I am a serial entrepreneur - this being my fourth technology startup and the second focused specifically on Internet Marketing. My co-founder and I started our last company in the late 90's and ran it for ten years (he was the CTO and I was the CEO), seeing it go from my garage with zero revenues and just a dream to a worldwide organization doing $80 million/year in revenue with over 270 employees in offices all around the world.
We are now teamed up again and believe we have an idea and an initial product that will be even bigger than our previous company. We currently have five employees and we completed our Series A round of financing a couple months ago. We pride ourselves in being hands on, in the trenches guys and are having the time of our lives rolling up our sleeves and getting this company off the ground. We have a very strong core philosophy about how to build a company and in the early days that means frugality, fun, hard work and foundation building. The first year creates the culture and bakes into the DNA the characteristics that will live with a company for years. It also allows a few early employees to be involved with something from the very beginning and get exposed to business lessons that few ever get. We are looking for a very special person who gets excited about that kind of opportunity.
At our last company I opened a position like this and that person thrived in our company as we grew and ultimately ended up (after proving himself over and over again) managing over 60 employees and over $40 million/year in revenue. He left after five years at our company and is now the CEO of his own startup company that is the leader in its space. This person came in early in our company's development, put in an insane amount of hours, worked way too hard for way too little, and learned more than he ever imagined he could learn. Those lessons kicked off an amazing career and at the same time created a ton of value for our company. I'm looking to repeat that story.
I'm looking for someone who is willing to work way too hard for way too little. Someone who is willing to put in the time required, busting their ass, working early, late, weekends and holidays - whatever it takes to get the job done. The world of a startup is an amazing, dynamic and stressful place - but it teaches hyper-speed lessons beyond what any business school or big business could ever hope to impart.
Don't apply for this job if you think you learned everything you needed from college, if you shrink from hard work, you have an outsized ego, or if you want to get rich quick. This isn't the gig for you.
Do apply for this job if you are incredibly intelligent, your ambition outstrips your intelligence, you want long-term financial independence, you want to learn a ton of different things about business in a very short period of time, and you can truly leave your ego at the door.
This job will require a minimum of 60 hours per week and probably a lot more. The salary will be low, but the experience will be invaluable. We are in frugal startup mode, so we don't pay big salaries. What we will give you is startup experience that will teach, mold and shape you for a lifetime of success. For the right person who performs amazingly, stock options will be provided after six months – and if we are making money (which we fully intend to be doing), a raise to a more normal salary will also be provided.
You will work directly with me on sales, technical issues, marketing, product management, business development, human resources, finance, accounting and legal. You will learn from the inside how to build a business, how to develop a product and bring it to market and how to make money. You will be with me as we swap hats between CFO, CMO, CTO, CEO, VP of Sales and VP of HR. We will work insane hours, you will be more stressed than you ever imagined and you will have more fun than a single person should be allowed to have. This startup thing is not easy, but it is a thrill and it is never boring.
Requirements of the job:
• You have to love sales. Getting a product built, out the door and making money requires outreach and lots of it. More often than not these sales are the kind that require the use of your ears more than the use of your mouth – but both will be required.
• You must have amazing written communication. We all chip in and blog, tweet and participate in online communities related to our product. You have to be able to write well and write fast.
• Must be able to brew a mean pot of coffee and order really fantastic sandwiches. Caffeine and food are our fuel and none of us are too good to supply them.
• You must have great interpersonal skills. You’ve got to like the people you work with – we spend way too many hours with each other not to.
• You must have some technical expertise that go beyond the ability to surf the web. Ideally you are someone who can master a spreadsheet in Excel, spruce up a logo in Gimp, edit some simple HTML and CSS, and know where to find and how to edit your host file. We aren’t looking for a dev or an ops person – but if you are going to be in the online marketing world these are the kinds of technical expertise that are used every day.
• You must have an execution to idea ratio of at least 4 to 1. A startup environment breeds ideas like you wouldn’t believe – carrying them out and executing on them independently and efficiently is what we all keep focused on.
• You must be a productivity machine. Some people just have an innate ability to get stuff done and check things off their list incredibly quickly. Our current team has this ability, so we need you to match this.
• If you have a sense of humor and can laugh at us and make us laugh, that is a plus. Lama and monkey jokes are worth double points.
• You don’t need to have a ton of experience. The stuff we are looking for is largely innate and the skills required could easily have been picked up in college by someone with ambition who did more than just go to class.
If you want to be a part of - and learn how to - build something significant where nothing existed before, then send me your resume and your response to the following:
1. Why do you want to work for a startup?
2. Tell me about something you failed at.
3. Describe a time when you accomplished something you thought was impossible. (Can be work-related or personal)
I look forward to hearing from you.
- Location: Bellevue
- Compensation: Cash compensation initially to be $24k/year. Options included after six months - dependent upon performance. Experience provided in spades.
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