Over the past decade, I’ve developed a very close friendship and work collaboration with Phil Weiser. Phil is now the Dean of the CU Law School. Prior to this he spent several years in the Obama Administration, most recently as the Senior Advisor for Technology and Innovation to the National Economic Council Director. We first met when Phil was running Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship, an organization he founded at CU Boulder.
Phil is an incredible thinker, totally understands entrepreneurship, is on a quest to level up law school education, and is my guide to all things politics. Simply put, he’s awesome.
He’s also hiring two positions – both of which report to him. If you are interested in these areas, I strongly encourage you to apply as Phil is a remarkable person to work with, and for.
Director of Communications and Public Relations: responsible for improving and expanding written and electronic communication within the Law School and for developing/ maintaining a public-relations program for the Law School. The Director will further serve to develop and implement an aggressive strategy to use traditional and innovative media work with the External Affairs team inorder to communicate the Law School’s research, teaching, and service excellence to external audiences.
Director of Information Technology: oversees all technology-related responsibilities and efforts for the University of Colorado Law School. In so doing, the Director will evaluate and support a range of strategies for using technology more effectively to advance the mission of the Law School and the effectiveness of its departments.
As a bonus, I expect you’ll get more time with me since I spend a chunk of mine with whatever Phil wants me to do.
If you are looking to be in on the ground floor of a hot, new mobile startup based in Boulder, now is your chance.
We’ve funded a new company focused on the business conferencing / collaboration market that uses a unique mobile approach. Our co-investors including Google Ventures, SoftBank Capital, SoftTech, and a few prominent angels. The team is led by an experienced entrepreneur who I have worked with in the past and he’s built a dynamite founding team.
The company is looking to build its core development team here in Boulder. If you are a great mobile developer (iOS or Android) and want to help start and build a great company, email me and I will connect you to the team.
We recently invested in an exciting company called Sympoz. They are searching for a great head of marketing.
Sympoz, based in Denver, was founded in May 2010 by an experienced team. They are growing rapidly, generated over a million dollars in revenue in their first year, and are now looking for an experienced VP of Marketing to join the founders as an integral member of the executive team to lead all aspects of marketing.
If you are interested and think you fit, please email ceo@sympoz.com.
Many of our Foundry Group portfolio companies are growing rapidly. As a result, we just put up a new page on the Foundry Group website listing all of the jobs in Foundry Group portfolio companies that we are aware of. We also have a new Foundry Group Jobs twitter feed to follow – it’ll tweet out a link whenever a new job is posted.
This page is built on top of Indeed, in our opinion the best job search engine. We are not investors in Indeed, but our friends at Union Square Ventures are. They led the way on this one, working with Indeed and hacking together some code to make a dynamic jobs page. We looked at several options but kept coming back to the USV Jobs page.
Kelly Collins and Ross Carlson in our office did all the work. They had help from Gary Chou at USV who generously provided all the code he’d written along with advice, as well as Matt Molinari from Indeed who helped Kelly and Ross figure out all the nuances of the integration.
So – if you are looking for a job in a high growth software / Internet company, take a look at the new Foundry Group Jobs page and follow the new Foundry Group Jobs twitter feed.
One of my favorite times for me in the life of a company is when it finds its sweet spot and really turns on the juice. Over the past year, we’ve had a number of our Boulder-based investments find this magic moment, including Trada and SendGrid. The most recent Boulder-based company to really hit its stride is Gnip.
Gnip is around three years old and is a testament to our belief at Foundry Group that it often takes several years for a brand new company to really find its mojo. While Gnip is building a business based on the idea that led to its creation, like most firms breaking new ground it has had its share of bumps along the way.
The first version of the product was based on an architectural approach that didn’t aptly satisfy all players in the ecosystem and wasn’t flexible enough. This led to a reset of the business, including a layoff of almost half the team (who were quickly absorbed into a number of other local Boulder companies, including several that we funded) and a different approach to the product. This approach worked much better, but by this point one of the co-founders was frustrated with the customer dynamics (all business facing) and decided to leave to start a new consumer-facing business (he left on good terms, we are still good friends, and he’s much happier today).
At this point, the other co-founder, Jud Valeski, stepped up to be the CEO. Jud is an extremely experienced CTO / technical product manager and developer, but had never been a CEO. The investors in Gnip committed to supporting Jud in any way he needed and he’s done a spectacular job of building the product, growing the team, negotiating several significant deals including the first Twitter data resyndication deal, and unleashing a very compelling set of products on the world. His one-year CEO anniversary is approaching, and things are going great.
The last three months have been pleasantly insane. Gnip has been adding customers at rate that any investor would be proud of, is executing flawlessly on the product and operations side as it scales up, and is posting month over month growth numbers that put it in the “they are killing it” category. Oh, and they are hiring as fast as they can find great people; across the spectrum (business, sales, & engineering).
I’m super proud of Jud and the team he’s built at Gnip. I expect we’ll look back on 2011 as the year that Gnip went from a highly product development focused company to a company that was firing on all cylinders. And Boulder will have another substantial software / Internet company in the mix.
Boulder is full of software engineers, but we need more. A lot more. So, several local companies pitched in some bucks and the organizers of Boulder Startup Week are buying plane tickets for five people to come out between May 18th and May 22nd. If you don’t know about Boulder Startup Week, take a look at the killer agenda.
If you are a software engineer, send ryanwanger at gmail a note containing the following:
1. An answer to why you are interested in coming out to Boulder.
2. A resume or examples of your work.
3. Your phone number.
The deadline for applying is 12pm MST on May 9th. Please don’t apply unless you are available to fly out to Boulder May 18th – 22nd (with a little +/- flexibility). Also, you have to be in the US already as the organizers can’t afford to fly you from outside the US. And, they’ll help you find a place to stay as long as you aren’t allergic to couches.
Orbotix, one of our investments (and a TechStars Boulder 2010 company) is looking for an iOS and an Android developer.
If you don’t know Orbotix, they make Sphero, the robotic ball you control with your smartphone. And if you you wonder why you should care, take a look at Sphero on his chariot being driven by Paul Berberian (Orbotix CEO) while running Facetime.
I got the following note from Adam Wilson, the co-founder of Orbotix – if you fit this description email jobs@orbotix.com
We are looking for two new full time positions to fill as soon as possible. We need talented iOS and Android Developers that are not afraid of a little hard work and a little hardware! You must have an imagination. No previous robotics experience necessary but it doesn’t hurt. We want someone that can help make an API, low level protocols, implement games and work on other research and development tasks for Sphero. We expect some level of gaming history and previous experience in the field. There are online Leaderboards and some side tasks include coding up demonstration apps for our numerous interviews, conventions and for fun! We pay well, have plenty of food and beverage stocked including beer, redbull and the famous hot-pockets, are in downtown Boulder and literally play with robots all day/night long. Read our full jobs posting at https://www.orbotix.com/jobs/ for more info. Take a chance…. email me at jobs@orbotix.com.
A bunch of our portfolio companies are hiring. Just today, I got emails about new job pages at Cheezburger (Seattle and NY), SendGrid (Boulder and LA), and Attachments.me (Bay Area). But the growth is everywhere – Zynga (throughout the US), AdMeld (NY, London, Berlin), Fitbit (Bay Area), Gnip (Boulder), Oblong (LA), Trada (Boulder), and – well – most of our other portfolio companies.
I know I’ve got to come up with a better way to aggregate jobs across our portfolio, but if you are on the job hunt, take a look. And if you are looking for something in Boulder, don’t forget that I manage a CEO list that I’ll happily email your resume to.
My friends at Orbotix are hiring. Following is the list of open positions. If you fit the description, like playing with robots, want free beer all day, and live in Boulder, email them a note with a resume.
– Game Designer: Are you passionate about gaming and have a deep understanding of game design and game mechanics? This isn’t a programming job but you will need to be able to create wireframes and rough graphics for games that bridge the gap between the virtual world on your phone with the physical gameplay aspects of Sphero.
– iPhone Game Developer: Build amazing and crazy iPhone games that integrate with the Sphero API.
– Android Game Developer: Same as the iPhone developer but on the Android side.
– Social Media & Marketing Manager: Do you love robots, toys, and games and can think of nothing better to do than talk to people about them – both in person and on Twitter, Facebook, and a blog? If yes, then this is you!
– PHP Developer Internship: This paid internship is for someone fluent in PHP development who can help manage the Orbotix web sites.
– Marketing Internship: This paid internship is for someone who will be working with our marketing manager to promote Sphero.
Orbotix has some exciting announcements happening in the next 30 days; if you’ve been waiting for the right time to join a hot startup in Boulder, now is the time. And, if you are at SXSW, go hunt down the Orbotix gang and participate in their “Where are my balls?” contest to win a free Sphero.