneur Pitching 6:00 - 8:00

Submit your business plan.

SPEAKERS:
- Heather Gilchrist, RAK Tech Fund
- Allan Grafman, Mercury Capital
- John Ason, Angel Investor
- David Teten, ff Venture Capital

Startup idea: marketplace for business research and students seeking internships / experience

David — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:56:54 +0000

We're looking to spend money with a startup business: a marketplace for businesses which want consulting research and students who want jobs, internships and experience.

Specifically, we want a website where we can advertise the research topics that are important to us (e.g., best practices of operational improvement among VCs), along with the qualifications (e.g., consulting experience) required to execute each of them.� As a live example of the outcome we�re seeking, I'm now sponsoring a team of three Columbia MBAs (ex-McKinsey & BCG) on a research study on �Best Practices of Venture Capitalists in Adding Operational Value to Portfolio Companies�.� I�m �providing research materials, guidance, and introductions to interviewees and other experts.� When we�re done, I�ll work with the team to publicize and potentially publish the final research paper.� This is effectively a sequel to my research study on �Best Practices in Deal Origination by Venture Capital and Private Equity Funds�.

In this marketplace, clients benefit by getting high quality work from smart, ambitious students.� Students benefit by addressing real life business challenges, the opportunity to get published, as well as access to a large network of potential employers who gets to see the students in action.� This business model is particularly pertinent to business students, but I could see students in many different disciplines participating in this marketplace, e.g., English students could write a marketing brochure.

Students would review these research topics by topic, industry of the posted topic, and/or by company that posted the topic.� The students pick the ones they like, and execute them as independent for-credit studies and/or as part of a class.� They�ll inevitably produce a better quality product and learn more if the goal is producing something for a potential employer� as opposed to producing something for a professor who gives a grade and then is (typically) no longer involved in the student�s life.

I would be surprised if this were to become a scaleable business of the sort that ff Venture Capital would invest in.� However, I certainly think that this could be a lucrative business, and would be highly beneficial to the universities and students that choose to participate.

To learn more about the process and the research topics for which we in particular are seeking student help, see our topics page.� If you�re working on a startup similar to this model, and/or you�re affiliated with a university which wants to execute this idea on its campus, please contact me.

Image credit: laverrue

Invitation to InSITE Pitch Event, Dec. 2

David — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:03:59 +0000

ff Venture Capital is a sponsor of a graduate Fellowship program called InSITE. InSITE works with New York based businesses looking for their first round of funding. Twice a year, we mentor 6-7 teams and help them refine their business plans and finance pitch. On Friday, Dec 2nd we will be holding our semi-annual Pitch Event, where the companies we have selected and mentored will present to a panel of investors. Also at this event, InSITE fellows will present special projects and research.

The basic details are below - the event is invite-only, but the first five people to email vp.partnerships(@)insiteny.org with the subject line 'David Teten sent me' will get an invitation via email. I'll be serving as one of several judges.

Friday, Dec 2, 8:30am - 11:30am
Cooley LLP - The Grace Building
1114 Avenue of the Americas (b/w 42nd and 43rd St)

Companies:
Zeel
Geno.me
Bre.ad
BestVendor
RoundTable
RunThrough
Framey

AGENDA:
InSITE Presentations:
Special Project: BioTech
Research: Mobile Payments