All posts by Mukund Mohan

My discipline will beat your intellect
Entrepreneurship, Hiring, Learning, Tips

How to A/B test your job description and hack your way to hiring success

5 Comments

The last post on hiring for startups touched a nerve with many recruiters, many who emailed me on why I was negative about their profession. I did not intend to throw them under the bus, but the post came off reading that way. So, to my recruiter friends, apologies. I could have been more judicious with my choice of words. I assure you though that my words are not worth their weight in gold, so many startup entrepreneurs will still call you to help them with their recruiting. To those that claim spamming is helping, please stop.

Onward and upward.

This post is about hacking your job description. Or in the new age way of putting it – A/B testing it.

I had to hire 3 engineers for our new startup. The first step I took was to send an email to a few good fellow entrepreneurs and friends.

Version 1.0 < or bachelor #1>

I told them:

“Ideal candidate will have 3+ years experience in web or mobile technologies. Should be a hands on developer (PHP, Ruby, MySQL, Java or Python)”.

After 2 weeks and 30+ emails later I got 4 resumes from friends of friends. They were “technically sound” according to my network and within my budget but were mostly out-of-towners.

I phone screened two of them to find them fairly challenged in terms of their communication skills, and the remaining two wanted me to assure them a job before they made the trip to Bangalore (I was willing to pay for their trip, but not assure a job until I met them and interviewed them).

Version 2.0 <or bachelor #2>

I added “Good communication skills required. Position is in Bangalore.” And posted it on my twitter profile, LinkedIn and facebook account.

3 more resumes landed on my inbox, but none of them were even a close fit. One person said in their email, he was a test engineer and wanted to move into development and the second was a ASP/.NET developer who “could learn PHP quickly”, but had been in Windows development for the last 3 years. The third sent me an email, saying ” I am currently 25K salary, looking for 40% hike”, in his 3rd sentence, without any questions about either the job, the company or the technology.

Version 3.0 <or bachelor #3>

I decided the simple useless job description I wrote was just that – useless. I had forgotten the cardinal rule – Sell yourself, sell the job, sell your company.

So I did a ginormous makeover. I posted version 3 on hasgeek – I titled the role “developer in residence” not tech lead.

Worked like a charm. I got 4 very high quality candidates asking for what a “developer in residence” meant. Two were very qualified, professional and very good fit for the role.

I did not stop at version 3, but went to a refined “pitch the value, not the features” version.

Version 4.0 or <bachelor #4>

I added the following and posted version 4 on hasgeek.

“We have a complete 12 quarter hands-on program outline for you to feel ready to start your own company, which we will invest in to get you best prepared for entrepreneurship.

Job perks

  • Catered lunch every friday.
  • Ability to network and meet venture investors and angel investors in special invite-only events each month
  • A working 12-quarter program to give you all the experience necessary to be an entrepreneur”

Worked even better. The posting intrigued enough people to deliver even higher quality resumes. I thought I was overreaching because and got 2-3 over-qualified folks for a “lead developer position” re marketed as “developer in residence”.

What I learned:

1. The most important part of your job description is the Job Title. Its obvious, but I see far too many “PHP developer needed” or “Web hacker wanted” and “Javascript Ninja Hatori” titles, which gets you a certain type of person. Usually that person is not the first 25 developer hires in your company. Be creative, but dont overreach.

2. Your job description is the first impression for 90% of your potential candidates. The next impression is a Google search with your company’s name. You control the first a lot more than you control the next impression. Realize that people will read your job description and decided quickly if its worth Googling your company. What you say and how you word it says a lot about your culture. Does it have many typos? Are you using cliche’s like Ninja, hacker, Superman, etc. because you cant really describe the person with a simple engineer title, etc.

3. Dont say too much, because people dont read too much. Most job seekers I found, only read keywords like PHP and sent me their resume. They did not read anything else. I mentioned “should have worked in a product company (not services company)” before in a branch version of the JD, but I ended up getting many resumes from folks who worked only at services companies.

4. Each version of the JD attracts a different crowd from a different job board. If you are posting on hackerstreet, or hasgeek – think and focus on being a little more creative. If you are looking for technical marketers, pluggd.in is pretty good and for fresh grads, yourstory worked best for me.

5. Describe the perks of the job. If possible please make it human by adding a P.S. at the bottom. People read the P.S. More people read the P.S. than you think. Make the P.S. memorable, or make it sound like a prize given for the one that had the patience to read the entire posting which you spent hours writing (or a few minutes copying and pasting from some other JD).

Next post – how I phone screened and what worked, what did not.

P.S. I do read and reply to every email, and I do like getting email, but I always prefer comments on this blog.

Other

Hiring for startups: one perspective on what works in India and what does not

44 Comments

Early this year we needed to hire good engineering talent for our new startup. Unlike larger Indian companies who hire by the thousands and train by the hundreds we needed 3 people. A lead developer (backend: python, php or Ruby), a front end engineer (Javascript mostly) and a junior backend and database developer.

I had a 3 month goal for 3 people. I also decided not to hire any recruiters (I had used recruiters before), not for the money, but I had been warned about perverse incentives, aggressive, pushy people who try to close on sub-par candidates and poaching of your existing staff. A story that I learned about (turned out to be true), was that a recruiter was helping a company hire 2 developers and after those 2 were hired, the hiring team of 3 folks were placed by the recruiter in another company within 3 months.

I started at earnest looking primarily for people in my network. I have a reasonably large network in the entrepreneur community and was convinced by many that it was the best way to hire developers. I also avoided hiring from larger Indian companies (for developers) since many of them dont enjoy startups after they learn about the longer hours and pressures of shipping product.

This is not a blot against the individuals, but more the reality that many of these large companies have a very low bar set by their customers. Product release cycles for most IT organizations (that outsource work to India) ranges from 6-9 months. Multiple conference calls to “nail down requirements”, a process which takes 3 months, are normal.

The “network” included emails, twitter & facebook posts and linkedin status updates with the job description, the perks of the role and our company’s culture. A week later I got 3 resumes, and none of them were even a close fit.

I did get spam messages from Sutralite, Naurki and a freelance recruiter.

Plan B was to attend many developer events and network to meet qualified candidates. I got more people pitching me to invest in their company than possible candidates. I attended 3 events and the total number of people at those events was close to 300+.

Plan C was to post the job on some technical, developer friendly forums. I started with hasgeek. I have been a fan of their events and a couple of entrepreneurs mentioned their job board as a good one, so I posted my first job description.

I was fairly pleased with the results. I got 11 resumes in total, 7 were good quality and fit the JD reasonably well, 1 was over qualified (and expensive), and 3 were not a fit.

I did get a spam message from Sutralite again.

Plan D was to post on Pluggd.in. It was not a featured job listing. I got 1 resume for a totally unrelated position (marketing) that we were not hiring for.

I did get a spam message from Sutralite again. Different person. I emailed back and asked the individual to stop spamming me. Got no response back.

I also got another resume from a person who was a recruiter for a mid-sized company offering to “help” me recruit from her database for a “fee”. She claimed to have access to a large database of good quality developers (obviously rejects from that company’s database). She did not send me her email from her company ID, but a simple google search revealed who she was.

What I learned:

1. Recruiting from your network is hit or miss. If you need to hire a specific set of people by a particular time, there’s no choice but to spend money either to buy a database, hire a recruiter or to pay a lot of money for referring candidates. The other approach is to pay-it-forward. Build your networks way before you need them.

2. There are a lot of startups that claim that they exclusively hire from their network. Many also claim they “attract” very high quality candidates because of their unique culture or work environment. I have visited those companies and met their people. I did not find anything different or unique and also found that most people hired there were recruited by consultants. Dont believe that myth.

3. If you are a startup and you dont have an aggressive hiring strategy – which includes spending money on multiple means to recruit, then dont plan on scaling or growing fast. There’s value in growing slow and steady, so your culture assimilates everyone, giving room for hiring mistakes.

Next post – how to word that job description so you can increase your chances of success.

Related post & ht to Elaine for triggering the thought – The recruiter honeypot.

India

Flipkart Forbes story: Most startups are like toddlers, cute for 15-30 min, but messy and noisy otherwise

7 Comments

I love kids. I have 4 of them. They are so sweet and fun when guests come home that most folks claim I have it easy.

They dont know the half of it.

If you have ever been with toddlers (or even been a baby-sitter once, you’ll relate to this), you know they can be “Oh so cute for 15 min in front of strangers and give you hours of tantrums later.

Startups are the same.

Great on the outside, messy in the inside.

Well behaved when people are visiting, painful to deal with when the guests leave.

Quite as a mouse when grandparents are baby-sitting, but tear the house apart otherwise.

Then when everyone else realizes they are being kids, they express shock. That’s the story with Flipkart’s Forbes piece.

Flipkart is a 5-year-old company.

Do they have culture issues? Possibly.

Do they have growing pains? Definitely.

Are they trying to figure out what they want to be when they grow up? Sure.

Will they go through more pain before they grow up into “role model” that everyone expects them to be? Absolutely.

I have only heard the podcast and am still to read the entire piece.

Here’s what I believe the story will have <Begin conjecture>

1. Flipkart has management challenges in scaling up and has alienated a few folks who were not part of the original team.

– Happens. Is that a call for the company to “go under” – not sure.

2. Flipkart is obsessed with great customer service, so their prices are higher. Competition provides better pricing.

– Lame. If you have a business model that’s predicated on better service and hence you command a premium price, there are customers who will come. May not justify their valuation, because growth might stall, but there’s a market for great customer service – FOREVER.

3. Flipkart has nose-bleed valuation and some VC’s are shying away from paying those valuations.

– Lame. I dont know a single VC who likes large valuations. This is an absolutely useless point.

<End conjecture>

Do I think the journalist did a poor job?

Nope, he’s just chasing PageHitsVille.

Post my facebook discussion with Rashmi:

4. Flipkart’s acquisition of Letsbuy was driven by the VC’s and was a total waste.

– Sure. Total waste is your point of view, but I called the synergies a few months ago. It was smart for Flipkart to get the customers and more importantly the relationships and the purchasing power from larger numbers.

Community, Entrepreneurship, India

Bangalore Startups Group and the Big data meetup

5 Comments

I attended an awesome mixer and startup meeting late afternoon yesterday put together by Bangalore startups.  Umashankar, Rashmi and Subhendu had organized a technical Big data developer exchange.

First off, just having over 100+ developers in a room (with a VC to boot- Rajesh from Ojas) was great. There were multiple levels of maturity about big data and Hadoop in particular (Zookeeper, Pig scripts, etc.) but this was an awesome start to more technical meetups. I think the format was in beta but it was good to see the energy in the room.

I am a big fan of the unconference in particular, so for developer meetups, this is one of the best formats is my perspective. This one in particular would have been best suited for it.

There were 3 talks – one by Karan from Microsoft, another from Vara & Khadim of Search enabler and 3rd by Vikranth of Data Weave. All three were excellent, hands-on perspective from developers, by developers and for developers.

I personally thought Vara stood out. The most impressive part of the presentation was the confidence that there are folks in India doing excellent work on niche (but growing) and arcane areas, some of it very cutting edge. Vara actually builds his own servers (from cheap components), and has built a suite of tools to automate their imaging, provisioning and maintenance built on open source components. I thought they could offer that as a service to Indian entrepreneurs because even though Amazon is easy, its a tad expensive for Indian startups. Their infrastructure is at least 30% less expensive than Amazon was their perspective and best suited for companies hosting for Indian and neighboring markets.

Their stack had Lucene and Nutch (for crawling and indexing), pig scripts and Zookeeper on top of HDFS. There were over 30 open source tools they have used for the infrastructure management.

My biggest takeaway was that many of these folks are not too far away from contributing back to FOSS community. When I talked to many of the developers to find out why contribution to FOSS was low from India, their personal experience was the lack of confidence that their “code was not up to the mark”.

I think there’s an excellent opportunity for this team or another to build confidence by hosting and running FOSS contribution hackathons. If anyone’s up to it, I’d love to contribute with space, food or some freebies.

Mobile, Tablet Computing

The Microsoft Surface: Why I’d buy it

12 Comments

Microsoft announced a new device today called the Surface. I’d buy it immediately if it were available. Why?

1. I dont believe it is a tablet, although it can be used as one. I believe it falls into the same line as the Mac Book Air. Its a really thin notebook with a Z-height that’s simply awesome. Light and yet fully functional. I use my iPad purely for leisure – reading mostly and the kids use it for gaming. To get work done, I need a notebook. My current notebook’s pretty heavy and I’d love the ability to add a keyboard (which is what the surface does very well). So, out goes my notebook and its going to be replaced by the Surface.

2. I dont think the partners (HP, Dell, etc.) are going to get happy with Microsoft, because they’d now be competing with the device, but I also think MSFT is borrowing a leaf from the Google Android playbook. The Galaxy nexus was by far the best Android device I have used (Got it as a gift from my brother at Google), but Samsung Galaxy S II and S III (and the others like HTC) are pretty good as well. I think MSFT is creating a benchmark for what a great device running their software will look like.

3. My primary use of computing on the go is my mobile device. I tried the iPad, but its not suited for my style of intense use of documents, spreadsheets, presentations and some development. I need a notebook, but one that’s a lot less heavy and if I dont need the keyboard I want the option of using it as a leisure device as well – (as an iPad if you like).

I’d buy it and give away my notebook if it were available today.

Entrepreneurship, India

What happens when your co-founder decides “Its time to move on”

6 Comments

Its that dreaded 6 month itch. Or the 12 month itch, or 18th – whatever. Its an itch all right. Your cofounder and you have been toiling away at your startup for what seems like ages now. Its not going all that well (if you compare yourself to others) and you both know it. You both get a sense that something’s missing. Or something’s not just right. Then she drops the bomb “I’m thinking of going to look for something else to do”. Or she’s going to pursue her MBA instead of working. Or worse, work at a big company with a large paycheck and some “stability”. Or his mom wants him to get married and his prospective father-in-law does not like the idea of a “startup” – “Go and get a real job at a big company, if you wish to marry my daughter”, he says.

I am going to assume you are both equal partners in all things (i.e. you both own the same amount of the company, and came up with the idea together).

So what happens next? Let me tell you the emotions I went though.

First, its okay to cry. I have personally done that a couple of times.

Then I dreamt revenge. Its okay if he leaves, I will make this so big, he’ll regret he left me in the first place. He’ll come begging back to me in 1 year asking for a job as a programmer in my company and I’ll ask him to come to interview with people who work for the people who work for me. I’ll claim we are a “big” company now and decisions to hire programmers are left to lower level people. “I only focus on strategy and vision and having lunch with my investors”, would be my email back to him.

Then I woke up.

I questioned everything. Why was I starting this company? What was the vision? Was it still valid? I started to create my own FUD. Was I a good co founder? Was the idea bad? Will customers now trust me? Will anyone else want to work with me? Is a startup even worth all the pain and suffering?

I spoke with most of the people involved with our startup – potential investors, some people we had interviewed, some customers, seeking their advice.

My first reaction was to tell them that my cofounder left for some bizarre reason. I told them he had to move out of town (which he did, but not for the reasons I mentioned) and so we decided to part (I did not want to leave Silicon Valley, you see). Most everyone saw through that.

Then all I said was “He thought this was not worth doing and it was hard on him and his family”. Which was the truth.

What I got back was surprising – “Get back on the saddle, and start to ride”. Or as some say “This too shall pass”.

Everyone pitched in with new ideas, different ways to solve the problem we initially set to solve. One prospect even gave me a consulting agreement, because he knew I was going through a rough patch.

So what happens when you co-founder decides to leave?

Lots, and then again nothing much. Many things change and most things remain the same.

If you really want to succeed with your startup, most external events will not matter. Most successful startups were born during periods of recession.

Regardless of whether you have a co-founder or not, the fundamentals remain – Is this a big pain / problem? Is there a better way that you can solve it? Are lots of people willing to give you lots of money to solve that problem? Is there a way you can take small steps towards solving that problem?

Go on, be a force of good.

Other

How to build a framework for decisions that you have to make daily at your startup

6 Comments

There are two types of decisions – big life altering ones and innocuous ones. The tough part is I dont know which decisions fall into either category. Like Steve Jobs said, you can only connect the dots in hindsight. The amazing part is these decisions are to be taken in every aspect of your startup – engineering, marketing, sales, finance etc.

Let me give some examples:

For BuzzGain, I had a good friend recommend a lawyer who he had worked with. Jim (Cooley) was a smart, very well connected and personable individual. Daniel and he helped me put together our initial structure, complete my 83B election. Being a tech and a sales guy I did not care too much about the 83B election. I was loathe to spend too much money speaking to Jim and Daniel (they are good, but charge by the hour) so I dismissed the paperwork as needless “waste of time”. 3 days after sending me the paperwork, Daniel called me to remind me to send it in. There was a decision I had to make – spend a few thousand dollars today or punt to a later day. Since I was bootstrapping, I was inclined to punt. A couple of days later, Daniels’ paralegal called me and reminded me again to file the paperwork. I did it and it turned out to be the best decision I made on exit.

When our alpha version was out in Sep, I had 15 pre-release customers who were trying out the initial version. The feedback from most was to continue to build the initial database of key reporters and bloggers with a focus on specific markets. I.e. to continue on our original vision and value proposition. Paul though was the only person with an alternative opinion. He asked me to look at his most recent blog posts and compare them to his posts from 6 months before. His focus had dramatically changed from finding and building blogger relationships to engaging on social media. He mentioned that although it would be a dramatic change in our product, it was where things were headed. The decision was rather scary at that point – continue down our path (based on 14 folks feedback) or change course (based on 1 person’s feedback). We chose the latter. Again, the best decision I have ever made.

Now, these decisions were not made in a vacuum. Both alternatives to the decisions had a ton of pros and cons. I needed to build a framework to think about how to think.

My first piece of learning was its always better to see the options and decision criteria in writing. Somehow I have found that writing it in paper (or on your computer) and hence being able to see it (with your eyes) brings a level of clarity that doing it in your mind (hence being unable to see it) does not.

My second piece of learning was that my framework was a tree. The depth of the tree would be the level that was needed to get to two states – Worst case situation and Best case situation. The rest were if-then-else statements.

The third part of my learning was to map out how to undo my decision if I figured out later I had made the wrong decision. If I spent as much time figuring out how to recover from a bad decision as opposed feeling good about a well made decision, I’d be okay.

Try it out. Let me know if it works. If you have learned something else, drop me a note.

Entrepreneurship, Learning

The difficulty in giving honest feedback to entrepreneurs

18 Comments

I met a cofounder-team last week at the Microsoft BizSpark event. They were fairly young, and were working on their first startup, after 5+ years of working in a large corporate environment. They were both a year into their startup and were looking to raise funds (seed round). They were focused on the consumer Internet space (are now considering pivoting to B2B instead) and have been building a version of their webservice.

They definitely caught me at a “not so opportune time”. Actually, a friend pulled me in adhoc after a bad call (bugs in our software, customers complaining, etc. you get the point) to introduce me to them and ask me for feedback.

The next 30 min was painful for us all is the best way to say it. After the 5th time of me asking what problem they were trying to solve and if that was a real problem, I think I had a breakdown.

I tore into them for the next 15 min with both my friend and another individual sitting next to them. I claimed they had no idea what problem they were trying to solve, who their target audience was, what their product actually did that any of 20 other startups did not do already and why I would not use the product even though it was meant for folks like me.

They were patient, gave me a hearing, but I you could cut the tension with a knife. I felt awful 2 hours later. I had forgotten the cardinal sin I kept repeating to others they should avoid doing.

If you cant give constructive feedback, you are a moron, not an investor. If an “investor” does not help you with a next step, he is a moron. Period.

I had become a moron. The very thing I had detested in many other investors (not all, there are several exceptions).

You know the type. They kill every idea and suck your soul dry. They dont think your idea is good, they dont think you can pull it of, they dont believe you have what it takes.

I used to believe this was necessary tough love. It is absolute B.S.

What I did was inexcusable. It bordered on killing the spirit of another individual, which no person has the right to do. Even if they are an investor.

So, what should you as an entrepreneur do when you meet this type of investor?

First off, try some mind-relaxation techniques.

Second, give them the benefit of doubt. You probably got them on a bad day/week/month.

Third, ask the question:

“How would you go about trying to solve this”?

Put the ball on their court to give you a SINGLE next step that they (the smarter ones) would take to get you further along on your path.

One last point. Being an investor, you meet many smart, talented individuals daily and its difficult to not do some form of “pattern matching”. So, if anyone tears into your idea, remember at that back of your mind, you are likely doing something (either right or wrong) and its worth doing some more digging.

The worst feedback to get when you are pitching your idea/product/startup is no feedback.

P.S. I did meet the team this week and offered some (my version of the story) constructive ideas they could possibly work on, and was trying to help as much as I could. That does not make me feel better about what I did last week, but its good karma to erase the bad.

Entrepreneurship

How to deal with startup failure. A personal story

38 Comments

I have failed in as many startups as I have been successful.

Since I tend to tinker a lot, I have also failed at many of my side projects. In fact I have the distinction of not having succeeded in any of my side projects in the last 4 years (4 side projects).

If however, you count the lessons learned, I have been enriched.

The first project was an idea that was going to provide “price transparency”. The site was registered as pricearoo.com. I had a team of 2 build it, got a prototype ready, did a lot of leg work to understand the products the site should give your pricing information about. But I never launched it. I realized that building stuff is rather easy, but I feared it was too small a feature for people to take notice. 6 months later Priceonomics was launched. I am not privy to how they are doing but its a good start.

Ship early. Your product will have a lot of bugs. Ship early. It wont be perfect. Just ship the product. You will feel miserable about the fact that its not “quite ready”. Ship it already. Get people to use it or at least give you feedback. Ship.

I also failed at an eCommerce company. Technically it is still going, but I was a miserable failure at it. I just was not prepared for the rough and tumble of both managing real “inventory” or lots of blue collar suppliers. I hired too quick, did not manage expectations well, and had negotiated a very poor deal with the investors. The capitalization table was so messed up, that no new investor was willing to fork up money for the company. There were way too many lessons I learned but the most important was work with people you like and trust.

These are recent (last 1 year). Let me tell you about my first failure.

I left Univ of Maryland, (Baltimore County) in 1994 to head to California for a startup. Fresh out of college, I was not quite a rockstar programmer that I thought I was. The first project required me to get up to speed on a language (Visual C++) that I was unfamiliar with and a functional area (procurement) which I did not comprehend. 4 months into a “delivered” prototype, the client kicked us out. The entire project had to be rewritten because we built a very buggy prototype. The company failed. I was not even sure what I learned at that point. Except maybe I needed more experience and I needed to be a better developer. That experience colored my judgment on services companies though. I never wanted to build a consulting company after that.

For all the young, newly minted graduates who are going down the entrepreneurial journey – Celebrate your first failure. Take your friends out for a lunch or drinks. Share what you learned. After that dinner / lunch forget about that failure but write down what you learned. Email it to yourself but leave it unread. Archive it. Open it after 2 years. If you dont laugh at that email you sent to yourself, I will send you a free t-shirt. Get a job at a startup where you can learn from someone else making mistakes.

If I could tell you one thing I wish I knew now that I did not know when I failed at those things, it would be: I am happier I failed. Not when I failed, but much later. I felt awful after each failure, but moved on.

Nobody cares that you failed. Except you.

Think about the last time anyone at an interview asked you if you got an F in school.

Other

A closed letter to all open letter writers

2 Comments

After seeing many open letters, I have a few questions of open letter writers (including me).

1. If you did not publish it on your blog, was your intent to send your communication via a handwritten Inland letter?

2. Has anyone ever responded to the open letter? If so, has anyone ever sent a closed reply to an open letter?

3. At what point did you decide to name the title “An open letter to …”? Before or after you wrote the letter?

4. When did you come to the realization that its was harder to come up with a more catchy title?

5. If closed letter’s became a meme would you jump on that bandwagon as well?

Links.

1. one

2. two

3. three

Before the usual flame throwers barge in, yes this is my attempt at humor.