My Background - Before Venmo Graduated from Columbia Engineering Started at JP Morgan Left JP Morgan Learned iOS Development + Released 6 apps in the App Store Started as an iOS Engineer at Venmo May 2013 June 2013 August 2013 February 2014
My Background - At Venmo iOS Engineer February 2014 July 2016 Product Manager January 2016 Strategy Associate Completed the Flatiron School iOS Bootcamp December 2013
My Background - After Venmo Full-time Student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business September 2017 ??? Start a Company / Join an Early Stage Startup
● Roles: Who all make up a technology team ● Hiring: Getting Top Talent at your Startup ● Process: How to optimize for success with your new team Agenda
● Roles: Who all make up a technology team ● Hiring: Getting Top Talent at your Startup ● Process: How to optimize for success with your new team Agenda
Responsibilities of a Product Manager ● Assessing product opportunities ● Defining the product requirements and user experience design that describe the project to be built ● Validating the product to be built with real customers and users Roles: Who makes up a technology team
Responsibilities of A Marketer ● Telling the world about the product, including positioning, messaging, and pricing ● Managing the external facing product launch ● Leading key influencer programs and marketing campaigns Roles: Who makes up a technology team
Responsibilities of A Designer ● Creating the actual views and UI look and feel, including layout, colors and fonts ● Coming up with tasks, navigation, and flow that are both usable and productive ● Developing a deep understanding of the target users and personas ● Rapid Prototyping Roles: Who makes up a technology team
Responsibilities of an Engineer ● Providing feasibility estimates during product exploration ● Writing production code ● Testing production code ● Reviewing code written by peers Roles: Who makes up a technology team
Responsibilities of A Quality Assurance ● Writing and executing manual test cases ● Coding automated tests ● Logging bugs Roles: Who makes up a technology team
● Roles: Who all make up a technology team ● Hiring: Getting Top Talent at your Startup ● Process: How to optimize for success with your new team Agenda
Hiring: Getting Top Talent at Your Startup 1. Invest one hour a week to answer questions online 2. Hide little gems in your product and website 3. Write guest posts about things you’ve learned 4. Host a Hackathon around topics you’re passionate about 5. Give a 30-minute talk 6. Release internal tools as open-source projects
Invest one hour a week to answer questions online Possible Sites ● StackOverflow ● Quora ● GrowthHackers Venmo Co-Founder Andrew Kortina replying to a question on Stack Overflow in 2011. Getting Top Talent
Hide little gems in your product and website ● By using the console.log or simply as plain HTML. ● As a custom HTTP Header ● As a 404 page. ● As a small hidden message inside your logo Getting Top Talent
Host a Hackathon around topics you’re passionate about ● Great way to introduce potential candidates to the team ● Show them what it feels like to work at your office ● Record and document the event At Dropbox Hackathon: Engineers hack an LED screen to display animated Dropbox logo (left). Drew Houston, Dropbox founder & CEO, coding with everyone else in the company. Getting Top Talent
Give a 30-minute talk ● Look for nearby Meetups you believe your future employees ● People tend to connect faces to companies ● Share lessons learned and provide value to your audience Venmo Co-Founder Andrew Kortina speaking at the University of Pennsylvania Getting Top Talent
Release open-source projects ● Examples include ○ internal tools that make your work easier ○ components of your app or site that others might find applicable ● Demonstrates a company's commitment towards open source Getting Top Talent
What to assess in technology candidates ● Passion for building (sideprojects?) ● Grades (for new hires) or Experience ● Excitement for your product (champions?, ideas?) Getting Top Talent
● Lead a meeting with everyone working on the project ● All members should have reviewed the narrative beforehand ● Goal: shared understanding of objectives and agreement on approach to solve Kickoff Project Process
● What was the impact? ● Was the feature successful as defined by metrics? ● What do the metrics tell us about how we need to iterate? Measure Impact Process
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