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So sad! I love Hackpad

I wonder what the process of losing a child was like for mothers in the 18th century. Somehow I have trouble believing there was that little sorrow

Yes, but there are fewer merchants than over. 50% of e-commerce goes through 12 merchants. Consolidation is insane in digital commerce. So yes, we can buy many more products but through fewer and fewer merchants giving them huge power. Amaozn alone accounts for 30% of e-commerce

Quick comment from the author: One problem with this method is that it only includes companies that have raised money. Those that were able to bootstrap and become profitable without fundraising (and are perhaps even more awesome than any company on this list) are not included here. It's a lot harder to get info on those companies, but if anyone has ideas for how to do it, I'd love to know.

Hi, Thanks for pointing this out. I should probably include something in here that clearly states: Getting into YC won't make you successful or vice versa.

No, it doesn't matter that much whether you get in, but people still care a lot and my point was simply to say: It's great to care, but don't let that fear paralyze you. Just apply and be a bit zen about the outcome either way.

Hey, this is Elli from HireArt. I'm the author of the piece. Agreed that rejection actually helps you get closer to your team and figure out what you're really building

Hey Steli, quick question: You suggest we should ask for the referral right when the customer makes the purchase. In the case of a SaaS solution (like ours) they haven't experienced the product at all right when they make the purchase...isn't it better to wait until they have experienced the product to ask for a referral (eg when they've had a success on the platform)?

Thanks so much for making this public. You're putting yourself out there for our benefit and so that we can all learn (and not feel quite as shitty when we get similar emails). Thanks.

Haha, I love the story about getting the job at Shoptiques! It's brilliant. Just show up and meet the CEO...Nice.

Great article! I especially like the comment below which is very true in our experience (W '13): YC: What’s been the most surprising thing about YC?

"How much everyone really cared about us. You have a lot of mentors and friends and supporters who are all helpful, but the YC partners had this astronomical degree of kindness toward us."

I had read a lot of marketing books and watched videos. Then I tried making my first Google Ad. I lost hundreds of dollars. Actually doing stuff is very humbling because you realize how little you know.

I think this really applies to all online courses. It's great to take a marketing course, but to really become a marketer you're going to have to learn how to learn on your own. Would be great for courses like Udacity to explicitly build material into their curriculum that teaches you how to learn on your own after the course is over.

So interesting to see start ups that help w this kind of remote collaboration. An interesting example of globalization. Now a band can be in Toronto, DC and Hong Kong at once. I wonder if the music will be more diverse and interesting

That's true ZhangBanger. But don't you think you get at least some basics from an MS in terms of logic, how to architect an idea, etc? For instance, as a non-tech person learning the basics was so incredibly difficult. Just understanding the basic frameworks of how a computer "thinks" was hard....

I wonder whether this is actually possible for someone who didn't have a computer science background at all. I have spoken to Andy and I know he did coding when he was young (Note, this is Elli from HireArt). I guess I wonder if it's possible to make such a huge transition if you had no prior CS background at all

Plug: If you want help writing a better job description, we're one of the companies quoted in the article and can help you (HireArt). We do it for free if you post a job on our site. It's pretty crazy how much of a difference it can actually make. If you do it yourself, my biggest advice is: make it memorable. Funny, sweet, crazy, whatever...but make it something people think of even after they close the browser window. www.hireart.com

Hey Baltcode, This is Elli, Co-Founder at HireArt. We actually only do jobs for non-technical hires (marketing, business development, sales, operations, etc)

Thx for checking it out!

Here is a discount code you can use (25% off for employers) https://www.hireart.com/for-employers?code=techcrunch

I love the part where he talks about how he thinks everything should be doable through the internet. Need food? internet. Need dates? internet. Need entertainment? internet. Totally true that most job boards don't work.

Wow the worst title in history.

Lol Dwight. Read article. Watch Vince Vaughn.

What's the most entrepreneurial thing you've done to get a job at a start-up?

Hi, Elli from HireArt here. She didnt get the job because she lived in Michigan and couldn't move to SF but she made it as a finalist. I was directly involved and was astonished at how well she did given her lack of "formal" education. I wish more people were like Patti. She really inspired me. The fact that Michigan is struggling economically and that she was unable to leave is a different and very interesting topic.

Yes, absolutely. We would love to hire someone from UOP.

The point is that right now people don't look at anything other than the fact that you went to Yale. If you didn't go to a good school, it's very hard to get noticed in today's job market. There's something fundamentally wrong with that given that with a few exceptions, where you went to school is directly correlated with your family's household income.

Elli from HireArt here. I think your comment is really interesting and important to take note of. It's a bit funny in my particular case because I actually worked for University of Phoenix for a few years which is how I got the idea for HireArt.

I met a ton of students at UOP who hadn't been as lucky as I had in going to a school like Yale (FYI, I was an athletic recruit so felt really grateful to be there). Employers literally ignored their resumes and would never get back to them. I was shocked because I would talk to some of these students and thought they were talented, ambitious, hard-working, etc. The thing that makes me passionate about HireArt is trying to overcome the obsession with credentials (which are very highly correlated with socio-economics) and moving toward a more meritocratic way of hiring.

Can I say that I am totally rid of the drive towards prestige? No. I fall into that trap. It's a hard trap not to fall into given how much society values brand names. Anyway, you pointed out a tension that I actually struggle with a lot. A recent article about the "college bubble" recently called for all Ivy-League graduates to 'renounce' their degrees to stop the bubble from continuing. It's hard in practice but the point of the article is that unless the people with Ivy-League degrees stop caring so much about them, the status quo cannot change.

Hey, Elli from HireArt here.

We work only with non-technical jobs like marketing, biz dev, sales, etc (we think technical jobs are quite different). And then we have two different types of challenges: 1) Challenges that individual employers create 2) General industry challenges that candidates can use to apply to lots of jobs.

In terms of how we come up with the questions, we mostly just ask employers: "What does this employee do at work" and then we ask candidates to do similar tasks.

learnup is awesome. we need lots of companies to solve this problem. Elli (co-founder @hireart)

Passive candidates are completely under-represented in recruiting efforts. This is awesome.

cool. btw email me directly at elli@hireart.com and i can hook you w some cool jobs.