Is Hiring Obsolete?

I stumbled across this really great essay on Paul Graham’s website that is derived from a talk at the Berkeley CSUA. The title is a bit of an exaggeration, but I find his method of “hacking” the corporate world to be great advice for any young, motivated 20 something who is feeling a bit hopeless due to today’s plummeting job market:

“The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Average age of their founders: 24. So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. And if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?

Like everything else in technology, the cost of starting a startup has decreased dramatically. Now it’s so low that it has disappeared into the noise. The main cost of starting a Web-based startup is food and rent. Which means it doesn’t cost much more to start a company than to be a total slacker. You can probably start a startup on ten thousand dollars of seed funding, if you’re prepared to live on ramen.

The less it costs to start a company, the less you need the permission of investors to do it. So a lot of people will be able to start companies now who never could have before.

The most interesting subset may be those in their early twenties. I’m not so excited about founders who have everything investors want except intelligence, or everything except energy. The most promising group to be liberated by the new, lower threshold are those who have everything investors want except experience.

Market Rate

I once claimed that nerds were unpopular in secondary school mainly because they had better things to do than work full-time at being popular. Some said I was just telling people what they wanted to hear. Well, I’m now about to do that in a spectacular way: I think undergraduates are undervalued.

Or more precisely, I think few realize the huge spread in the value of 20 year olds. Some, it’s true, are not very capable. But others are more capable than all but a handful of 30 year olds. [1]

Till now the problem has always been that it’s difficult to pick them out. Every VC in the world, if they could go back in time, would try to invest in Microsoft. But which would have then? How many would have understood that this particular 19 year old was Bill Gates?

It’s hard to judge the young because (a) they change rapidly, (b) there is great variation between them, and (c) they’re individually inconsistent. That last one is a big problem. When you’re young, you occasionally say and do stupid things even when you’re smart. So if the algorithm is to filter out people who say stupid things, as many investors and employers unconsciously do, you’re going to get a lot of false positives.

Most organizations who hire people right out of college are only aware of the average value of 22 year olds, which is not that high. And so the idea for most of the twentieth century was that everyone had to begin as a trainee in some entry-level job. Organizations realized there was a lot of variation in the incoming stream, but instead of pursuing this thought they tended to suppress it, in the belief that it was good for even the most promising kids to start at the bottom, so they didn’t get swelled heads.

Why QR Codes Aren’t So Hot Yet

This shows that yes, QR codes have yet to really take off here in the states, but I still feel it is a little to early to know for sure if they ever will. Reports like these keep writing about how most people struggle with the whole process of scanning a QR code, but my experience has shown otherwise. Not only have I never had problems scanning QR codes, but some of my technically challenged clients have easily figured out how to scan a QR codes without any assistance on my end.

CNN reports:

“.. evidence suggests many people don’t understand what QR codes are or what to do with them.

You might think that if anyone would know how to use a QR code, it would be college students — a demographic that is immersed in technology and bombarded by marketing. But a recent study found that nearly eight in 10 college students had no idea what to do with a QR code.

Archrival, a research group that focuses on youth marketing, surveyed 500 students at 24 colleges and universities across the United States. They found that although about 80% of students owned a smartphone and had previously seen a QR code, only about 20% were able to successfully scan the example QR code they were shown.

Furthermore, about 75% said they were unlikely to scan a QR code in the future.

‘Why the discrepancy?’ wrote Don Aguirre, brand manager at Archrival. ‘Students simply struggled with the process. Some didn’t know a third-party app was needed [to scan the QR code]. Many mistakenly assumed it could be activated with… ” [Read more]

Have you had any troubles scanning QR codes personally? Leave a comment and let us know!

Likester: Making Facebook “Like’s” Searchable!

Any tools that can help us spot trends is very welcome. If you spot trends early enough you can position yourself in a market before there is too much competition.

TechCrunch writes:

“With hundreds of thousands of websites integrating with Facebook Likes and 250 million people engaging with Likes just a little after a year after the Like button made its first appearance at F8, the space of Facebook Likes aggregation is about to get competitive. Facebook search engine Booshaka just released their own Facebook Likes categorization yesterday, for example. Likester just overhauled its platform, wanting to become the go-to Facebook Likes aggregator.

What Likester does differently from Booshaka is that it shows users realtime and popular Like trends, including what your friends are Liking, what everyone is Liking, what’s trending and a chronological log of all your friends Likes. A maps feature adds locality to what Likes are popular where.

As an example of the potential of this service, Likester is currently trying to predict the winner of American Idol by tracking how many people Like certain contestants during the show.

The best part about Likester is the drill down effects of item affinity when you hit the Details button on a specific Like. You can look into “Likesters who liked this also like” recommendations as well as suggest the content to friends and post it on your Facebook wall. Founder Kevin McCarthy says he is also experimenting with anti affinity, or figuring out what people…” [Read more]

Is Dwolla The Future Of Online Payments?

This sounds great, how can you beat $0.25 per transaction?

Business Insider reports:

“There’s a tiny 12-person startup churning out of Des Moines, Iowa.

We interviewed Milne about how he is building a credit card killer and Square rival from the middle of the nation where VCs and press are scarce.” [read more]

Is Your Website Mobile Friendly?

With smartphones now taking over, it’s important to make sure your website is mobile friendly. If it’s not, then you’re frustrating your visitors and they’re most likely never to come back to your site or blog. I remember reading somewhere that 80% of your mobile traffic is leaving within’ 2 minutes of landing on your website if it is not mobile ready. This is because it is really hard to navigate a normal site on a mobile device, and find the information you’re looking for. It only makes sense really.

Contact us today and we’ll set-up your mobile website ASAP!

Check out our mobile site by scanning this QR code!