This week’s Ask a VC was with Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, a standout in the younger generation of VCs whether you are looking at his portfolio (Twitter, Tumbr, Boxee, SendMe) or talking to entrepreneurs who work with him.
I asked Sabet about how fundraising went for Spark Capital, which just raised its third fund, and how much that early investment in Twitter helped the process. We also talk about a running theme on this show– how startups outside the US can get US VC attention, and the limited investments that Spark has done overseas. We talk about basic ways in which Spark– and Sabet in particular– like to be pitched, the slide that will turn him off immediately and whether he ever funds one-man startups. → Read More
So now that we have this big, amazing office in San Francisco, directly across from the Caltrain station (read: commuter friendly) and a stone’s throw away from AT&T Park (go SF Giants), we need to fill it with more great people. We’re hiring. Lots.
Join us and our modest goal of world domination. We love what we do. You can too.
Lots of other jobs around the world are listed on CrunchBoard.
The top roles we’re currently recruiting at TechCrunch follow after the jump. → Read More
Check out the jobs on CrunchBoard. Jobs from New York to San Francisco to Germany. See jobs in Europe here.
In the last couple of weeks we have added more than 50 jobs on CrunchBoard, including a Ruby Developer and student intern here at TechCrunch.
Click through to see a quick sample of some jobs posted. → Read More
The brains behind Yahoo Boss, a young engineer named Vik Singh, is leaving Yahoo to become an entrepreneur-in-residence at Sutter Hill Ventures. Earlier this year, Singh was named to Technology Review’s 35 Under 35 list at the age of 24. Singh is exactly the kind of talent Yahoo should be trying to hold onto, but that is hard to do now that it is ceding search to Microsoft.
Singh is more diplomatic. Contacted for comment he confirms, “I’ll be starting next week actually. I’m really pumped but I’m going to definitely miss Yahoo! It’s been such a great company to work at but I just got this really bad case of the entrepreneurial bug.” → Read More
We’ve seen free iPhone apps, $1,000 iPhone apps, promotional apps, pointless apps, and offensive apps. Now we have the high-concept app. This is a little like conceptual art, except that it doesn’t quite rise to that level.
One example of a concept app that just hit the iTunes Store is 24 Hours: The Starck Mix (iTunes link). It is a 24-hour soundtrack streamed to your iPhone, meant to be an audio tribute to French designer Philippe Starck. In fact, it sounds like something you might hear in the lobby of one of the trendy boutique hotels he’s helped to design, like the Clift in San Francisco or the Hudson Hotel in New York City. → Read More
Its CrunchBoard time, so let’s take a look back at the recent job news. Super Secret startup MOBshop is looking for some serious coding guns for hire. They say MOBshop “will hit the intersection of mobile and physical worlds.” If your looking to get your name out there and do some networking, Card.ly lets you create some cool online business cards. It’s time to get yourself a presence online, cause you know, this internet thing is here to stay. And we’re all about that business card dying thing. Things still don’t look good for the print media industry as the Condé Nast layoffs continue. They’ve hired consultants from McKinsey to help with the cuts, with the first casualty being their web brand for men. Well, atleast they’re hiring somebody. Here is our layoff tracker, which is updated regularly. If your on the hunt for a new job, CrunchBoard may be the place to find a new opportunity. Check out a snapshot of the jobs available below: PHP Developer Fox News Channel – New York, NY Content Associate Modern Feed – Los Angeles, CA Search Specialist imeem – San Francisco, CA Senior Technical Lead ByTheOwner / DuProprio – Quebec City, Canada Product Manager Bazaarvoice – Austin, TX For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard. → Read More
If you’re annoyed by TPS reports right now, consider yourself lucky. This week saw the staff reduction of MySpace by 30%, to bring the total number down around 1000 employees. Things dont look good abroad as well. But the situation might be turning a corner. Last week the U.S. Labor Department issued their Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report. While it showed an increase of 608,000 in jobless claims last week, the number of continuing claims dropped to under 6.7 million. Here is our layoff tracker, which is updated regularly. If your on the hunt for a new job, CrunchBoard may be the place to find a new opportunity. Check out a snapshot of the jobs available below: Sr. Java Engineer Cramer Production Business Trust – Norwood, MA Senior Brand Strategist Red Lever Inc- Santa Monica, CA Sr. Front End Developer eHarmony – Pasadena, CA Member of Technical Staff- Systems Kosmix – Mountain View, CA Ad Product Manager Cirius Technologies,Inc. – Sunnyvale, CA For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Don’t forget we’re looking for a few good hackers here at TechCrunch. Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard. → Read More
Dan Blake from Harkness Labs – who is working on far more projects at the same time than he could possibly tell me about in just one conversation – recently filled me in on his latest Twitter-related venture, TinyPetition.
Basically, Blake is looking to address the apparent need for a tool that allows the many opinionated people that inhabit Twitterland to voice their concerns about anything that gets their hearts pumping: a digital petition engine that can quickly spread online thanks to the viral nature of Twitter and the concept of retweeting in particular. → Read More
For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Don’t forget we’re looking for a few good hackers here at TechCrunch. Here’s a few Crunchboard jobs: Web Developer – Fast Growth Sloshspot, Inc – San Jose, CA Software Engineers Extendy – Virtual Location Application Architect frog design inc. – San Francisco, CA Back End Developer Momo Networks, Inc. – Palo Alto, CA Senior Java Developer Flipswap – McClean, IL Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard → Read More
With the apparent ease in layoffs, things might be looking up. This week we saw quite a few new jobs on CrunchBoard as companies are still looking for some tech savvy employees. But then again, according to analyst Christa Quarles, we might all be in the wrong industry. For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Don’t forget we’re looking for a few good hackers here at TechCrunch. New jobs on CrunchBoard: Director, Online Communications/Webmaster Broadcast Music, Inc. – New York Lead Web Developer NationalBLS – San Francisco, CA Senior Server Software Architect Nuance Data – Mountain View, CA Associate Product Manager Knewton, Inc. – New York User Interface Engineer Gerson Lehrman Group – New York, NY → Read More
April proved to be a dismal month for technology sector jobs and overall employment, but there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Granted, this morning brought sobering news of the U.S. unemployment rate hitting its highest mark since 1983: 8.9%. In the past month, 700,000 jobs were lost in the U.S., bringing the total number of U.S. jobs lost since December, 2007 to 5.7 million in April, 2009. However, while the economy continued to suffer from recessionary conditions over the past month, the pace of layoffs, at least in the tech sector may be decelerating.
According to the TechCrunch Layoff Tracker, tech layoffs reached 330,000 in April, due to layoffs announced by Yahoo (675), Sony Ericsson (2,000), Toshiba (3,900), and Nokia (450) over the past month. Media companies were also hit with layoffs this month with NPR, The Tribune Company, and Conde Nast Digital all forced to implement job cuts. However, according to the numbers, job losses may be slowing down. It only took three weeks for tech layoffs to go from 200,000 to 300,000 in February and five weeks for layoffs to hit the 200,000 mark before that in January. Yet it has taken 11 weeks for layoffs to rise by 30,000, with the layoff tracker hitting 330,515 layoffs today. → Read More
Last month, the social network hi5 cut a large percentage of its staff following a new round of funding that didn’t materialized. Now, the self-dubbed “world’s leading social entertainment web site” is getting a new leader at the top. Bill Gossman, formerly the CEO of the online advertising service Audience Science, is taking over as CEO of Hi5. Grossman was brought in by Hi5′s largest shareholder Mohr Davidow Ventures, where Grossman was a former partner and is a current executive in residence.
In the release (below) you can read between the lines to see where Hi5 is looking to head as it continues on at a smaller size. The site, is now focusing on forms of entertainment like casual gaming and micro-payments. Hi5 also recently partnered with Paymo to power mobile payments for virtual goods. Gossman, who obviously has experience in monetization, will now try to monetize hi5. The company’s former CEO, founder Ramu Yalamanchi, will stay on and take the roll of Chief Product Officer. → Read More
This week we saw quite a few new jobs on CrunchBoard, companies are still adding positions in New York, Silicon Valley, Boston, Philadelphia, and Austin. For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Dont’t forget we’re looking for a few good hackers here at TechCrunch. New jobs on CrunchBoard: Product Manager BillShrink – Redmond City, CA Software Engineering Manager- Core Site TripAdvisor – Newton, MA Software Technical Support Engineer Articulate – 100% Telecommuting Technical Operations Manager Yelp, Inc. – San Francisco, CA Junior Software Engineer doubleTwist – San Francisco, CA → Read More
With the popularity of Twitter and the proliferation of symbiotic applications designed to feed off the Twitter phenomenon, it’s becoming increasingly uncommon to see startups taking a stab at creating a totally new “micro-blogging” platform. That’s why it’s always fascinating to see how people are trying to reinvent the Twitter wheel. TribeHQ has launched its own twitter-like platform, but with a twist. TribeHQ is a “micro-jobbing”platform: a micro-blogging social network that enables members from the same occupation (or “tribe”) to converse with each other and with employers about potential job opportunities.
Unlike Twitter, which uses ungainly hash tags (#hashtags) as a convention to indicate what a particular Tweet is about, TribeHQ uses job-matching algorithms to align members seeking a new job with opportunities that match their career goals. Employers can post jobs and profiles of their companies. Tribe members can then have real-time conversations with employers (but only using 140 characters or less) and are automatically matched with jobs available to members of their tribe. TribeHQ integrates with Facebook Connect to import contacts. TribeHQ’s real-time conversations with employers is forward thinking when it comes to Track, because it combines real-time updates with filtering and mining of content. → Read More
This morning’s news about the latest unemployment statistics was dismal and quite sobering. The U.S. has lost 5 million jobs in the past 16 months, and the unemployment rate has hit a 25 year high, reaching 8.5%. Our own TechCrunch layoff tracker reports nearly 320,000 tech jobs lost since August. While jobs are being shed at an unprecedented rate, job listings are also being affected, both in tech and general employment sectors.
Tech jobs site Dice.com is reporting a 45% year over year drop in available technology jobs for March, continuing the drought of tech jobs in the economic downturn. This drop, as reported by Thomas Weisel Partners, is the highest annual drop Dice has seen so far this year, with February’s listings down 40.4% and January’s jobs down 39.3% (all year over year). In 1Q09, available tech jobs declined 41.4% year over year on Dice.com. Monster.com reports a 27% decline for Q12009 from last year, indicating that perhaps tech jobs are being hit harder than general job listings. And it seems that jobs hit an all time low in 1Q09, job listings declined 22% in 4Q09. → Read More
It’s time for CrunchBoard Jobs. This week we saw layoffs at UStream and companies hit the deadpool, but never fear as new ways to find a job came to light. Are you a Rails UI Engineer? How about a (soon to be) Director of Blogger Networks? We’ve got jobs all over the country, from a Salesforce Developer in New York to an Interaction Designer in Colorado. Job hunters in Europe can check out our Europe CrunchBoard. New jobs on CrunchBoard: Web Sales Manager Green Mountain Energy – Austin, TX Senior Software Engineer Undertone Networks – San Francisco, CA Lead Qualifier Box.net – Palo Alto, CA Business Development Manager Travelzoo – New York, NY Senior Metrics Engineer Serious Business – San Francisco, CA → Read More
The unemployment rate in the U.S. continues to trend up, and the tech sector certainly hasn’t been spared from the overall economic turmoil.
We’ve noticed a general downward trend in our monthly tech job listings on CrunchBoard over the last year, too, which confirms what is already obvious – there’s less hiring going on out there.
A year ago 100 – 120 job listings were added to CrunchBoard each month (which is consistent with the previous year’s trend of a steady 100+ listings/month). The number of new listings gradually declined and then fell significantly in November 2008, dropping from 68 to 37 listings. Things bottomed out in December with 22 listings, and have edged back up slightly since then. → Read More
Update: TechCrunch is looking for 4 remote interns–5+ hours per week. While this week saw fewer new jobs on CrunchBoard, companies are still adding jobs in New York, Silicon Valley, Boston, Philadelphia, and telecommute. (Here at TechCrunch, we’re looking for a Rails Developer.) New jobs on CrunchBoard: Software Engineer Yelp – San Francisco, CA Vice President Online & Mobile Ad Sales MocoSpace – Boston, MA Director of Product Management Stealth Project – San Francisco, CA Director of Marketing Xpree – Redwood City, CA CTO/Lead Developer NowHound – New York City or Telecommute International readers can check out our British and French job boards as well. → Read More
Despite the continuous stream of layoffs, CrunchBoard this week has the most diverse job listings I’ve seen yet. There’s both a range of job types–from marketing to technical–and a wide variety of job locations, from New York to Dallas to San Francisco to Portland, OR.
Want to work as a social media planner in Philadelphia?
Or a product manager at Newsweek Digital in New York?
Or maybe in the online marketing manager with a SEO focus at Match.com in Dallas?
(Here at TechCrunch, we’re looking for a Rails Developer.)
Some other jobs currently on CrunchBoard: → Read More
Starting a high tech company often means going at it alone, but eventually every start-up needs some outside help – whether from lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, or special types of vendors. And other times, a company just needs to sell things.
Unfortunately, startups don’t always know where to find help or list items for sale. To help them in these regards, we’ve added services and sales directories to CrunchBoard’s existing jobs directory. These new directories are intended to make it easier for high tech start-ups to find the professional services they need and sell the things that they no longer want or need. Conversely, the services directory in particular provides a door for professional services organizations into the high tech startup community. → Read More
