First off, did you know Aaron Patzer is from Evansville, Indiana? I had no idea, and considering how often I link to and post his stuff, I should have known that.

Anyway, some of my big takeaways:

“About 8 or 9 months before we launched Mint, we started a personal finance blog. We didn’t really have much money at this time, so we couldn’t hire any writers. We did the blog mostly ourselves. We went around to all the other personal finance blogs, and we said, “Would you like to write a guest post for us?” Half of them said yes, as long as we linked back to them.”

“Then we emailed those guys and said if you put a little badge on your site that says, “I want Mint,” on your blog, or wherever, we will give you priory access. We got 600 people to put a free banner ad for our site on theirs.” 

“Then we launched at TechCrunch 40, and about 6 weeks before, I hired a PR firm, which I think is very important.”

“We also hired designers with a very specific skill set. We hired people who had a computer science background, where they could come up with the idea in their head, and render it in Photoshop, program it in HTML and CSS, and do a bit of a usability/user experience product management roll, sort of three roles combined into one.”

In less than 7 minutes this video shows us that kindergarteners are the natural champions of the lean startup methodology and every business class we take further dilutes our successful, natural instincts.

“Business students are trained to find the single, right plan…what kindergarteners do differently is that they start with the marshmallow and they build prototypes” (Biz Students vs. Kindergartners starts at 1:50)

“With each version kids get instant feedback of what works and what doesn’t” (3:11)

“Sometimes, a little prototype of this experience is all that it takes to turn us from an uh-oh moment to a ta-da moment.” (6:34)

I think this “marshmallow challenge” could also be a great interview activity for lean startups.

Memorable quotes from the interview:

“One thing I did at my second company was to put white sticky sheets on the wall, and I put everyone’s name on one of the sheets, and I said, “By the end of the week, everybody needs to write what you’re C.E.O. of, and it needs to be something really meaningful.” And that way, everyone knows who’s C.E.O. of what and they know whom to ask instead of me.”

“I keep my eye out for someone who has achieved a lot, so they’ve been a great athlete or on a great team, but then something didn’t go quite right, and they’re still very hungry and want to be C.E.O. of something. I like to bet on people, especially those who have taken risks and failed in some way, because they have more real-world experience. And they’re humble.”

When Yaw and I decided to start Pocket Tales before we had a programmer on board (we must be idiots right?) we knew hiring was going to be one of our biggest, most important challenges.

To be frank, it’s been a much bigger challenge that we expected, but a few months ago we made our first technical hire. Jeromy Darling joined our team just before Thanksgiving as our frontend developer. This particular hire came as a surprise for a couple reasons 1) He’s located in Minneapolis and we were sure we wanted someone from Indianapolis 2) He wasn’t referred to us and usually the best hires are referrals.

We’re ecstatic with the result, but it was a long road. Below are some details of our process which should help anyone out there trying to hire technical resources in Indianapolis:

Our Strategy

Hiring is important but we believed it was also something that could still be bootstrapped and done well with a lot of time and effort, something Yaw and I had plenty of. Our strategy was to offer a compelling position (livable salary, co-founder’s portion of equity, cool job, great company mission) and to blast it out to as many relevant friends and sites as we could.

Additionally, we knew were going to need to hire multiple skill sets to complete our application, so we posted 4 positions (Frontend Developer, Backend Developer, Graphics/UI Designer, Rich Internet Applications Developer); however, our intention was to only make one hire in the beginning and we were leaning towards hiring a Frontend or Backend Developer first.

What We Were Looking For

Here were the most important qualities we were looking for when we started our search. I put them in order of importance:

1. Experience building web applications
2. Unbridled enthusiasm for our idea
3. Available to work full-time
4. Ability to fill multiple technical roles (e.g. Can do both graphic design and frontend programming)
5. Desire to work for a startup
6. Located in Indianapolis
7. Able to serve as a technical lead

These qualities were required for all 4 of the open positions we posted.

Sources of Job Applicants

Below is a list of how applicants heard about our job openings. Most of these are sites where we posted the job ourselves; however, a few are job aggregator sites. In total we had 145 applicants and we invited 23 for phone interviews. We invited 2 people for second round interviews, although that number would likely have been higher if we decided to fill some of the other positions we posted.

Website (http://www.pockettales.com/)
35 total applicants
7 invited for phone interviews
It probably goes without saying that you should post your job openings on your website or your blog. Note: This “source” is a catch-all bucket for us. If someone contacted us and we didn’t know where they came from we put them down as “website.”

Craigslist (http://indianapolis.craigslist.org/)
34 total applicants (including Jeromy whom we hired)
5 invited for phone interviews
We only posted our position to the “Indianapolis” section of Craigslist. I wanted to post it to more cities but the Craiglist spam bots are aggressive and undoubtedly would have flagged and removed my multiple listings. As it turned out, my listings did get flagged the first time because our 4 job openings contained a lot of similar language. Despite the spam bots, you will get the most spam from Craiglist.

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A recent interaction with a developer reminded me of two things I’ve learned:

1. Don’t let your emotions control you, but don’t be afraid to show emotion.

2. It’s easier to control your emotions when you stop thinking everyone is out to get you. More often than not, people hurt you with their idiocy not their meanness.

The story - last week we conducted phone interviews for developer positions we have open at Pocket Tales. One developer failed to answer his phone at the arranged time.

This isn’t unusual. In my history of recruiting you always have one or two no-shows or late arrivers. You usually write the candidate off unless they have a very good reason, but you give them a chance to give you a reason.

Where it got interesting was his email response.

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The following video and presentation contain actual numbers from Mint.com’s startup story. It shows how Patzer and team budgeted expenses, hired developers, and raised multiple rounds of capital from “Garage” round to exit.

And it’s all wrapped up into a succinct 20 minute presentation.

This is extremely useful information; especially, for early-stage Indiana tech startups who see few if any examples of this type locally.

Patzer’s revenue model slide is particularly ingenious.

Startup Building 101