Posts Tagged "recruiting"


Announcing Printchomp

Announcing Printchomp


Posted By on May 27, 2012

As some of you already know, I have been working on a new start-up. I spent two weeks on the high seas back in February contemplating my next move after leaving my last venture. It was very liberating to sit with a blank piece of paper and a pencil and scribble ideas. While the ocean went by I would sit for an hour or two a day and come up with ideas, business problems or other problems that need to be addressed. In the following month, I took all of my ideas and started evaluating them in more detail. I came to the one conclusion: the customized goods space is under serviced on the internet. It is still nearly impossible to do good comparison shopping for competitive goods or to order them in an easy fashion. The first industry vertical we will be building this service out for is the print industry, hence our name “Printchomp”.  We just got back from TechCrunch Disrupt in New York where we have begun to share what we are doing. I even got to share a beer up on stage with Michael Arrington and MG, what a cool way to start a company. Meet our Mascot! For the time being, we are calling our mascot Chomp! He is the master of ceremonies for all Printchomp related activities and was created by our awesome Art Director – Alysha Puopolo Now onto business! We hope to be launching V 1.0 of Printchomp for this September and encourage you to sign-up at our website www.printchomp.com to get the latest news as we prepare for launch. Recruiting! We are looking for the best and brightest in talent to help build out our team. Declan Whelan, our tech virtuoso, is looking for some awesome tech talent to join our elite force of coders. If you want in on the ground floor of this kick-ass bootstrap start-up and have the skills to pay the bills email me at joseph (at) Printchomp (dot) com. We aren’t just looking for tech talent. If you have other skills that you think will help us, please let us know. We need your help!  We recognize we are only as strong as our users. We need your help! If you want to help us please do the following 3 things 1. Like us on Facebook 2. Follow us on Twitter Follow @printchomp 3. Sign-up for our updates – Sign up here...

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For the last 2 months, I have had my head down building the first start-up in which I was one of the founders. While I spent time coming up with the idea, figuring out how to make money with it, and deciding what it would do, I knew that I needed technical expertise. I started to spend time searching for a technical co-founder, because it is one of the most crucial hires that a new start-up needs. Here are some tips that I have compiled after spending time in search. 1. Run your search in parallel with all other activities – The search for a good technical co-founder can take weeks or months. Don’t try to get a bunch of other tasks done first before you begin your search. The best recommendation I can give is to run the processes in parallel. It will not only save you time, but you might get some fantastic advice along the way to help you further refine your idea. Also if the first person you find isn’t the right person, you might get some leads from them to send you in the right direction. 2. Know what skills you possess and vice versa – Mapping skills and deficiencies of you and your potential co-founder is essential. There is nothing worse than not admitting where your strong and weak traits lie. Do yourself a favor – be upfront with them and encourage them to be upfront with you. What this will do is foster trust and remove any ugly surprises later on in the process. There is nothing worse than assuming on either side you are good at everything. Once you have an idea what you both do well and what you suck at, you can begin to start mapping out additional hires or contractors to fill those potential holes. If you map everything out and find there are some pretty glaring holes, you have to take a long look in the mirror and figure out whether both sides are bringing enough to the table. 3. Skills don’t always equal a good technical co-founder – The person might have the skills that pay the bills, but does that mean they are a good technical co-founder? I would say definitely not. Beyond having the technical acumen to get you to MVP, does that person have the temperament to grow and scale a business? How would they react to a massive changes? When you hit a bump in the road, are they going to rise to the challenge or run for the hills? As much as they need the ability to write lines of code, their ability...

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