HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

will_critchlow

746 karma · joined July 22, 2010

I co-founded an agency called Distilled in 2005, sold it to Brainlabs in 2020 and now run SearchPilot. I'm based in the UK just outside London.

In my spare time, I play basketball, drink whisky and enjoy cooking.

You can contact me at will@willcritchlow.com

submissionscomments
will_critchlow··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2012)
London: Junior / Graduate Python Developer

Distilled is looking for a graduate developer to join our growing Python team in our London office. We currently have the following largely Django based projects:

- DistilledU - a feature rich online SEO training platform - our latest project that came out of beta in June this year and is being well received by the SEO industry.

- Distilled Store - an online store we’ve built from scratch to sell conference tickets and videos.

- Internal Tools - building a range of tools, from quick hacks to fully functional tools, pulling from APIs and various data sets.

- Distilled website - currently a Wordpress site that we’ve got grand plans for turning into something far more awesome based on a Django CMS and blogging platform called Mezzanine that we will fully integrate with DistilledU and Distilled Store.

- Distilled Tools - our internal reporting system and tool for managing freelance writers.

You’ll gain experience in Agile development practices and work in an open, fun and collaborative environment. Please apply at the URL below.

Requirements:

- Python - some experience, not necessarily commercial.

- Frickin smart - you will need an uncanny ability to get stuff done.

- Passion for self improvement - technologies move quickly, we’ll expect you to keep up. - Evidence of getting things done - you’ll probably have a number of side projects.

About the company

Distilled is a search marketing company with a big and ever growing reputation. We have worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, and are known in the industry as experts in what we do. We are 100% owned by the two directors, with offices in London, Seattle and New York. Employees number 52 in total, with London being the biggest office. We like to have fun, with things like Beer o’clock every Friday, regular company outings and a meeting room that is largely used for 4 player Mario Kart.

For more info and to apply: http://www.distilled.net/graduate-junior-python-developer/

will_critchlow··on Ask HN: Who Is Hiring? (November 2012)
London: Junior / Graduate Python Developer

Distilled is looking for a graduate developer to join our growing Python team in our London office. We currently have the following largely Django based projects:

* DistilledU - a feature rich online SEO training platform - our latest project that came out of beta in June this year and is being well received by the SEO industry. * Distilled Store - an online store we’ve built from scratch to sell conference tickets and videos. * Internal Tools - building a range of tools, from quick hacks to fully functional tools, pulling from APIs and various data sets. * Distilled website - currently a Wordpress site that we’ve got grand plans for turning into something far more awesome based on a Django CMS and blogging platform called Mezzanine that we will fully integrate with DistilledU and Distilled Store. * Distilled Tools - our internal reporting system and tool for managing freelance writers.

You’ll gain experience in Agile development practices and work in an open, fun and collaborative environment. Please apply at the URL below.

Requirements

* Python - some experience, not necessarily commercial. * Frickin smart - you will need an uncanny ability to get stuff done. * Passion for self improvement - technologies move quickly, we’ll expect you to keep up. * Evidence of getting things done - you’ll probably have a number of side projects.

About the company

Distilled is a search marketing company with a big and ever growing reputation. We have worked with some of the biggest brands in the world, and are known in the industry as experts in what we do. We are 100% owned by the two directors, with offices in London, Seattle and New York. Employees number 52 in total, with London being the biggest office. We like to have fun, with things like Beer o’clock every Friday, regular company outings and a meeting room that is largely used for 4 player Mario Kart.

For more info and to apply: http://www.distilled.net/graduate-junior-python-developer/

will_critchlow··on Show HN: Business.txt - Standard Proposal
I like the idea of having a standard place to find this information. It's still for robots though isn't it? Why not include this information in robots.txt?
will_critchlow··on Viral Growth Pisses Me Off
Thanks for the comments in response to this everyone. To the parent comment, I think you'd change your tune if you met John. He's as legit as they come.

[Disclaimer, I'm one of the founders of Distilled - the company John works for. Brand issues very much acknowledged btw - we are thinking hard about it - trust me!]

will_critchlow··on Craig Silverstein, Google Employee #1, Leaving for Khan Academy
One of my colleagues wrote this in the fanfic style: http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/the-internet-without-googl...
will_critchlow··on How Trigger went international with Y Combinator’s help
I went to college with Amir and also caught up with him while he was in London. I'm one of the founders of www.distilled.net - we have a US subsidiary (see comment elsewhere on this page) - let me know if you have any questions I can help with.
will_critchlow··on How Trigger went international with Y Combinator’s help
We (UK-based, with 2 UK founders) created a US subsidiary with relatively little work - at least compared to the work of actually growing a US part of our business.

We initially created an LLC (Distilled LLC) that was wholly controlled by the UK limited company (Distilled Ltd). We have just recently changed that to a UK holding company that owns the UK trading company and changed the LLC to a wholly-owned US corporation.

So we now have Distilled Group Ltd owning Distilled Ltd and Distilled US Inc. (we weren't allowed Distilled Inc. because of potential confusion with Distilled LLC).

I wasn't personally involved with the paperwork / legal hurdles but I believe the company creation stuff has all been pretty straight-forward - certainly compared to visas for the (2, non-founder) UK employees we sent to the US. They haven't been too troublesome, but they certainly could have been and they did cost us money (in advice).

Sidenote for anyone considering this slightly convoluted process - if you have an EMI options scheme in the UK, you need the US subsidiary to be a corporation as it must have shares (the parent must own "all the shares" (or some such language) in all subsidiaries to qualify for EMI tax protection).

will_critchlow··on Women as Entertainment in the SEO Industry
To clarify / reiterate - the issues didn't happen at our conference (I double-checked with Jane on this!). I'm more interested in pre-emptive things to help make sure it never does happen at our conferences in future.
will_critchlow··on Women as Entertainment in the SEO Industry
Well, we don't have booths, never mind booth babes...

I'm more talking about the kind of harassment that Jane describes happening in the bar / at breaks in the conference etc.

will_critchlow··on Women as Entertainment in the SEO Industry
I know Jane well IRL and count her as a friend.

My company also runs digital conferences and she's frequently spoken at our events - and I'm very thankful it wasn't one of ours where the sleazeball stuff happened.

From a purely pragmatic perspective (i.e. what, as organisers, can we do about sleazeballs) I'm fascinated by two aspects of my own personality:

- on the one hand, I skew towards believing that individuals are entirely responsible for their own actions. If someone's a sleazeball at one of our events, that's entirely his fault (I would obviously react badly if I witnessed it or knew it was happening in real time)

- on the other hand, I'm into game theory and behavioural economics and I wonder how we can structure things so that we reduce the occurrence of this kind of thing. I'd love to hear ideas for tactical things conference organisers can do to filter and constrain ridiculous behaviour...

will_critchlow··on A better Hackerbuddy
This is looking great Dave. I'm excited to see where it goes. Here's me: http://hackerbuddy.com/users/28
will_critchlow··on Music artist: "Why I prefer piracy to Spotify"
I'm intrigued: what massive negotiating power does spotify have to force labels / artists onto their platform? Is there a market failure here? What keeps the pricing unfair?

Why not just pull your music from spotify if you don't want it "sold" there?

(Written as a spotify premium subscriber who loves the service, but assumed that the music was legitimately obtained through a negotiation with the labels and / or artists).

will_critchlow··on Google to default to SSL version for logged in users
My reading of it has them blocking referrers even if the target page is https. See: http://searchengineland.com/google-to-begin-encrypting-searc...
will_critchlow··on Introducing Amazon Silk
I wonder if they jacked up the spot price to clear out some system capacity for a big test...
will_critchlow··on Introducing Amazon Silk
SEOmoz have been seeing extreme volatility in EC2 spot pricing - could this have been related to pre-release testing of Silk?

http://devblog.seomoz.org/2011/09/amazon-ec2-spot-request-vo...

will_critchlow··on I went through YC as an intern, here’s what I learned
I am one of the owners of one of the companies that Ed interned at. He is amazing - proving that opportunity is there if you just go and grab it. Here's what he produced: http://www.distilled.net/linkbait-guide/
will_critchlow··on From Here On Out, Do What You Love
I'm one of the founders of Distilled (mentioned in the story) and I also come from a technical background (maths mainly). The thing I love about SEO is that we get to work on harder problems in more fun ways than any other industry I've come across. You can make it whatever you want - Justin is a great example of this.

And, yeah, he rocks - but you all worked that out already.

will_critchlow··on Server Density scores Angel funding and rolls out ‘app store for sysadmins’
So excited about this. We're thrilled to be involved (and really happy this is now public so we can start talking about it!). I'm going to be writing more on the Distilled site about the whole experience and why we're getting involved / how we plan to help.

It's a crazy-smart team at SD and I'm very excited about what's coming next. It's our first investment and I'm also really looking forward to learning loads from our co-investors over the coming months and years.

will_critchlow··on London Is Gonna Be Pissed, But We Prefer Berlin for Startups
I don't know where in London you are taking about, but I live in zone 3 in a 3 bedroom house and my mortgage is less then that...
will_critchlow··on SEOmoz introduces public analytics on all posts
As someone who blogs on SEOmoz, you can bet this is going to make me up my game with my posts now everyone can see how widely-read my posts were vs. my colleagues'.
will_critchlow··on Speaking of the British
You're right. I'm talking about the ones with the pre-requisite knowledge, not the total blaggers. It's hard to address their answers to the questions that don't have right or wrong answers because they answer so well.
will_critchlow··on Speaking of the British
Yep. This rings true even of technical graduates. Makes them really hard to interview because they are so good at interviewing!

I think it's an under-rated skill outside oxbridge. I certainly think it's helped me and I only have the very edges of this skill that I picked up at Cambridge.

will_critchlow··on Silicon Milkroundabout: Forget the banks, come and join a London startup
Is there any way for other companies hiring devs in London to throw our weight behind this?
will_critchlow··on A death sentence for a young Chinese businesswoman chills entrepreneurs
Really? Is there anything similar in the UK? I don't believe there is - but I generally tend to believe there is less red tape around entrepreneurial activities in the US than the UK (we run businesses in both places).
will_critchlow··on Ask HN: Who's hiring in Europe?
We are just about to advertise two dev roles (mainly python). In London - no remote options.

Email me (address in profile) and I'll let you know when spec is live.

will_critchlow··on Don't touch me, I'm British
I'm surprised by the eye contact comment. As a brit, I definitely rate eye contact.
will_critchlow··on How to Track Highlighted Text on Your Site with Google Analytics
This is smart. Wish I'd thought of this. I love hacking GA to do fun stuff. My recent favourite is tracking real page load time (i.e. not just server response times but actual user load times in the wild).
will_critchlow··on New in Gmail Labs: Smart Labels
I'm not seeing this in my (paid, google apps) account - does anyone know if it's rolled out for everyone?
will_critchlow··on ASK Hn: Funding a "small" startup in London
I'd love to chat. I may not be your 'fool' (see other comments) but I may know some. I'm based in central London. I have some contacts.

One day I'd like to be making investments like this (he says, not really knowing what you're planning to do).

Can you share more info privately?

will_critchlow··on Startup culture memes: do you have a duck of awesomeness?
I'm really thinking hard for new ones we could add now. I feel like there must be one around how we share knowledge and also how we market ourselves (pretty much one and the same thing).

I wonder if we could design language to help people get that element of our culture quickly when they join...

← PreviousPage 2 of 5Next →