myoung8's comments

I've seen a few friends go down this path, happy to introduce you if you're interested.

Contact info is in my profile.

When you buy a qualifying print-edition book from Amazon you can get the Kindle edition on Matchbook for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free.*

* Applies to past, present, and future purchases.

If you're interested in a front-end position at SurveyMonkey, feel free to get in touch--we're hiring right now and, having joined recently, I can say it's an awesome place to work.

For what it's worth, this isn't the case at SurveyMonkey.

I'd say 90% of us are out of there by 5:30.

Bay Area, CA.

Come hack the auto industry at CarWoo! (YCS09)

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We are looking for an awesome Rails developer to help us take the online auto industry by storm. You'll join a great engineering and design team that's working hard to bring car-buying into the 21st century. The features you create will help turn the mostly terrible experience of buying a new car into a wonderful experience for our customers. Responsibilities

Work with Michael, Erik, Scott, Rimas, Tim, Andrew, and Patrick to create a world class set of products. We're a small team (just 5 engineers and 2 designers), but we work smart and get a lot done. Here's some of the cool stuff we're working on right now: a queuing system to optimize our operations across the country, an iOS app, and a stealth web crawler.

We do story-driven development, so you'll get the chance to work on any or all of this stuff if you so choose.

Qualifications

- Deep knowledge of Rails and everything that goes along with it (MVC, REST, relational database design/SQL)

- Solid grasp on modern web application design using Javascript, HTML, CSS

- Experience with version control systems (we use Git/Github)

- Solid testing methodologies and willingness to write comprehensive tests before release

You get extra bonus points for:

- Extensive Javascript experience outside of JQuery (e.g. Backbone)

- Ability to write complex SQL

- Understanding of good RDBMS design. Experience optimizing queries.

- Experience with memcached, sphinx, and nginx

- Story-driven development

- Web service/API development (REST)

- Experience with iOS development (Objective-C)

- Ability to play ping-pong skillfully and/or drive a go-kart furiously

Perks

- Full Benefits (medical, dental, vision, 401k)

- 17 days of PTO (vacation)

- $5,000 to buy anything you want to get your work done (must include an Apple computer of some sort)

- A substantial amount of equity in the company

If you're interested, send an email with your résume and something interesting about yourself to [email protected].

We're based in Silicon Valley, but if you live outside the Valley, we still really want to talk to you (we'll pay for your flight, hotel, and meals when you come interview with us).

Consistency of (beautiful) hardware design. Existing ergonomic keyboards are just plain ugly and it's a shame to pair them with Apple devices.

Agreed. An ergonomic mouse would be great too. Apple's mouse is beautiful, but it's one of the worst possible designs in terms of ergonomics.

I think it's a mistake to categorize all web startups as belonging to the "web startup" industry.

Even though we (CarWoo! YCS09) are a web startup, we see ourselves primarily as a company that plays in the automotive industry. All of our key metrics are highly-correlated with the automotive industry, not with what Techcrunch writes on any given day.

While a lot of YC startups' metrics ebb and flow with the goings on of the echo chamber, many do not.

It's not classic, but it is a diversified portfolio. YC invests in startups across all industries--automotive, mobile, health, financial, entertainment, etc.--which presumably is less risky (lower variance in returns) vis-a-vis just investing in one sector.

This isn't generally the case anymore--funding rounds these days tend to assign a 1X liquidation preference to both common and preferred shares, so assuming that a company gets acquired for more than its valuation, you shouldn't need to adjust EV down.

Thanks for the shout-out Sachin! Minor detail, but important: CarWoo! doesn't handle CPO yet, only new (current model-year) cars.

You're already ahead of the pack just by realizing that, though. Good luck to you. Feel free to reach out if you want any help.

Very little risk has been taken out until you've found product/market fit. Unfortunately, ideation and fundraising don't eliminate risk, they're the easy parts.

erik, maybe you should give them a clue where to start...

The first-mover's Achilles heel, though, is that you're the one who has to affect behaviorial change, which is the hardest part about building a company that is trying to fundamentally change the way people, well, behave.

That's a good point, thank you.

We have a VP Biz Dev, which is a totally different role. He's responsible for creating a pipeline of deals with big companies like KBB, AutoTrader, Cars.com, etc. It's a process that moves incredibly slowly.

We're looking for someone who can help us drive a lot of traffic right now and in ways that aren't necessarily traditional.

Sorry about that! Let me address your questions one-by-one:

1. We'll consider this. However, the vast majority of our users already know what model they want (i.e. they've done their research before using CarWoo!)

2. Same.

3. Split tests don't lie.

4. Actually, you're paying for the privilege of us keeping your information anonymous from 10 dealers and only giving it to the one dealer you want to work with after you've vetted them all through our app (i.e. we save you from spam), among many other benefits we provide, such as better prices from competition.

5. We have a 100% Happiness Guarantee and we're not afraid to use it.

6. Sorry about that, we use a 3rd-party service called SnapEngage, I'll have to look into this.

7. Some statistics for the analytically-inclined:

- CarWoo! buyers save an average of over $3000 off MSRP (but this is meaningless without context) - CarWoo! buyers save an average of $450 more than any other car-buying service (Costco, AAA, USAA) - For Minis, CarWoo! buyers save an average of about $500 off MSRP (relatively low, but Mini dealers generally aren't that willing to negotiate on price)

Thank you for your comments. Please let me know if you have any other questions or if you'd like a coupon to use CarWoo!

Unlike most other marketplaces, we're fortunate that we can build the network in an ad-hoc fashion.

Essentially, every time a buyer pays us, we reach out to just the dealers in that person's immediate area and get them to sign up. It's surprisingly easy because we come to them with a buyer who has paid money to help them buy a car that the dealer who's on the phone has on his lot.

Increasingly, though, as volume increases and dealers become more aware of CarWoo!, we don't even need to call.