Our newest team member is a designer, not a rapper
Last Friday I got a DM from Hup asking me to “whip something up for the blog by Monday… to give a sense of my skillz and personality.” After my initial confusion (thinking Hup wanted me to redesign an entire blog in one evening,) I realised what he meant: a blog post. “Feel free to flex your creativity a bit,” he said.
Shit. I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start over.
Hello. I’m Eston Bond. I left my job last week to come back to the startup fold after absurd amounts of relentless harassment a gentle coaxing by my friend John Ramey. Previously, I was a relatively early Product Designer at Facebook, the original creative director and game designer of Twitter game Spymaster, a consultant for various social gaming companies, and most recently Principal Interaction Designer at MySpace. I’m really, really excited to be working in a fast-paced environment again on product design for a demographic I haven’t worked with yet, so expect to see more from me and my fellow designer (I’ll let him disclose himself) on this blog about the challenges we face in iterating on isocket’s product and UI. There’s really nothing like working on the ground floor of a startup.
Christ. That was boring, too. I’m sorry.
Given the climate at MySpace at the moment, I’m going to have to take down my little nerdcore track for now just to be safe. Sorry guys!
Eston Bond is isocket’s new designer, with the official title of “Mad Hatter.” He challenges all geek rappers to leave some rhymes in the comments below.
Our Investor Can Dance, Can Yours? Dave McClure Gets His Groove On for Chic Meets Geek
I know that we don’t talk much about our investors, but I thought that this might as good a time as any to start. To everyone’s surprise (well, not really), Dave McClure, one of our investors who is never too scared to get his groove on, decided to show off some of his interpretive dancing skills at the Chic Meets Geek event last week in San Francisco.
After being on the mic for a few minutes he decided that his time would be much better spent dancing than talking.
“I might be a geek, but one thing I can do is bust out the moves like nobody’s business.”
Personally, I would have to agree with him, but take a look at the video below or check out this direct link to UStream if you want to decide for yourself.
Answers to the 10 Most Common Things That Interviewees Want to Know Most About isocket
If you didn’t know it yet, we’re hiring 3-4 awesome PHP developers/engineers and 1 amazing front-end developer/CSS/Javascript ninja here in the very near future and we’ve been getting after it to find the right people.
Since we’ve quickly figured out that most people who are thinking about interviewing with isocket need this type of information anyway, we thought that it would make sense to post all of it here on our blog for the world to see. So, allow me to present to you the 10 most common things that interviewees want to know most about isocket, answered by our co-founder and CEO John Ramey.
1. What are the co-founder’s backgrounds (for John Ramey)?
I’ve been a techie and entrepreneur for as long as I can remember. isocket is my third legit business. I used my 12th birthday money to buy my first domain name back in the late 90’s to launch a foodie social network (it failed). In high school I started a service business called Lythargic Media, helping local SMBs “get on the intertubes” – we built brochure ware, CMS’s, etc. In college I started Maven Ventures, a product & service business around real estate marketing. We started thinking about isocket due to the pains of that last business, eventually spinning off and going full time with what has now become a great startup =)
2. What is the vision for isocket and why does it matter?
We believe that it’s still way too hard to find, buy and execute most forms of advertising. For all the “advancement” that’s been made in the last decade, that fundamental problem still exists. We believe that the approach of the last ad wave was… misguided. We believe that by bringing the open web and transparency to advertising, we can finally make real progress for both buyers and sellers.
3. What is the stage of the product, who are the current customers and what is the potential market?
isocket is still very much an early stage product and company. We are “release early” type guys – so when TechCrunch came calling early in our development, we were happy to oblige. We took the company out of stealth and went live with TechCrunch as our first customer in Summer of 09. We’re now ramping our private Beta, bringing in many of the publishers who have signed up to join (you can request a beta invite here).
4. What isocket’s funding situation? Are you going to be around in 3 months and who are the investors?
Unlike most early stage groups who have a handful of people, we’re going to be around for a while. We raised a $2M seed round from some of the best early stage investors in the world. As a well capitalized seed company, we have the runway to build the company correctly and for the long term. You can rest assured that if you join now, we’ll be around in 3 months 
5. What type of work would I be doing, who would I be working with and what’s interesting about it?
You would work with the founders and everyone else on the team (an advantage of being small) to execute on the promise and vision of the company. You’ll wear many hats and learn a wide range of new stuff. But obviously, there’s work to be done – so if you’re a backend engineer for example, you’ll be responsible for the end to end process of planning / building / launching / testing our product. Picture being part of a 5 person company in a garage trying to change the world. That’ll be your job.
6. Where is your office located?
We found a great place to work in Burlingame, CA. There are two other startups in our building (Brightkite and Jobvite). We definitely wanted a place to be comfortable, so standard office parks were off limits. High ceilings, natural light, open space, funky colors, and two awesome dogs. We’re also less than a block away from the Caltrain station, which makes getting around a cinch.
7. What types of interesting technical problems would I be working on?
Trust us – we’ve got a lot of very interesting technical problems and challenges to work on. And they’re not all your typical “how well will our MySQL scale” problems. isocket is taking off because of our vision for the future, which is rooted in our tech. So we can’t share much more publicly – if you want to find out more, I guess you’ll just have to come in and talk to us =)
8. What’s your office culture like?
Although it’s cliché, we work hard and play hard. Joining a venture backed high growth startup is a lifestyle choice, not a job choice. The benefits of that lifestyle are working in the type of environment / culture that you daydream about at big companies. Fun, open, communicative, no politics. Smart, passionate people working together to build incredible value and change an industry. Even more importantly – you have the freedom and support to impact and build our culture the way YOU think is best. Feel free to check out our insideisocket Twitter account and our videos on YouTube for a better look at what it’s like to work here.
9. What are the benefits of working at isocket besides working on the product? For example, is working at isocket going to help me get better connected in Silicon Valley?
There is simply nothing in the world like being part of the original team behind a company that changes an industry. The ability to think of a plan, do it yourself, and directly see the rewards. Friendships and brotherhood that is the civilian equivalent of going to war. You’ll meet the best people in the Valley and around the industry. Investors, advisors, the guy who engineer the Sony AIBO, etc. It’s all possible.
10. What technologies are you using to build the isocket product?
isocket is primarily built on the LAMP stack, using a PHP framework called Symfony. As a web app, we obviously use HTML, CSS, Javascript / AJAX / libraries, server stuff like memcache, MySQL, etc etc. Some of our platform uses other tools like C, Java, and Python. However – we are “right tool for the job” type guys, so we’re always open to experimenting and using what’s best.
Well, there ya go — if you’re interested in learning more about who we’re looking to hire go to isocket.com/jobs and let us know!
John and Zak Speak At The Teens In Tech Conference (And Meet The Woz)
This past weekend John and Zak had the opportunity to speak at the Teens In Tech Conference, which was held at Google’s San Francisco offices. They met a ton of great people throughout the day and were super excited that they had the chance to positively impact so many young entrepreneurs. Both John and Zak both started their first businesses in their early teen years, so they jumped at this chance to give back to an excited group of kids who are ready to take on the world with new ideas and innovations.
A few of the highlights of the conference included meeting a 16-year old who had a full business plan put together for a new airline he wanted to start, getting some sweet swag (ex. a sweet, new RickShaw Bag) and of course the one thing that tops them all — getting to meet The Woz (the co-founder of Apple, Steve Wozniak).
The Woz was there to check out what all of the kids were up to these days and was more than happy to sign several MacBooks throughout the day. Check out the video below or over here on ReadWriteWeb to see John get interviewed and to see the Woz in action.
A huge thanks goes out to Daniel Brusilovsky for putting all of this together and for inviting us out to join in on all the fun.
Beer Friday
Even though we’ve both only been members of the isocket team for a couple of months now, Vinoth and I have already started a tradition (although it’s not isocket’s first). It’s called Beer Friday and it’s nothing too fancy but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere, right? It’s been a long week and we cranked out a lot of awesome stuff, so personally I feel like we deserve a couple cold ones.
If anyone reading this is ever around our neck of the woods in Burlingame around 6pm on a Friday, feel free to join us.
Frank Meets Cosmo
Yesterday our friend Al stopped by the office, but he didn’t come alone.
Frank, meet Cosmo. Cosmo, meet Frank.
Telling the isocket Story at the Palo Alto JobNob Happy Hour
A couple of days ago we all headed out the Palo Alto JobNob Happy Hour in search of some talent that can help fill the void left by our current job openings. In other words, we hit the road to find some energetic, awesome and talented developers who are looking for an opportunity to help us build a product that will rock the world of online advertising. Is that too much to ask? We don’t think so.
The event was super packed and we were amazed at the insane amount of job-seekers who were literally lined up around the block just waiting to get in. After we made our way in though the masses and mingled for a while it was time for John to hit the stage, where he would have 60 seconds to pitch the crowd on what isocket is all about, what we have to offer and what types of talent we’re looking for. Considering that he was the first one to grab the mic (he was actually #2, but #1 didn’t show up), I think that he did a great job telling everyone about what we’re up to. Also, don’t forget that he only had 60 seconds to do his thing, which goes by even faster when you’re the one up there on stage.
Be sure to heck out the video of John on the mic below or over here on YouTube.
Also, on a side note, I snapped a few pics of a couple of the more interesting pitches that I heard after John finished up and wanted to let you know about them, too.
The MyLawsuit.com guy leaded off with. “Have you ever tried to file a lawsuit? Where would you start? Would you go to the Yellow Pages? Maybe call one of the late night infomercial guys that you see on TV? Finding your way around a lawsuit is tough and here at MyLawsuit.com we’re making it a much simpler process.”
I’m not sure if this is such a great thing for people to have access to? I would hate for lawsuits to become even easier than they are now, you know? However, I’m sure that this is a great business, so I should probably just keep my mouth shut. Moving on…
I thought that MingleVine (their JobNob profile) was one of the more interesting businesses to pitch on stage. I guess that they really caught my attention because they don’t really have anything to do with tech — they’re actually a wine carrier turned board game that makes drinking wine more fun and social than it already is. Hard to imagine that drinking wine can get much better than it already is (especially here in wine country), but it sounds like they’ve somehow figured out a way to do it.
Overall, the JobNob Happy Hour was definitely worth going to and presenting at. We met a few really solid developers who could potentially join our team, not to mention we also met a lot of other cool people who are doing really exciting things around the bay area. If you’re either looking to hire or be hired, I would highly suggest that you keep an eye out for the next time the their Happy Hour rolls through town. Just be sure to get their early, there’s going to be a line.
Zak Gets Extreme With Stubborn Money-Saving Printer Tactics
Any founder of a newly-funded startup will tell you that it’s always a good idea to save as much money as possible when you’re building out your product. However, sometimes trying to save a buck can go from economical to borderline fanatical, which is what has happened with one of our founders, Zak. I know that he has nothing but good intentions as far as trying to stretch a dollar as far as he possibly can, but in this particular situation he might have crossed the line over to crazy. But don’t take my word for it, read his story below and feel free to come up with your own thoughts and opinions. 
Zak vs. The Printer
We have an average laser printer that you would find in most offices, which means that the printer, when bought new, comes with a ’starter cartridge’ that’s filled with like 30% of the amount of toner that is found in a normal, brand-new, off-the-shelf (and fairly expensive) cartridge. I’m not sure who came with this jank idea, but for some reason it’s become standard practice throughout the printing marketplace.
If it had been up to the printer gods, our toner cartridge would have needed to be replaced like 2 months ago when we first got the standard “LOW TONER WARNING” that displayed proudly on our printer’s LED screen. But, thanks to Zak’s ingenuity and deep-rooted hatred of the ridiculous premium that we all are forced to pay for new toner, he used his MacGyver-like skills and figured out a way to trick the printer into pretty much using up every single drop of the toner that was left in the starter cartridge. I must say that this was pretty impressive, but even his electronic trickery couldn’t make it last forever and today was the day that the printer officially screamed out “No more!”. The time Zak dreaded most had finally arrived. It was time to change the toner cartridge.
Zak Gives In
Even after the printer gave off an error that literally read “Toner Life End” (as seen in the image at the beginning of this post), Zak still had to give the starter cartridge a few more shakes just to make sure that we weren’t wasting anything. You could see the defeat in his eyes as he finally realized that he’d been beat. I swear that he got a little teary-eyed as he started to reluctantly rip open the silver packaging that contained the brand-new toner cartridge. “You’ve won the battle”, he thought to himself, “but you’re not going to win the war.”
As Zak shut the toner’s access door and the papers started printing out again I began to think that it was only going to be a matter of time before I saw this scene unfold again. However, if Zak has anything to do with it, it’s probably going to be a while.
Looks like you’ve won this time, printer.
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About isocket
isocket.com is a
really expensivecommission-free ad platform. We're aMidwestSilicon Valley startup working passionately to improve the advertising options available to you. -
Recently Written
- Two For The Price Of Two!
- The Frank Experiment
- Our newest team member is a designer, not a rapper
- Our Investor Can Dance, Can Yours? Dave McClure Gets His Groove On for Chic Meets Geek
- Answers to the 10 Most Common Things That Interviewees Want to Know Most About isocket
- John and Zak Speak At The Teens In Tech Conference (And Meet The Woz)
- Beer Friday
- Frank Meets Cosmo
- Telling the isocket Story at the Palo Alto JobNob Happy Hour
- Zak Gets Extreme With Stubborn Money-Saving Printer Tactics
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