Kunal Shah at RentJuice is hiring a Web Developer and a Designer in San Francisco
Kunal Shah was the first technical hire at Connected Ventures, joining as Lead Developer, and ultimately rose to be VP of R&D managing 10 co-workers before he left a couple of years ago to found RentJuice in San Francisco with David Vivero. Their service makes it easy to list and rent apartments.
My favorite memory of Kunal occurred soon after he joined. Revved up by having another teammate, we set an aggressive deadline to rewrite, redesign and relaunch CollegeHumor in about 6 weeks. Halfway through, Kunal and I found ourselves staying later and later at the office, now knowing full well that the self-imposed deadline was too aggressive. Only half-kidding, he proposed a rule that for every day we exceeded the deadline, we should stay one hour later than the night before. I accepted and 
a week later we were at the point where we had to bring sleeping bags to our grungy little office, which inaugurated a tradition now known as “Killweek” which involves bunkering down and camping out in the office for a week of bonding over work. On this occasion, on the final night, we worked through until 7am. The sun was up, it was Saturday morning, and we drifted outside for something to eat. The streets were eerily empty and without agreeing to it we wandered to the Brooklyn Bridge. We kept walking until we were halfway over it, and I remember the orange glow of the morning and feeling so proud of what we had accomplished, and most importantly I know both of us were thinking, “What a amazing city.”
Our friendship grew out of that week and I consider it one of my favorite experiences associated with moving to NYC and starting a company.
Since then, he has proven to be brilliant, rational, obsessively committed to his responsibilities, down to earth, and big hearted. He was so popular at Connected Ventures that the company planned a roast in his honor, the first and only for a departing employee.
You’d be fortunate to work with him and here’s your chance: RentJuice seeks a Web Developer and a Designer, both to based in San Francisco.
If you’d like me to pass along your interest, please send me a letter to share with Kunal.
July 26, 2010
Jonathan Marcus at HiiDef needs a Senior or Lead Python Developer anywhere in US
Jonathan Marcus was Vimeo’s first GM and is responsible for helping Jakob Lodwick and I recruit most of the talent that was the original Vimeo team. He taught me critical lessons in organizational scaling and he continues to impress me with the success of his pragmatic approach to team-building, which boils down to letting your co-workers decide how and where they’ll be most effective, as simple as the computer they prefer you to buy them to the hours and place they work.
Following his stint at Vimeo, Jonathan founded HiiDef with several partners including his brother David and Jack Zerby, another Vimeo alum. It’s a sort of incubator that continuously rolls out polished products, the most well-know being Flavors.me, but also Goodsie, Dashboard, and Superkix. There are nearly a dozen people involved and they work from all over and telecommute without any central office.
He’s now looking for a developer with an extremely thorough understanding of Python / Django, Javascript / JQuery and *NIX server / cloud administration. The ideal candidate, Jonathan said, has excellent communications skills, a good sense of humor and a calming, down-to-earth personality.
Competitive pay + health benefits.
To apply, email me a letter of introduction and code samples to pass along.
July 23, 2010
Perry Chen at Kickstarter needs a graphic designer and a frontend developer
Perry Chen is one of my favorite people in the world. He’s just one of those dudes who’s magnetic and attracts thoughtful and kind people — like his co-founder Yancey Strickler — and he’s looking for more people to join his startup Kickstarter.
He sent me over some job descriptions:
Front-end developer to work on advanced UI components — photo/video upload & management, live/faceted search, maps, data visualization, and others. We need someone who has strong experience with client/server interactions and an aptitude for user experience. Someone who knows unobtrusive javascript, can select the most appropriate method for an asynchronous process (polling, comet etc.), and will keep the DOM consistent when an ajax call in one place affects the display of information in another. We work in jquery and ruby/rails (haml, sass, compass). Naturally, experience optimizing for performance and browser compatibility is also important. You’ll work with others in design, product, and engineering to build and maintain UIs of the highest quality and consistency.
Graphic designer to further refine our identity and communicate our brand. Responsibilities would include the design of marketing materials and branded assets to be used both online and off. With that said, skills & experience ranging from print and web, including a strong technical understanding of both mediums. An ability to code isn’t critical, but a very big plus. Candidates should bring a strong typographic style to their work, along with a sense of wit and smarts. An appreciation for grids, simplicity and minimalist styling are a must.
Both w/ competitive start-up pay, equity. no telecommuting.
To apply, email me your letter of introduction to pass along.
July 23, 2010
Carter Cleveland at Art.sy needs a Web Developer with good design instincts
Carter Cleveland founded Art.sy, a marketplace for art. It’s intended for any artist with a piece to sell, no matter their expertise, or anybody wanting something unique to hang in their office or home. It’s fun to think about a world where generic wall posters are made obsolete by a long-tail of artwork. I’m especially bullish on companies that enable people to supplement their incomes by doing something they love.
It’s still in private beta, but I’ve seen a sneak preview and I was surprised by the quality of the design and UX. It’s one of my favorite startups in NYC, actually.
They run a LAMP stack and he’s looking for a Web Developer with good design instincts. Carter told me it’s a plus if you’re passionate about art of any kind.
To apply, email me your letter of introduction to pass along.
These jobs are worth a look especially if you’re an interesting person, but lack technical skills, or otherwise someone who wants to work from anywhere. Amit Gupta has a couple of positions to accomodate a wider range of candidates than others I typically post to this list. He needs plenty of technical people, too.
I’m collaborating with 
I finally ran into Jason at SXSW11 after years of being encouraged to meet him. He is, afterall, the original designer of Mint and praised for his heartfelt devotion to his work. He lived up to the hype.