I wanted to say Congrats publicly to a good friend of mine. Shawn Nelson is the Founder of LoveSac. He has definitely seen his share of ups and downs (He’s the only person I know who has won a million dollars) but just recently hit one of his biggest ups. Shawn has been down in TX a lot lately working on a LoveSac theater, he just finished it up and will be opening it soon. Fortunately I get down to Texas a lot with my current business, the largest distributor of Caballo Negro is in Texas. I will be catching a show there next time I am in town.

Anyway Shawn way too go! I am proud to call you a friend and know that with your passion driving LoveSac beyond the brink nothing will stop it!

p.s. Its cool to have a theater but I want the bus!

So I have to eat a little humble pie here. In the past I have been way too critical of my experience in JUNTO. I was living in the moment and had no idea what it would do for me in the long run. I learned more about business in the short time I worked with the amazing guys in JUNTO than I did getting my undergrad (Nothing against Westminster or my Professors).

Anyway Greg Warnock, Alan Hall with the help of Joe Grover and I am sure Tara “the mother of Junto” Rosander are putting together another JUNTO group. If you are at a place in your life where you want to pursue entrepreneurship there is no other place in this state to learn more than through the Junto classes.

Here is an pdf from Joe Grover about Junto:

Junto 2008

Joe Grover | Mercato Partners | jgrover@mercatopartners.com

Anyway if you have any questions please feel free to contact me at ryanmoney”at”gmail.com

Thanks again to Greg Warnock, Alan Hall, Tara Rosander and all of the many other people who have put their time into Junto.

I just read an article in the Desert News from a Professor at Brigham Young University. I have a lot of thoughts about what was written but I would love to see what you think before I spew my guts.

John Richards of BYU and an Utah Angle says that deal terms in Utah “befuddle those who somehow want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to raising money for their business ideas”. He also goes on to say “Utah has an unusually high entrepreneurial activity rate per capita compared to most areas. Yet Utah is relatively small in terms of investment capital available to new or emerging entrepreneurial ventures. Thus, demand for cash is high and supply is low. That means the supplier has more power or leverage in the negotiations. This is a law of economics that is universal and obvious”.

What say you? is he right or wrong?

I am going to get as many thoughts back as I can and I will weigh in on it in a week.

Ryan

I am very glad that video interviews and video resumes are receiving so much publicity. It just brings awareness to using video in the hiring process. There will be a time in the next 5-10 years where half of all interviews will be done via video over the internet.

I keep on reading about how bosses are allowing their employees to work from home and how this is better for the company and the employee. With travel times increasing and gas prices headed no where but up. I see home offices becoming the norm. The internet makes it so easy and efficient to support this move.

Anyway, we at HireVue will always look for the best way to use video in the hiring process.

Here is some of what the USA Today wrote about HireVue ”

•HireVue works with employers trying to save money on recruiting by screening job candidates through video interviews before deciding on a formal in-person interview.

Co-founder Mark Newman says such remote video interviews save U.S. employers money on travel costs, especially in the tech industry, where job candidates often live overseas.

Applicants go to HireVue’s site to see questions from employers. They get a moment to read each one before videotaping themselves providing answers. Then they get up to two minutes to answer each question before the next one appears.”

Ryan

There was a great article in the New York Post about HireVue. Its not all positive but its good.

The one thing I hate in the article is where it talks about the candidates perception of HireVue. This is something I lose sleep over. I will always try to make it so that the candidate is able to put their best foot forward. We are working on three things right now that should dramatically improve the process from the candidate perspective.

Gerry Crispin is a good friend of mine (although he is my nemesis at the poker table). I love running into him because he always has the latest and greatest gadget. He carries around a laptop that is as big as my office desk (he uses a bag with wheels).

Anyway last time I ran into him was at Taluncon  (thanks again Jeff Hunter and Cyd for putting that on). He and I got talking about video resumes and how video was going to work in the hiring process. Mark Mehler, Gerry’s business partner caught it on video. You have to watch the whole thing because the last twenty seconds are the best. By the way that is Neal Bruce from monster and Jason Davis from Recruiting.com playing extra’s in the background.

Also have you ever been to www.nealbruce.com ? The guy lives in the same city as Neal Bruce from Monster but there is no mention of Monster on his resume. Does anyone know if this is the Neal Bruce from Monster.com?

I don’t know what to say about this article that I just read about the NFL not allowing tailgating at the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is an event that is ALL-AMERICAN. I am assuming the reason they are not allowing tailgating is because a terrorist threats. Be open with the people about the threats and let them make up there own mind about whether or not they want to tailgate.

To kill tailgating at the Super Bowl is wrong on some many reasons. I hope the NFL will change there mind.

I tried to find an email address or something to contact the NFL but no luck. If anyone knows who to contact that would be great.

I have talked a little before about what I call the “Entrepreneurs Wall”. A good friend of mine Will Allred (whom I believe is one of the smartest web 2.0 guys out there) sent me a blog post about perseverance. I agree with it so much that I had to break my silence and post about it myself.

This dialogue came from Steve Jobs who along with Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos is one of the greatest business minds in our era (IMHO).

SJ: I get asked this a lot and I have a pretty standard answer which is, a lot of people come to me and say “I want to be an entrepreneur”. And I go “Oh that’s great, what’s your idea?”. And they say “I don’t have one yet”. And I say “I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you’re really passionate about because it’s a lot of work”. I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don’t blame them. Its really tough and it consumes your life. If you’ve got a family and you’re in the early days of a company, I can’t imagine how one could do it. I’m sure its been done but its rough. Its pretty much an eighteen hour day job, seven days a week for awhile. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give it up. So you’ve got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you’re passionate about otherwise you’re not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that’s half the battle right there.

I couldn’t agree more with Steve Jobs. I love how he says “or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you’re passionate about” I know that it takes passion and commitment. Too many obstacles come up in front of “ideas” that kill progress, perseverance/passion is the bridge that overcomes obstacles and brings ideas to life.

Also I was reading a book that Henry Ford wrote and he talked about the same principal. His big beef was with people starting companies just for the sake of making money. His general thought was that there is no substitute for hard work and if you are just in it to make money you will not have enough commitment to make it work.

Anyway thanks Will for bringing this to my attention. I wish all entrepreneurs the best.

Ryan

Phil Carpenter over at simplyhired has a good post on what to look for in a start up team. He talks about an individual that is very flexable and able to roll with the good times and the bad. If you are looking at joining a start-up or about to hire a management team for your start-up I would look for Phil’s posts on the subject. SimplyHired is Phil’s 5th start-up so he should have some great insight.

First off let me say that HireVue is in no way a video resume! For some reason HireVue constantly gets labeled as a video resume when a video resume is everything that HireVue stands against.

Having said all of that I get asked a lot about my thoughts on Video Resumes. Something happened last week that illustrates some of my concerns surrounding the video resume. Yale senior Aleksey Vayner sent a video resume to UBS. Shortly after receiving the video resume some of the bankers began emailing the video around. (I am going to get my points from an article on Forbes written by Lisa Lerer)

• Video Resumes first and foremost can cause a lot of problems for companies. UBS is launching an internal investigation to figure out who began the leaking of Vayner’s video resume. You can now view the video on YouTube, OUCH!
• The video resume contained Vayner lifting a 495-pound weight, ballroom dancing, playing tennis, breaking seven bricks with a karate chop and waltzing. I don’t think that any of these are qualifications for the banking job. Here’s the point a video resume is only what the candidate wants to tell the company about herself.
• Richard Castellini, vice president of consumer marketing at CareerBuilder.com sums up the next point by simply saying Younger employees, often devotees on MySpace and reality TV, are predisposed to online missteps in the workplace. “Voyeurism is an aspect of their lives,” he says, “and they don’t understand the ramifications of it.”
• Lastly the internet did a great thing for hiring managers it put a place together to both post jobs and get resumes. The problem now resides in the fact that there is a logjam of resumes. Can you imagine now having a video resume on all of those resumes.

So there are a few of my issues with the video resume. I haven’t even begun to talk about what you really get out of a video resume. I believe that it does more harm to the process then good.