MochaTalk

We got off to a great start in March! We moved into our office space on March 1st and did some intense recruiting. Our office is located in downtown Bellevue with easy access from 405 and 520. There are number of good restaurants close by and Whole Foods is within walking distance. Here are some pictures of our office and our team including our first champagne toast to celebrate the opening of our new office.

It is amazing how recruiting has changed these days. Being a startup, we didn’t want to spend money on expensive recruiters. We advertised on a number of sites including Craigslist, Monster, Jobster, Seattle Times Online, a number of PHP and Java bulletin boards. We also used LinkedIn to reach out to software developers with strong resumes at leading web companies in the Seattle area. And, of course, we tapped our friends and former colleagues for referrals. Referrals from friends are, of course, ideal. Other than referrals, Craigslist and LinkedIn have turned out to be the best sources of strong job candidates. Not a good sign for Monster and the like!

Overall, the pace of recruiting has been great. The article in the Seattle PI cleared helped in getting us good visibility. We have already hired 4 team members and a contractor and are looking to hire one more full time person on the development team. See the Careers section if you are interested in applying for one of these positions.

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It is amazing how quickly the word gets out these days despite trying to operate in “stealth mode”. Barely 2 weeks after we had put up our web site, we were covered on Mashable (albeit briefly). Yesterday, we got a call from John Cook from Seattle PI wanting to know more about our venture. John Cook is an intrepid reporter who is very plugged into the Seattle startup scene. I would highly recommend his blog if you want to get the inside scoop on local startups and recent VC investments in the Seattle area.

John’s article about LiveMocha (Venture Capital: Creator of social startup LiveMocha a bit mum) is on the front page of the business section of the Seattle PI today. While I didn’t go into specifics of our venture, the article accurately describes our strategy – which is to dramatically transform a large market niche we have identified by applying the latest Web 2.0/social networking concepts. John correctly identifies that “Social networking may be one of the most overused buzzwords of the new Internet era. But the concept — using the Internet to share information and connect people of like-minded interests — is rapidly catching hold as millions of people set up profiles on MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr and other sites.” While there is certainly a “gold rush” mentality these days around social networking, there is no doubt that it is transforming the way users (especially the younger demographic) are interacting with each other over the internet. As I had mentioned in one of my previous blogs, I view this phenomena as creating a “platform shift” and if you are first in your market to leverage the platform shift, you have the opportunity to disrupt markets, create significant value and displace incumbents.

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