
How to hack your way into a hot startup with no experience - michaelrlitt
http://blog.vidyard.com/the-ultimate-hack-how-our-newest-growth-hacke
======
ajross
Is this the end of the current startup era? How did we get from "Make stuff
people want" to the current obsession with funding, SEO and "Growth Hackers"
(!). This sounds like the same sort of nonsense I was reading in January 2000.
Just like the 90's tech boom, the community has become inward-looking, stale,
and it's feeding on itself (c.f. this article, which isn't about how to start
a company but to be hired by a "startup"). The most exiting new stuff seems to
be stuff that just feeds more startups.

None of this is about the practical details of the article. If that's the job
you want then this sounds like a great way to get it. But like I said, if this
is the kind of thing that's interesting to "startups", then I think the end is
near.

~~~
epicjunction

      Michael was speaking at the KWB2B Marketers Meet Up
      I hopped in my dad’s car and drove to Waterloo.
    

Do founders usually prefer hiring someone who stalks them? Even if they quote:
"lacked any and all experience we were looking for."

Don't get me wrong, I think what Amar did shows a lot of hustle, and his case
on them showed that he was willing to learn and is passionate. But still, I
think ajross hit the nail on the end with saying "I think the end is near."
And I think that end will be when Pinterest has their IPO.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
While I agree that the end is near, I don't think Pintrest will be the
harbinger of the fall. I actually think that they are going to rake in money
on the scale of Google. They have intent (from the pins) and targeted
advertising, and Google have proved that the model works. Additionally,
Pintrest is about stuff, and if you think something is cool and want to do it
yourself, you're far more likely to actually click and convert.

Personally, I think the end will come when the free money the Fed are handing
out at the moment stops, and not a moment before.

------
kami8845
Wow, some really big mistakes... Explains why it took 5 months to get the
final interview.

>but I will put in 12 hours a day, 7 days a week until I get there.

>Vidyard being one of them, even if I work for free.

>I'm even willing to work for free for a period of time.

Never, ever, ever do this stuff

\- Free

If you say you're willing to work for free, that tells me one thing: You think
your work is of no value to me. And so if you think that, I will also think
that your work is worthless to me. Instant turn-off.

\- I will work 24/7

You're coming off as desperate if you put it like that. I've similarly been on
the job hunt for my first job recently and out of all the phone screens I had,
every single one led to an on-site interview (21 on-site interviews in the
next 3 weeks). I attribute my success in part to a similar snipped that I
would make sure to drop into every interview:

"I'm not a 100% subscriber of Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, but I do
believe that in order to become good at something you have to spend a lot of
time and focus on it. I want to become the best software developer I can be.

I'm not looking for just a 9 to 5, and especially interested in startups
because I want to join a great team that I can intensely work with and learn
from"

That was roughly part of my pitch. I also researched _every_ person who I'd be
talking to. Has a lot of PostgreSQL related posts on their blog? "Oh yeah I
hate MySQL". Re-tweeted a tweet about a MongoDB bug report? "I prefer
traditional databases for serious apps". Has a blog post about Go? "I think
the speed advantage that Go can offer is really interesting" And so on and so
forth. People like people who are like them, with pretty much everyone
exposing their lives and opinions, stuff like this is up for easy pickings.

Respect to the guy's persistence. I'm similarly in a position where I can't
immigrate to the US (but at least I'm a EU citizen so I can move to London) so
I can see why OP really wanted to join a famous startup when there's already
so few available to him.

~~~
hnriot
Working for free does not mean the work is worthless. This is just an insane
idea. Let's say I volunteer building houses for people in the 3rd world, or I
give free talks at my daughter's school, or I help some friends get their
startup off the ground, none of these means they are worthless. This must be a
cultural difference thing, but giving freely of your time for endeavors you
believe in should not make you think my work is worthless to you. Compensation
comes in many forms. Money is just one of them.

~~~
danso
> _Let's say I volunteer building houses for people in the 3rd world, or I
> give free talks at my daughter's school, or I help some friends get their
> startup off the ground, none of these means they are worthless._

You're right, but the difference is perspective. In those situations, the
"employers" expect the work to be free, because they are "paying" you in non-
monetary ways (such as, continued or closer friendship). So someone offering
to do work for free is meeting their expectations.

In the case of a stranger approaching a company...An employer is expecting
such work to cost money...and if someone unknown offers to do that work for
free...then there are multiple ways to interpret that offer, many of them
detrimental to the candidate:

1) The candidate is actually not very good or is inexperienced, or else he
would know that he could be getting paid good money to do what he is offering
to do.

2) The candidate sees the proposed work as trivial. See 1)

3) The candidate is desperate, leading the employer to wonder if either #1 or
#2 have something to do with that.

4) The candidate sees the employer as desperate.

5) The candidate is actually very good and is fully confident that his work
will knock the employers' socks off.

Sure, #5 is possible. But likely?...

~~~
lubujackson
He was clearly #1, inexperienced. Which the job application said was OK as
long as you were willing and able to learn as you go, so there is a clear
narrative he's following: "let me prove that I can work myself into this
role."

The side benefit is that even if he fails or works for free for a month or two
he will have gained valuable experience that could get him a job elsewhere.

------
Irregardless
It's an interesting story and really shows an unusual level of determination,
but I'm stuck on this part:

> So, just to recap, that’s about 5 months and 9 interviews/meetings and
> countless hours spent working on projects/reports/presentations.

> by proving himself capable for the role, he hacked the process.

I don't see a hack so much as I see a broken process that made a single task
monumentally difficult and time consuming. Employers everywhere have a problem
with relying on credentials or experience rather than recognizing ability and
potential, which is understandable given time and budget constraints. If
someone could figure out a way to help companies quickly pick talented but
inexperienced individuals out of a pool of applicants, THAT would be a hack. A
pretty amazing one for employees and employers, too.

~~~
redwood
I think it would probably be better to just make "temp to hire" the norm and
start lot's of people, keep those who seem to excel.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about cut-throat competition and giant
classes feeding into one position.

I'm just thinking you can't tell how someone's going to do until they're in,
and you should be able to get them in quicker and easier to find out. Finally,
a lot of good people can learn quickly.

I suppose what I suggest is real hands-on mentorship which is not the norm in
American management today...

------
ia
"hot startup" is empty and salesy, IMO. after reading this, i kind of wish i
hadn't. none of the parties mentioned came off in a positive way.

------
eliza1wright
Wow. I don't know if I should be impressed or pity the guy. Mike says,
"Everyone who wants to work in a startup should do this," which I don't agree
with. But I think every job-seeker should read this piece and pay attention to
2 key points:

1\. Amar leveraged his own internet real estate by publishing blog posts about
Vidyard's marketing and then tweeting at the founders to let them know about
his work. He essentially provided some flattering, well-written, and useful
consulting work to Vidyard.

2\. He was honest about his desires, expectations, and willingness to work.
When his initial email was written off as just another form letter, he went
above and beyond to ensure his real feelings were heard.

These tactics are within the reach of every reasonably intelligent person.
Good read.

------
theshadow
While this had a happy ending, can you imagine an alternate universe where the
founders for whatever reason decided not to hire the guy? Leading him on for
several months, making him jump through hoops and then not hiring him would
have been a huge waste of time and energy, esp considering they seem pretty
disinterested through most of the process. People sometimes greatly undervalue
the value of a polite 'no'.

~~~
matthewowen
I think you mean 'uninterested'. Pet peeve, sorry.

But I wholly agree with the substance. This article feels like a justification
for an unnecessarily long process that was a poor use of everybody's time. It
reflects badly on a person if they're sufficiently desperate to expend so much
time on the whims of a particular company, and it reflects badly on a company
that would expect and encourage it.

To be clear - if you don't get a response, reaching out again to follow up is
a really good thing. Being persistent is a good thing. But I think you really
need to have a stronger sense of your own value than Amar displayed. When a
company is that cool on you, it's probably better to move on.

But the bigger problem, really, is just that it all seems so inefficient. With
all due respect, Amar sold himself really badly in the emails shown. That puts
you on the back foot from the outset, and it bodes especially badly for a
marketing oriented role.

------
Swizec
"Launch something"

That's all you need to get a startup to pay for your time. Honest. Every time
I launch something, emails start pouring in from people who are interested.

Forget everything else anyone says, just launch something.

~~~
mikle
I don't think you can make such a broad claim. I've been working at startups
for a few years and I don't lack job offers, but they come mostly from my past
experience and industry ties. I've "launched" (as in created) two small web
apps in the last 6 months and even though one has a few hundred users I still
only got a 15$ donation and some interesting conversations, but no job offers.

Not to mention I have tens of github repos and even though the link is on my
CV I was never asked anything about any of them in my last job search.

I live in Tel-Aviv, a city only second to SV in startup mania, yet I still
feel very alien reading a lot HN articles and comments.

Edit: Thought I should add: in the Israeli startup scene ties, not launching
are your best bet at getting a good job.

~~~
oz
_"in the Israeli startup scene ties, not launching are your best bet at
getting a good job."_

Could you explain why?

~~~
mikle
I'll try. First I want to make sure that this is from my personal, but vast
experience. I'm not saying it is the only way to get a good job, but it is the
best bet.

I think the most important reason is that Israel is a small and a tight knit
country, and so is the startup scene. It helps that the huge majority of
talented developers served at very specific army units (the most famous is
8200). This leads to a simple truth - when I interview someone he was probably
referred to me through friends or at least I know someone who worked/served
with him.

When I read the article I found it funny that Amar was OK with working for
free for a few months. Me and almost everyone I know served at least 3 years
in the IDF which __is pretty much __working for free.

~~~
oz
Ahh, I see. Thanks.

------
CosmicShadow
Wow, can't believe all the negative talk, perhaps I read it in a different
tone, but the story delivers what the headline says, unless you want to be
really critical on the word hack. If you are persistent and prove yourself,
you can go anywhere. It didn't sound to me like they treated him like crap,
yeah sure they told him No, they brushed him off, and they did what any other
person running a start up or even what any other HR person would do. If a guy
continues to practically stalk you, you either ignore him or are forced to
deal with him, and when you are 'awkwarded' into a situation or you see
someone trying hard, what are you gonna do, tell him to fuck off or throw him
a bone? Dude kept coming back and incrementally proving himself, asking for
what he could do, and what do you say? "Sorry you'll never be good enough?",
you don't know that, you just know he is currently right for that role, but he
still might be able to prove he's a valuable person to hire. The stories of
7-year over night successes are because of persistence, dude had that and
those are the people you want along with you on the ride.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"yeah sure they told him No"_

Where in the article did you find that information? I think the problem is
that they never did tell him 'no', stringing him along while they had
absolutely no intention in hiring him.

IMO, Amar should've moved on to a company that would appreciate him. The
Vidyard guys seem like major assholes.

~~~
CosmicShadow
My bad, maybe they didn't specifically say No, but if you apply for a job and
don't get a response, I'm pretty sure that is universally recognized as a No
in the job seeking world, and I think it's clear from the article that he
realized that, he just didn't care because he really wanted a job with them.

 _"However, I was too frustrated after being turned down everywhere else (for
one reason or another) and realized that on paper, I didn’t look too great
(Bachelors Degree in Science and a bunch of failed business ideas)."_

Guy recognizes that he doesn't look good enough which is why he is getting
No's or no responses, but he believes that he is good enough so he decides to
get creative to prove it.

If you are trying hard and they aren't responding, I think you know it's
because you aren't making the cut, Vidyard was sending subtle, but very well
understood signals that anyone else might do, you try, no response, obviously
no clicking with them, so you keep trying, because you still think you can
prove something.

It sounds like people want to say either Amar is stupid or Vidyard are dicks,
both had their own agenda and clearly sent each other messages about how they
felt without necessarily directly saying it. How many "No's" does it take to
get to a Yes in sales? Dude is a good salesman.

------
aclimatt
All right, most of these comments seem to be about how he went the completely
wrong direction looking to get hired and how each of us would have done it
completely differently. There's more than one way to skin a cat.

Would he have done better if he had just "launched something himself"?
Perhaps. How about being a fantastic coder and orator too? Certainly. That's
not the point. He had persistence. When it comes to running a company and
trying to be successful, there are few traits more valuable than persistence
-- and he has more of it than the majority of extremely smart people I know.

I know a lot of absolutely fantastic coders. Many of them are very creative
too. But the lack of persistence and drive is what will prevent them from
dealing with the emotional rollercoaster and disappointment that is running a
company.

Somebody with persistence and intelligence can learn any skill. And most
importantly, they can keep performing their skills when everybody else -- even
those 50 times better at it than they -- have quit.

EDIT: And I should have included: Amar, hats off to you. You're going to go
far.

------
aba_sababa
Does anyone actually read and care about this inane bullshit?

------
redwood
Amazing how much free consulting work companies are getting through job
interviews these days... It almost makes you think a lot of companies now have
an incentive to pretend to be hiring just to get this input.

By the way, if anyone's interested, I posted a cpl days ago to no avail the
following breakdown of job openings results in select cities by select
keywords via Indeed.com's API (I'm new to python and having some fun):
<http://i.imgur.com/hGlSb.png>

~~~
joonix
The article makes Vidyard and particularly "Mike" look pretty bad and lacks
perspective and empathy. The fact that he's OK with ignoring personal
communications just because they look like a "cover letter" speaks volumes. I
don't buy the "I'm busy" argument. I've emailed people like Mark Cuban and
received prompt replies in the past.

Worse, he interviewed the guy and made him do free, unpaid work to further
prove himself, and then ignored him for four weeks after he did the task!
Absolutely pathetic. I can only think about my friend's startup cleaning
company: he has prospective cleaners clean an apartment as part of their
interview to see their cleaning skills, but he pays them the standard hourly
rate ($20/hr+) for their time. And he follows up. And he doesn't have any
funding himself yet.

Posts like this one just reinforce and validate this kind of behavior in the
startup community. Just because you're a "busy startup guy" doesn't mean you
get to ignore labor laws and have free reign to be a prick. Just FYI, having
people work for free is almost always illegal if they're not receiving
academic credit.

All people deserve to be treated with common decency. It doesn't matter how
bad the economy is, how new the employer is, and how inexperienced the
applicant is. As soon as we deem it acceptable and in fact encourage the
abandonment of these principles and laws, we descend into a third world black
market business culture. I wouldn't be surprised if the next boulder we crash
into on this slippery slope involves applicants bribing their way into jobs:
"In exchange for letting me work for you for free, I'm willing to "fund the
overhead" of my training by providing you with a monthly stipend of $500/month
during my free labor period!"

~~~
michaelrlitt
You're right - I did lack perspective and empathy.

I never thought I'd be the busy guy without time or energy to filter through
and respond to every application we get.

The problem that I've encountered is that at < 15 employees, the best hires
are generally people we pursue. Literally 90% of people we've spoken to who
apply through standard means are ill-fitted for the role.

This post is designed to open the perspective of myself, the "busy startup
guy" as well as Amar, the "I want to be a part of a startup guy".

The idea is that everyone should go above and beyond to get noticed. Most
people don't. If you don't really really really think you can make an impact
in my business (and haven't shown me so via initiative) how can I really know
that you're not just another tire-kicker?

Remember, a seed-stage startup is on an egg-timer. Every minute needs to be
productive and every conversation needs to create value. We need to pick and
choose our battles wisely.

~~~
joonix
I don't mean to be hard on you, I was really just ranting against this
pervasive behavior, not specifically just you. I can see how this could
happen. I just think we should all try to proactively hold ourselves to higher
standards of doing business and employing people.

------
brianbreslin
You know its funny, most of the talented engineers here in Miami are working
at big corps and could care less about the startup echo-chamber and jobs at
these startups. Could be that our startups here don't get enough press to seem
cool?

~~~
achompas
Well, look at the article. It's written by a young guy who essentially
consulted for this company _for free_ for 5 months. I'd argue South Florida
has it right: startups are absurdly glamorized right now, and in a region
where everyone (everyone!) hustles to get by, the engineers know fronting when
they see it.

Why do engineers go to startups? Cool technology, interesting problems, more
autonomy, and the slim chance of a big payoff. Startups in South Florida
apparently have none of these. I've told Mike Greenberg (and you too, I
think?) as much about the tech meetup culture down there: you won't have
strong technology culture without strong technology. RefreshMiami and a Rails
meetup won't cut it.

Besides, why quit your corporate engineering job for a startup when you're
making $80k+ in a city where money is everything?

------
kamakazizuru
this is depressing. cheers to the guy for his persistence and interest - but
seriously - why would you still want to work for a company after being
literally treated like crap like that? also - what bargaining value do you
have at all w.r.t. salaries or equity if you go in seeming like the most
desperate person alive? It should be the other way around - if you´re good and
talented - which the author of the article obviously is - then companies
should court you to be come a part of their business. Case in point - the
42floors guys - who were awesome enough to really try to woo Dan Shipper
publicly - [http://42floors.com/blog/consider-this-a-job-offer-to-
work-a...](http://42floors.com/blog/consider-this-a-job-offer-to-work-
at-42floors) \- at the end of the day - you want to be valuable to a company -
and you want them to want you - telling them that they can use you isnt that.

------
Derpsec
this article was terribad internet 2.0 stuffed shirt middle management
corporate hot garbage.

i wiped my ass with everything that ceo had to say. join our moustache hipster
'hot startup', it'll take you 9 interviews but we're worth it. really? it's
2012 how about f you and your viral marketing video cloud service startup. you
are parasites upon humanity making video spam and viewing metrics stats for
car companies, penis pills and gambling. just admit you are shameless
hucksters that are one peg above a spammer, ditch the synergies and ridiculous
pretense.

if this guy enjoys the starbucks latte macfag synergies promoting corporate
work environment that's great but this isn't 'hacking' this is pleading and
begging to get a shitty job in yet another corporation that's just pretending
to be super kawaii cool and awesome but when it comes down to it they'll lay
this guy off in a heartbeat, sell the company to some megacorp and screw every
employee royally. all startups do this. the guy who owns it buys back all your
shares before he lays you off as a favour then keeps the money and sells out
faster than Jay Leno in front of a bowl full of Doritos.

I bet they do excrement inducing "team building exercizes" at this way super
coo startup. No matter what hipster clothes and mac products you put in front
of the CEO he's Bill Lumberg from Office Space demanding TPS reports.

Finally the worst of this entire article was the buzzword 'growth hacker'
which is newspeak for a spammer. Look at the definition article they link,
some guy who basically manipulates CL ads to punt his junk, a marketer with
coding experience, in other words, a fcking spammer. Protip: all of India and
Pakistan are chock full of marketers who can code. This is not a revolutionary
concept.

I would've shown up and given this guy a USB drive with 3 OSx exploits on it
to corrupt client side memory and my "resume", then sold myself to him in
person using balls not limp social media or stalking around linkedin and
twitter. If they didn't hire me I'd have their source code to sell on blackhat
SEO forums anyways so who cares.

------
mikle
I have read almost to the end and I still have no idea what a "growth hacker"
does. Is this SEO (another blurry, but less blurry term) or content generation
or scaling?

------
hakaaak
Very few will be this tenacious, so if you have a startup, don't get your
hopes up unless the pool of workers is really desperate.

------
johnnymonster
It very funny to see Vidyard erasing ALL comments on their post that are
negative, constructive or not LOL...

------
breckenedge
Kuddos to the persistence and doing a great job maintaining your tone in your
communications.

~~~
amarbirchahal
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the read.

~~~
vsloo
Can't imagine how frustrating something like this can be. Have many friends
with similar visa issues. Hope you'll enjoy Vidyard.

