NEARLY 11,000 JOBS AVAILABLE AT VENTURE-BACKED START-UPS

November 16th, 2009 by admin

nvca logo StartUpHire_Logo

Contact:
Channa Brooks, Tenor Communications for NVCA, channa@tenorcom.com, 302-368-2345
Robin Bectel, New Venture Communications for StartUpHire, rbectel@newventurecom.com, 571-312-1448

NEARLY 11,000 JOBS AVAILABLE AT VENTURE-BACKED START-UPS

NVCA and StartUpHire Celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week with “Help Wanted” Initiative

November 16, 2009, Arlington, VA — Thousands of America’s venture capital-backed start-up companies are bucking the job-cutting trend and actively seeking new employees, according the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and the job board StartUpHire.com. Despite mounting job losses nationwide, StartUpHire currently lists nearly 11,000 jobs available at more than 2,500 companies across various industries, states, and job functions.

As part of Global Entrepreneurship Week 2009, the NVCA and StartUpHire will highlight the contributions of these young entrepreneurial companies to economic growth by:

Releasing jobs data by geography, industry, and job function on both websites throughout the week.
Creating a permanent link from the NVCA website to the StartUpHire website so that job seekers can easily connect to openings at venture-backed companies.
Publishing testimonials from start-up company employees on their work experiences – all in 140 characters or less. To submit your start-up story please visit www.startuphire.com/stories by Wednesday, November 18, 2009.

The two organizations first partnered to report venture-backed job availability in early 2009. The job listings on StartUpHire represent an important segment of the total jobs at venture-backed companies nationwide.

“Global Entrepreneurship Week celebrates the risk-taking, innovative thinking, and passion that drive entrepreneurs to build sustainable companies,” said Mark Heesen, president, National Venture Capital Association. “A significant factor of entrepreneurial success is hiring the right people, a tenet for which venture capitalists have a daily appreciation. This week we join the rest of the world in formally honoring those employees who take the risks necessary to grow our start-up community and build the U.S. entrepreneurial economy,” Heesen added.

“It should be noted that the value of StartUpHire goes beyond the actual job listings. These companies are not only creating jobs but they are doing so in the industries which will keep America competitive both economically and technologically. Start-up companies engender an entrepreneurial culture that lives long after the early days, often inspiring employees to spin out and create entirely new companies with what they have learned,” said Steve Fredrick, partner, Grotech Ventures and a founder of StartUpHire.

Please visit the NVCA and StartUpHire websites each day this week to see more details about job availability at venture-backed companies:

Tuesday, November 17 – venture-backed job openings in each state and region
Wednesday, November 18 – venture-backed job openings parsed by industry
Thursday, November 19 – venture-backed job openings listed by function (marketing, sales, etc.)
Friday, November 20 – release of start-up “short stories”: 140 character testimonials from venture-backed employers and employees

The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) represents more than 400 venture capital firms in the United States. NVCA’s mission is to foster greater understanding of the importance of venture capital to the U.S. economy, and support entrepreneurial activity and innovation. According to a 2009 Global Insight study, venture-backed companies accounted for 12.1 million jobs and $2.9 trillion in revenue in the U.S. in 2008. The NVCA represents the public policy interests of the venture capital community, strives to maintain high professional standards, provides reliable industry data, sponsors professional development, and facilitates interaction among its members. For more information about the NVCA, please visit www.nvca.org.

StartUpHire is the job search engine dedicated to recruiting exceptional talent to jobs at venture capital-backed companies. Our mission is to connect talented individuals to exciting career opportunities at venture-backed startups and to accelerate the team building process for companies and their investors. These are some of the most rewarding careers on the planet, but they historically have been difficult to identify. StartUpHire sponsors include Argy, Comerica, Calysto, Cooley, DLA, GlobalLogic, MMV Financial, Morrison Foerster, New Venture Communications, SIIA, and Sonnenschein. www.StartUpHire.com.

Posted in Jobs Data, StartUpHire News | No Comments »

Tell Us Your Start-Up Stories … in 140 Characters or Less!

November 3rd, 2009 by admin

For Global Entrepreneurship Week USA (Nov 16-20), the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) and StartUpHire are partnering to promote the thousands of jobs available at venture-backed companies. As part of this effort, we are soliciting start-up “short” stories … in 140 characters or less!

By following this link, you will have the opportunity to share a sound bite with the world about the unique attributes of your organization and what inspires you about working at a venture-backed start-up.

Companies and start-up employees are invited to describe start-up life as briefly and creatively as they can. We welcome all submissions from all employees and will accept multiple submissions from the same company. These “short” stories will be published the week of November 16th on the StartUpHire and NVCA websites, along with links to the company home page and/or their StartUpHire job listings. The best submissions will be highlighted in a national press release on November 20.

Thank you for your support in telling these great stories! We look forward to hearing from you.

Tell us your start-up “short” stories: http://www.startuphire.com/stories/

Posted in Startup Life, StartUpHire News, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Do you have what it takes to be a founder?

November 1st, 2009 by admin

(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)

When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves the following series of questions: monkey

Are you comfortable with chaos? (Startups are disorganized)
Are you comfortable with uncertainty? (Startups never go per plan)
Are you resilient? (At times you will fail – badly. How quickly will you recover?)
Are you agile? (You may find the real opportunities for your company are somewhere else. Can you recognize and capitalize on them?)
Are you creative? / Can you recognize patterns? (Can you think “out of the box?” Or if not, can you recognize patterns others miss?)
Are you Passionate (Is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? 24/7?)
Are you tenacious (Can you keep going when everyone else gives up? Can you keep giving 200 percent despite all the naysayers who don’t believe in your idea?)
Are you articulate? (Can you create a reality-distortion field and have others see and share your vision and passion?)

Even if they answer yes to every question, I remind them that they should be bringing some type of domain expertise (technical or business) to the table.

This is the minimum feature set for founders.

Generic advice given to entrepreneurs assumes that everyone is going to be the founder/co-founder. Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. If you’re not a founder (by choice, timing or temperament,) you may be an early employee or a later stage startup employee.

(And my advice to students who believe they want to do a startup but are unsure if they want to start one, is to join one that’s already raised their first round of funding. Founders know they want to start something. If you’re unsure, you’ve just decided.)

I believe that founder, early and later stage employees each require different risk/personality profile.

The Early Employee

If you’re a founder/co-founder all the attributes I mentioned above are needed in spades. However, if you want to join a startup as an early employee (say in the first batch of 25), you can modify the list above.

You still need to be comfortable with chaos and uncertainty, but by this time the major risk of where the first round of funding is coming from is gone. However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile.

Early stage employees are “self-starters” and show initiative rather than waiting for other people to tell them what to do or how to do it. (You may be wearing multiple hats in one-day.) You have to be passionate about your work, the company and its mission to be working 24/7. But more than likely you don’t need to be as articulate or creative as the founders (they’re doing the talking, while you’re doing the work.) And while you do need to be tenacious, you won’t need to be the last man standing if the ship goes down.

The Later Employee

If you want to join a startup as a later employee (say employee number 25-125, before the company is profitable) you can continue to modify the list above.

You still need to be comfortable with chaos and uncertainty. And you will be dealing with change, but it won’t be the constant daily change the early employees dealt with. By now the company may have found and settled on a repeatable business model. And at this stage of the company rather than everyone doing everything, actual departments may begin to form. However, job responsibilities and organizations will change regularly and you need to feel comfortable in embracing those changes and taking responsibility and ownership.

And you’ll still need to have a resilient and agile personality, as new customer and product opportunities will appear and change your work. But it won’t be happening daily. And while you still need to love what you do your passion doesn’t have to extend to tattooing the company’s logo on your arm.

Take the time and think through who you are and what level of challenge you are looking for.

You’re not joining a big company. Startups are the adventure of a lifetime – but make sure it fits who you are.

Posted in Startup Life, Team Building | No Comments »

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