Where to hire engineers in London?

Posted on 26/01/2012 by Philipp

Lots of people approach me about finding "technical co-founders" "a few great engineers" for their companies. It's not easy to hire at the moment, much less so in London where the banks and successful Seedcamp startups eat away all the talent (or so).

Where to advertise for and find engineers?

I usually say "good luck" with regards to the cofounder.

When hiring a team (at market range salaries, with a great package, of course), I can recommend a couple of ressources (skewed towards London):

    1. workinstartups.com is ran by Diana, and a great ressource to advertise your (mostly UK-based) jobs.
    2. Silicon Milkroundabout not only has a great name, it is also a series of excellent recruiting events for tech startups. The nice folks at Songkick put it up, and the next one is coming in May. Be there.
    3. Stackoverflow has an excellent careers page. It is probably the most relevant ressource for developers. Profiles are not cheap, but according to founder friends, highly valuable.
    4. Forrst looks cute, is ran by Kyle (a great guy I only know through email), and a great place to find designers.
    5. Dribble is another great place to find designers - browse around to see what's going on, quite the time waster if you like good design.

If you are looking for hardcore developers, try scouring github (or let your engineers do it) for folks that work on cool, relevant stuff, and are based around you. They might be interested or able to recommend someone from their circles.

In general, you need to be extremely resourceful when looking for talent, finding your ways to folks that work on the relevant platforms and technologies. Hiring is hard.

If you have suggestions for more places to look - leave them in the comments, both for London and other places. If you share your own hiring hacks, you get extra Karma points.

Oh, and if you are looking for a job in a startup - let me know. I might be able to help out.

ADDITION

Florian added a great comment that everyone should read, especially regarding investor /employee communication:

I have been involved in hiring engineers for the last 2-3 years. The following builds on this experience.
Okay, hiring hack share alert: I see numerous startups advertising engineering positions who pitch their company to engineers in the same way as they would to investors or founder peers.
This leads to the following: Strong focus on the company's market position, growth perspective etc etc. Strong emphasis on the current technology stack as a required skill set. Hype lingo ("stealth ninja CTO magician needed").

Far more interesting for high calibre engineers is the following: Describe your company starting with its engineering challenges. Focus on high level challenges that allow developers to think.
Try and understand what specific skills your hire needs and where an agnostic developer with a broad range of experience will be able to onboard himself quickly (eg you probably don't need a coffeescript expert, as someone with considerable javascript experience will be able to work productively with coffeescript in a matter of days).

Describe your development process. If you don't have one, get one installed. There are exceptional engineers who cowboy code. As long as you never plan to grow a team larger than that one engineer: No problem. Oh, you do? Get a process. Describe it.

Cut the lingo. All the engineers I know hate it. If you want to stand out, use terms that engineers use to describe themselves. "Maker" is an example. "IT whizz" is not.

Oh, and we're hiring: http://mindmatters.co.uk

Posted in Entrepreneurship, London | 2 Comments

Can’t wait for the really cool photo apps on tablets

Posted on 23/01/2012 by Philipp

I really love my cameras. I put a lot of hours into learning to use them, figuring out particularities, buying lenses and filters, etc. I am by no means a prosumer or even expert, but I know a little bit about taking pictures, composition, and aperture, exposure, blablabla. In high school, we had a very cool photography lab, and since my aunt was one of the arts teachers at my school, I could basically use it whenever I wanted. Thus, my love of pictures.

Now, since I use Instagram on my phone, I use my camera much less. These photo sharing apps are especially nice because they almost force you to use filters, making every picture look artistic and sophisticated. BUT: I can still take much better pictures with my SLR.

So, when will Instagram offer a simple desktop or even web version, to allow me to a) use these filters on bigger pics, and b) feed my stream from somewhere else, or c) allow me more immersive interaction with my photos?

 How about that bigger screen?

Here's a thought: All these camera apps on the market have very similar features (take photo, tweak it a little, publish to stream), and don't go far beyond those. I will take out the ones like Path (private activities) and Eeve (group albums), as I think they have a great niche where they can grow and add more value.

BUT: creation and tweaking, and also photo storage, management, and ordering across devices is still done in an app as annoying as iPhoto. How about these get thrown into the next generation?

I would love to see an app that allows me to take pics on my iPhone, edit them on my iPad (easy to do with iCloud photo stream), and share them anywhere. Simply integrating the iPad into this experience will be a great opportunity to do more.

Next step: instead of creating photos only, create collages, mosaics, GIFs, and other formats. Now, sharing these on your social networks will be much cooler and allows for much more of a story being told.

Please, build this.

Posted in Blog, tech | 1 Comment

Effective intros

Posted on 02/01/2012 by Philipp

My life consists of making intros to various people - for better or worse. I love connecting dots, so it's a lot of fun and often rewarding, but it can also be lots of back and forth. In the series of "posts that originally were emails I wrote at least 5 times in the last week", here is some advice as to how to make it work.

Whenever you are looking for an introduction, the key is to make it clean, understandable and directed.

How to ask for an intro in three simple steps:

  1. Clean: Use a fresh, empty, virgin email with a powerful subject line that conveys your message to the introducer and the next person
  2. Understandable: A short paragraph describing what you are working on (relative to you/ your company) and what you are looking for and information about the steps you have already taken, and why that did not work (if applicable)
  3. Directed: Put a specific ask in there so the person on the other end knows how he can help

"Hi Philipp,
we are looking for.... because we want to... I tried ... but it did not work because... Do you know XYZ/someone at... would be great to be introduced."

BEFORE you ask for that intro:

  • Please check if you can find the solution on the interwebs or the documentation (FB, Google, Twitter, etc have great docs that you will most likely be referred to if your question is not specific)
  • Find out if you maybe already know that person. It usually works better if you know them yourself.

When introduced, be polite and humble.

This should be more than obvious. No one owes you a thing - you asked for the introduction in the first place. Afterwards, keep it easy for the introducer and move them to bcc as soon as the introduced person replies.

[EDIT] In my case, I would probably forward the email to the next person, add a little flavor and some witty (bad) jokes, and get out of the way.

Fred Wilson wrote about another technique when making introductions - the double opt in. Basically, it entails asking both people if they would like to be introduced to each other before you make the introduction - otherwise you can leave a sour taste.

Posted in Blog | 3 Comments

One hell of a year. Thanks, all!

Posted on 31/12/2011 by Philipp

Careful: boring blogpost about my year ahead.

I've spent the past two weeks at home, in Germany. I finally had some time to wind down, relax a little, and read. I haven't managed to come even close to my goal of 80% couch time, but it's all good.

As everyone, I've had a bunch of "oh, and what are you up to now" conversations - lovely. This year, I resorted to a "oh, mostly work - but it was quite busy". and busy I was:

iCal in Lion looks fugly, but it gives you a stress indicator. Fair enough.

That tiny little bit of white in January was back when I was in Argentina for the break. The rest of the year - oh well:

    • - Seedcamp Events in Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, New York. I skipped Prague, Ljubljana, and Stockholm, but it was fun nonetheless.
    • - Our huge US trip in March to the East and West Coast, with SXSW to top it all off was definitely the biggest strain on my sanity (and nanny-capabilities with 15 startups in tow).
    • - Seedcamp Week in September - wow, what fun. And not much sleep.
    • - A trip to San Francisco, Valley, and Mexico in October. Awesome fun with tons of new people in Kundavi, and of course the inevitable brain overload from the valley. Tomaz and Jakob at Vox.io were kind hosts in SF, I will have to make this a regular somehow.
    • - Some smaller excursions to Germany, including the Pirate Summit, which will hopefully become a fixture in the European startup events calendar. Go Team!
    • - Weekend getaways to the English coast, the Isle of Wight, and of course France for skiing with the ICE crew.

I tend to judge a year on the basis of travel and change, and change there was as well:

    • - Isa moved to London in March and we moved to a beautiful new apartment in summer. I kid you not, it's possible to live in London and have a quiet home.
    • - We (Seedcamp) moved office to East London, which is awesome because lunch is more fun (less bankers and lawyers).
    • - I tried all possible mobile phone operating systems and am back on an iPhone. Boring.
    • - I started running. Somewhat. Sometimes.
    • - We invested in 25 companies over the course of the year. This means crazy many new friends, work pals, calls, meetings, but most of all, it means an amazing set of people to work with beyond my team. It's probably why I can bear it all.

So, all is the same, all is new - and here's to hoping that 2012 will rock as much or more. Q1 already looks like it will.

Happy new years and stay who you are. Because there is one thing that did not change in 2011:

    • - My friends are awesome.
Posted in Housekeeping, Travel | Leave a comment

The peculiarities of education startups

Posted on 08/10/2011 by Philipp

My colleague Carlos forwarded an article today:

Most entrepreneurs in education build the wrong type of business, because entrepreneurs think of education as a quality problem. The average person thinks of it as a cost problem.

Building in education does not follow an Internet company’s growth curve. Do it because you want to fix problems in education for the next 20 years.

There are opportunities in education in servicing the poor in the US and building a company in Asia — not in selling to the middle class in the US.

The underlying culture will change and expose interesting opportunities in the long term, but probably not for another 5 years.

via Why Education Startups Do Not Succeed « Avichal's Blog.

Read the whole article, because it's fascinating. I have thought about education for a long time (mostly because I received a good one, by chance and good choice), and find the situation quite troubling in many ways. However, I agree with Avichal - it's a mess, and it‘s not easy to solve. Here's a brain dump of my thoughts about the topic - I would love to speak to some people in the market to understand it better.

The current status

Education is either paid for by the state (=no opportunities to make much revenue, other than by disruption, and disruption and govt are not in the same bed), and/or it's tightly controlled by large corporates that bank on the status quo (private colleges).

Thus, it's mostly a vitamins vs painkiller debate when talking about education things like learning apps, classroom organisation, etc. Due to the nature of top-down decisions in the classroom, the large corporates and their salesforce and lobbying are better positioned for quite a while.

In 2nd and 3rd world countries, it might be a different thing, but this is also where the devices aren't yet available. thus, it's much cheaper and easier to facilitate change with people instead of technology there. The educational system in the poorer countries is still stuck in the 60s/70s when it comes to teaching methods. Talk to anyone who does voluntary or even vocational teaching in poor countries, and it's all full frontal teaching with students writing and listening. They have neither money, education, nor infrastructure to allow for new methods of teaching.

Seeing the education in the EU, it is very slowly breaking up to be more interactive and integrative, catering to individuals. This comes from both a very well funded education system (in reality, lots of money and leave no child behind type teaching) and our acceptance of new technology (and our own daily use). This will both take very long to come to the poorer markets, and necessitate solutions that are yet to be developed.

What makes me hopeful

is that most teachers (and builders, and professors, and politicians, and loads of other professions) are led and populated by baby boomer aged folks. Think about it - almost all of these professions are people in similar ages, and the following generation wasn't one of the strongest in terms of development. The baby boomers got kids early, worked hard, studied a lot - their kids smoked pot, went to woodstock, studied until their 30s, and are now in safe positions where they want everything but change (nice over-generalization, right?).

This leads to a new generation of very powerfully motivated people in our age group, wanting change. Look at us as an example - we're leading the way in our field, simply overtaking a lot of people who are older than us, and stuck in old ways of thinking and working. In the educational sector, this is even stronger so, as teaching hasn‘t changed in a long time. There weren't many teaching positions open in the 80s and 90s, but now a whole generation (the boomers) need to be replaced in about the next 10 years. I talked about this to one of my older teachers last week - almost all of the teaching body at my high school has actually changed in the last 8 years.

Long story short

that's when new methods of teaching, bottom-up adoption of tools, and a much more cost effective, democratized version of education is possible. We have the tools, infrastructure, and knowledge to benefit from the possibilities. We also still have the large budgets, which is why the new education market can take off economically.

The poorer countries don't have any of the prerequisites, which is why they need radically different solutions, NOW. Without knowing these markets, it's terribly difficult to build the necessary tools. Avichal makes a great point in his blog post, especially about the Asian markets - but you need to know these to play a part.

Because of the long term nature of the problem and its solutions, I am similarly sceptical about the market and especially investment opportunities without a really long term horizon.

TL;DR: There are a lot of structural problems to overcome or play along - it's difficult, but exciting.

Posted in Entrepreneurship | Leave a comment

Startup Metrics

Posted on 15/09/2011 by Philipp

Got asked about this twice in the past week - here are two very good videos about basic startup metrics and their application to your business.

Dave McClure at Seedcamp 2009 about "startup metrics for pirates", a talk he has given in lots of places. It's a good and fun overview of what you should think about and look at.

 

and the accompanying slides:

Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp, Sept 2009)

View more presentations from Dave McClure

And Ryan Carson of Carsonified with a more direct, and very numbers-focused talk from last year. He goes through a very detailed example, explains concepts like CAC, churn, lifetime value, and will give you an idea what unit economics are all about.

 

He talks about this spreadsheet, which you can copy and play around with easily, giving you a good idea of what your own numbers can look like.

Posted in Blog, Links, Seedcamp, tech | Leave a comment

I loved this city

Posted on 10/08/2011 by Philipp

I moved to London a little bit more than a year ago, and I fell in love with it right away.
In the beginning, I was intimidated when I walked from our office through Regent Street to the Oxford Circus Tube stop - I couldn't stop being amazed by the expensively dressed, very busy and important people whizzing down the sidewalk, avoiding running into me. I was amazed by all the tourists, looking at all the fancy stores and buildings, looking in the air, not seeing where the "real Londoners" were trying to get to work, meetings, or home. Because, when you are at home in a city, you don't look up.

After a while, I walked faster, talked in shorter sentences, and was whizzing by the tourists to get to the Tube - I even figured out I should walk to Green Park instead of Oxford, as it was less littered with visitors and more conductive to fast walking, checking email, and getting my breakfast sandwich. Of course, I felt like I was at home. I accustomed myself to the town, got along with the weather, and with the people that were much tougher and more focused than anyone back home. I made some great friends very quickly, and felt like I belonged.

After about three months, I started missing my home and everything I was used to (moving around a lot, I know that this is what happens every time). I worked incredibly hard and much, travelling a ton, and being busy all around. I still used to go back to Cologne quite a bit, and was always struck by how slow and peaceful things were. At the same time, I couldn't enjoy that - I felt I was missing out on the action, and was fed up by the slow pace, and couldn't wait to get back to London.

That was last year. This year, I have made myself a home here. Isa moved over in March, we lived together in my small room for a while, and now we found a gorgeous little place in a quiet street that is just simply beautiful. I work less crazy hours, we go on cool weekend trips, and I am much more of myself again - thinking, reading, and writing, besides being at work and on email all the time. I fell in love again - this time with the beautiful, the quirky, the individual, the incredible London in all its variety.

And now this crap happens. On Sunday, we saw it on the news, TV, and of course Twitter and Facebook. I heard the sirens, and saw the police vans driving around. I biked through a good part of London on Monday, and saw more police than ever before, but still, it was weirdly detached from real life. Then, on Tuesday, we all decided to go home early from work. I saw four big police vans near my bus stop. Nicolas told me how Upper Street, where I lived for a year, was the place for some (thankfully small) gangs to smash windows and steal sporting goods. Friends emailed me links to warnings about Islington (where I live) being the next target. I saw more violent videos, gangs rioting for no cause, setting fire to houses, shops, and family's livelihoods. More police, more police, and more police.

Today, it felt like it had calmed down a little. We met all of the participants for Seedcamp London, which is taking place tomorrow, and had a great afternoon getting to know their companies, their ideas, and visions for what they want to become. When we were having a beer in the pub around the corner (central London, mind you), two guys come sprinting down the road, followed by a shocked man, who was telling us how these kids had just kicked down his door, standing in his flat with a pair of bricks in their hand, threatening his family. It was so surreal, a bunch of international, good natured, and ambitious entrepreneurs, who couldn't even understand what he was talking about. Once it sunk in a little, it left an eerie feeling with all of us, and the crowd broke up to go to their hotels and homes. When I rode home on the tube, the usual bumpy ride sent my elbow onto my seat neighbour's arm (think of a passive aggressive armrest fight on the plane). He started to go off at me, and I of course didn't want to take it - arguing him for the better part of my ride home. Since he got more and more aggressive, I just backed off - but the sour feeling remained. It was nothing, really, but it upset me. This was my tube, my way home, my city where I felt safe.

Whatever it is, a disconnection of environments, a lack of communication between people, or just plain reality, I liked it much more before I felt this way. I hope it will come back, but I think we need to work a lot on what we have before it will be that way.
At least I include myself in the We, which makes me think I care enough to help bring about that change. Whining like this won't help, but being aware is the first step, as they say.

Posted in Blog, London | 3 Comments