The ab|inventio Gazette

One of our early investors was happy enough with what we are doing that he sextupled his investment in the abInventio fund. Thanks!

Thanks to Greg Buechler for a most generous post about ab inventio on his great site, http://www.offthehookjobs.com/ . It’s already bringing us great job applicants.

We seek an enthusiastic developer to join our team in creating the next generation people search engine. Headquarters are in Altadena, CA.

Required skills:

1. B.S. in Computer Science or related subject (M.S. a plus).
2. internet development experience (ideally 3+ years)
3. Deep knowledge of Perl and CGI scripting
4. C/C++
5. HTML
6. Database (SQL)
7. Proven ability of turning a research prototype into product level code
8. Proven ability of working in a small team and with limited resources
9. Fast learner
10. Good problem solving skills

Desired skills:

1. Web 2.0 usage experience: social networks, blogs, …
2. Previous exposure to machine learning and/or semantic text analysis and/or computer vision algorithms
3. Previous experience in startup environment

We offer a position in a challenging and nurturing environment, where creativity of individuals is highly valued. Compensation will combine equity and cash.

Looking for an entrepreneurial, hard-working and smart software developer to lead development of a new technology that will change the future of search and reputation. Technical requirements: Ruby on Rails and C++ programmer well-versed in Web 2.0 techniques needed. Candidate must be thoroughly comfortable with Ruby on Rails and MySQL 5 running in a Linux command-line environment. Candidate must also have knowledge of the basic usage and administration of Subversion, Apache, and SSH. Candidate should also be familiar HTML, Javascript, and CSS. Knowledge of screen-scraping techniques and automatic chart-rendering (such as the JFreeCharts library) preferred. Experience with the Facebook API a plus. ab inventio, the invention factory (www.abinventio.com), is an equal-opportunity employer.

If you do whatever it takes to get the job done, are efficient, have excellent people skills and like to have your hands in many pies, then this rocket ship of a company may be just for you! Apply at careers {at} abinventio . com . The position is at ab inventio’s Altadena World Headquarters.

Qless (http://www.qless.com) is a hosted service that virtually manages your customer lines or wait lists.

With QLess, customers can:

Join virtual wait lists by calling or texting with their cell phones
Pursue whatever activities they want, wherever they wish, while QLess holds their place in line
Obtain estimated wait times, which QLess calculates automatically
Ask to be pushed back in line if they need more time
Be notified when they reach the front of the line
Remove themselves from a wait list

We’re currently looking for an experienced individual to join our team to initiate and build the Qless sales and marketing function.

Key Responsibilities include:
•The drive to organically develop new business.
•The ability to open doors through effective prospecting.
•Proven history and ability to meet sales goals.
•Identify sales targets within a specific vertical, or across multiple industries like Casino/Gaming, Retail, Hospitality/Food Services, etc.
•Effectively manage client campaigns from concept/inception to implementation and post-mortem.
•Utilize internal sales platform to manage and maintain your pipeline and report your progress on monthly, quarterly and annual sales targets.

Requirements:

• 5+ years experience and a successful track record in direct marketing or sales preferred.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, presentation and negotiation skills.
• A history of success.
• Outstanding customer support & service skills.
• Entrepreneurial drive to open new markets.
  
• Ability to address basic technical questions and understand their impact on sales opportunities.
• Proficiency in MS Word, MS Excel, PowerPoint.

ab|inventio is growing, and hiring!

We are looking for:

* Search Engine Marketing/PPC Specialist. Whether you are an SEM expert already or looking to become one, The SEM Experts is looking for smart and motivated people with a desire to work with industry leaders and help some of the world’s best products reach more customers.

* Sales Guru. Our companies have innovative products unlike any in the industry, and are young enough that the whole marketplace is still open. It doesn’t get any better for a savvy sales guru to start and grow a winning team!

* Operations Meister. Are you an expert at getting things done? Capable of keeping a dozen plates up in the air? Enjoy wearing many hats? Have experience keeping a business running? We want you!

* Business Development GrandMaster. Can you ideate and strike strategic partnerships to drive revenues? Are you well connected or really persuasive? Do you have what it takes to put great products in the hands of millions of users? Come talk to us!

* Website Designer. Do you have experience building websites that rock? Do you know how to engage a visitor? Are you an entrepreneur at heart? Come show us!

* Software Engineer. Do you speak AJAX in your dreams? Code in your pajamas? Wrote computer games when you were 9? Like to make intelligent machines for the fun of it? Enjoy the feeling of shipping a product? You may belong here.

* CEO. As our companies mature, we look for world-class leadership to take them out of the crib. If you have what it takes to nurture a market leader, we want to hear from you.

Inquire within by emailing careers { at } abinventio.com .

Adapted from recent correspondence with Marc Andreessen:

Mike just pointed me to Marc Andreessen’s post on The Pmarca Guide to Startups: The only thing that matters (the market), which I recommend. I agree that the market is an essential element of the success of a start-up. Google’s (and Yahoo’s) success can be attributed in large part to the explosion of content on the WWW at the same time, which made almost any search miraculously yield something of some relevance (of course this does not explain why others like Altavista floundered). MySpace’s success can be attributed in large part to the explosion of young people on the WWW. iPod’s on the explosion of digital music. And YouTube’s on the sudden ubiquitous nature of digital video.

That begs the question: what will the next explosive markets be? I think Marc’s bet with Ning is a reasonable one: what could be more leveraged than creating a site to help people create multiple social networks? My own bets right now are on the following:

1. Finding a way to leverage the opinions of the millions of users who have started to express their view on anything under the Sun on the WWW.
2. Finding a way to find regular (i.e. not famous) people on the WWW –traditional search engine algorithms like PageRank were designed to find important webpages, and most people don’t have one.
3. Using the massive amount of digital data to personalize everything –the next decade will be one where cookie-cutter solutions won’t make the cut.
4. Using the ubiquitous nature of cell phones to solve the multitude of problems and waste (including waste of time) derived from lack of communication –automatic communication everywhere everytime will be the norm going forward.
5. Easy and inexpensive access to data and testing will eliminate arbitrary and/or irrational business decisions in favor of automatically tested strategies.
6. The commoditization of everything non-unique: The Internet has enabled the global supply of most any good to satisfy demand most anywhere on the Planet, meaning consumers no longer have to choose one seller: they can choose a good or an equivalence class, name a price, and let sellers compete to provide it.
7. (added by our own Mike Yudin): The web started as a very global media, it is now spreading to the local level. People expect to find information about their local community and interact with it online. Doctors and lawyers, car dealers, diners, plumbers, florists, community groups, schools, etc…

ab|inventio seeks to capitalize on these market trends. We have a number of teams working on solutions to each of the problems above: #1 is addressed by REPcloud (in stealth). #2 by Whozat. #3 by 2 start-ups we are working on that will personalize news and entertainment, both in stealth. Our first pass at #4 is QLess (www.waitinginlinesucks.com) , recently a finalist of TechCrunch Supernova. #5 we’re only just beginning to tackle, but www.PREPROVE.com will tackle one aspect. www.1ofthese.com will soon address #6. #7 we’re combining w/#3 in one of those companies in stealth.

Care to join us in the adventure? We’re hiring!

eBay Live 2007, the biggest trade show in the eBay ecosystem, started on Thursday morning. 1ofthese, an ab|inventio company that can convert every bidder into a winner/buyer by finding equivalent items for losing bidders, had a booth to introduce its services to big eBay sellers. It was the night before the show, and our booth sign had not been delivered. Our software still had a critical bug. Our impact movie had not been received. Our company T-shirts had not been received, and the girl who was supposed to wear one of them had not confirmed her presence. And the FEDEX package with the mind-reading headsets that we would use for our contest, prizing the contestant who got the highest attention score when concentrating on “I want more sales” was late.

But we did not give up, and thanks to diligent work by Susanne Sandsberg, Umesh Lalwani, Kartik Sehgal, Harender Kumar and team (and the fact that the Sun never sets on the ab|inventio empire), by the following morning, every one of those had been solved. With Mike Yudin (whose assistance was invaluable) and I manning our booth, we went on to collect hundreds of leads from eBay sellers interested in using our services, with many of them signing up right there on the spot. Prospective customers told us such things as “It’s a no-brainer to sign up for this!”, “This is a great idea!” (repeatedly) and “This is much better than eBay’s method”. We received visits by print and radio journalists, by an analyst intent on writing about us, and repeated visits by eBay executives, including Rob Cross, Sr. Manager of the Developers Program, and the top gun at Prostores, an eBay company which, in his words, has little to do with 1ofthese (eBay wouldn’t be spying on us via their companies, would they now?), . The keynote speech by eBay’s President North-America focused on eBay’s intent to increase “windorphins”, a term they recently coined for the feeling of winning an auction on eBay, which was practically an ad for us, given that 1ofthese is designed to help convert every bidder into a winner. We had a visit by a big potential bus dev partner, and by people intent on distributing our software in Europe. We had several visits by eBay educators who teach and train other eBay sellers. We had visits by Titanium sellers (the top of eBay’s tiers of sellers). And we had lots of useful feedback for future product development. I even got a chance to briefly meet Meg Whitman, eBay’s CEO. In sum, it was a thoroughly successful debut show. All with an investment in the smallest booth size available.

In the meantime, the Whozat team made several exciting improvements: a new UI, improved relevance, new interfaces to allow for comparisons of search quality, and two new internal UIs to test relevance improvements.

The SEM Experts grew its client base again.

And we came up with several new inventions for times to come.

All this in just a few days. Which brings me to how you can help. We are looking for a sales person and/or a biz dev. guru for QLess’s several verticals (restaurants, theme parks, hotel/casinos, supermarkets and retail, clinics and pharmacies) as well as one for Whozat HR and another to sell our Community-powered Corporate News Site to Fortune 500 companies who like to stay abreast of what their employees are reading and talking about. And if we find the right person, we may hire a Chief Revenue Officer as well for ab|inventio –someone with the experience to strike strategic partnerships and drive revenue across all our daughter companies. Referrals of exceptional people appreciated. And as always, we are always thankful for customer referrals, or for a word of advice.

We have also received investments by Assigncorp and Tom Mitchell, of Heidrick and Struggles fame and the co-founder of True Data Partners and several other successful ventures.

Thanks for your ongoing support. Thanks for helping us invent a better future.

Alex