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!