In recognition of the tough economic times we’re facing, and the fact that lots of startups are looking for people right now, I’m – perhaps naively? – going to have a go at kick-starting the market. But the “market” we are in is not just about jobs. It’s about office space. It’s about trying to find a mentor for your startup idea. It’s actually a bit like putting a band together – “drummer wanted, must also know Rails”! It’s about a lot of things that just don’t fit in to a box that most adverts try to shoe-horn you into.
I also get a lot of requests from people to Tweet that they need staff. Now, that wouldn’t be fair. I’d have to pick which ones to tweet and the whole thing would be unequal. And besides, tweeting ads all the time is something of a turn-off!
So, here’s the plan. For the whole of next THIS week – and during Future of Web Apps conference – TechCrunch UK & Ireland will be publishing FOR FREE on the CrunchBoard your adverts for people, office space, basically anything you can think of. I’d like to turn this into THE place to trade services, people, anything in the startup market in the UK and Ireland (doing Europe as well might be hard!). Here’s the RSS feed for the CrunchBoard.
Now, a lot of media sites which run classifieds out there aren’t going to like this (sorry guys!), but it will just be a for a week, after which we’ll revert to our normal charges for an ad (currently £20 per ad). We are also going to have to deal with the fact that right now the CrunchBoard is not really set up to carry an advert which says something like “Spare desk going in Shoreditch, comes with WiFi”. It’s best suited to traditional job ads. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Our first co-conspiritor is Cristiano Betta who is looking for a part time job as a junior developer at a firm in London and is experienced in XAMP, Symfony, and Rails. Here’s his advert.
Please send all ads for CrunchBoard to mike [at] mbites.com. Remember, it’s just free for one week only.
Update: Please note, I will give priority to ads which help startups (hiring, office space etc). Ads for services, like consultants etc, will come second in the queue.