I agree totally with your point about learning to rest. I am a startup founder, do way too many hours, plus family life, social, volunteering etc. The funny thing I am just back from a two day break (viewing universities with my daughter) and that hard stop caused me to get some virus, it always happens. Work so hard to the point you need to stop, stop, get ill. I can't be the only one.
Aside from that, it's hard for people lots of people to know when to rest when you have this moronic grind culture buzzing in the background. I despise this crush it, work more, do more things attitude in the start up / tech scene. I would have hoped with a better understanding of peoples mental health this would have vanished by now.
Ah super. thank you for your reply. We have the Adobe creative suite here so I think I'll go on a crash refresh course. I'll also take a look at PenPot!
I used to actually work in radar on the Isle of Wight, lots of people think of it as simply a place for tourists and old people. However, at least to recently, its the home of a lot of the worlds greatest radar and antenna designers. Sadly its all in decline now.
Agreed, its a good place to explore! I live on the Isle of Wight, its full of interesting historical places. I'd like to discover the Nuclear bunker but yet to find it!
Thats quite fascinating to watch, however I'm not sure if I missed it but I didn't see the tower being earthed. Those installers must have some impressive protection in place.
I used to be a volunteer on an emergency lifeboat crew, we would do a lot of drills with a man on a winch and the first rule is, don't touch until he's earthed. Helicopters pick up a hell of a lot of static electricity so you normally see a small earthing line hanging below the man on the end of the line.
One time we were practicing fast recovery, the boat and the helicopter doing crew exchange at high speed. We screwed it up and the static charge blew a hole in the side of the boat!
As a previous owner of a Pixel I have to say it was one of the most beautiful and well crafted laptops I've ever owned. The Pixel had some major flaws, the CPU and overheating was a killer. However the biggest problem here is the underdevelopment of ChromeOS, such promise but it seems to be going the way of most of Googles products.
Front End Developer (JS, HTML, CSS) - Budapest (Hungary) - Full Time
Powered Now is currently looking for a front end developer to join our team in Budapest, HU.
As a Front End Developer, you'll be a key cog in our growing team. As a startup we have a level of flexibility you'll rarely find in other roles and your influence will be huge. We are changing an industry and if you have the ambition for it, we want you to join us.
We are looking for someone that relishes a challenge and has an instinctive grasp of how things work. You'll be working closely with the rest of the development team as well as our Digital Marketing group. Your focus will be to continuously improve the user experience while hitting an aggressive roadmap for 2015 and beyond.
We operate a mobile first policy and during the next quarter you'll be a critical part of our next big project, our cross platform and multi browser compatible release. Its a great time to join.
* 2-4 years of experience of the following areas: HTML5, CSS3, SASS, compass, responsive design, javascript.
* Portfolio that represents a range of developed websites or mobile apps
* Strong knowledge of website development
* Passion for emerging technologies and hunger to innovate
* Excellent written and verbal communications skills
* Strong organizational skills and an attention to detail
Powered Now - REMOTE (possibly) - UK - Marketing Engagement Specialist, aka Growth Hacker, aka Digital Marketing Expert
Where: UK South Coast, working from home (office to open within 12 months)
Salary: Great salary DOE with bonus linked to MRR targets
Benefits: Share options (subject to shareholder approval)
Well funded startup run by experienced entrepreneurs with a brilliant technical team seeks someone special to lead the digital marketing side of our business. The right person will be a digital marketing expert with a background in online products and services, there are extra points if you’ve worked in mobile.
Your immediate goal is to find a repeatable process to capture early adopters. Therefore, we need someone who can experiment with various strategies to find one that works.
The short-term objectives for this role are to:
- Draw up a plan of ideas (brain-stormed with the founders) to test, building on what has already been achieved.
- Test those ideas, measure their success and report back.
At the end of this period:
- You should have a clear understanding of what strategies work and where you should focus efforts to grow the user base
- Demonstrable growth in the subscriber base, for this we will reward you with a bonus linked to MRR.
In the long-term you will be immersed in our customer lifecycle, from acquisition to retention, so that you can serve as a subject matter expert and implement initiatives to reduce friction. This means you will be working with teams across the company on initiatives that deliver value to our users early and often.
You’ll like this job if you are (aka essential skills):
- Analytically focused.
- Methodical, consistent and diligent at recording all experiments. You won’t get bored and stop recording the results!
- Smart enough to spot trends.
- Into digital marketing and advertising.
- Like working with smart people in a fast paced environment.
- Happy to work remotely (although we are planning opening an office in the coming months) and capable at managing your own workload.
- You can work within a budget.
- Know how to use Google Analytics.
- Like occasional travel to exotic European destinations.
Extra points awarded for:
- SaaS or Mobile products background.
- Knowing additional analytical products like Mixpanel, Kissmetrics
- Living on the South Coast of England, although if you are the right person we can be flexible.
- Creative, comfortable when writing website copy and designing landing pages for campaigns (we use Wordpress).
- Any qualifications to do with SEO or PPC (Google adword certification would be exceptional).
- Startup mentality, we all have to ‘muck in’ from time to time.
Maybe, however in these times of austerity there's also nothing like a large corporate playing smart to irritate the natives (speaking as a UK income and corporate tax payer).
I would love to see the impact the UK boycott of Starbuck has had on their bottom line. Sure, not everyone cares but clearly enough people have forgone their red cups over the past few weeks for Seattle to take notice based on todays headlines.
With the UK being the biggest userbase in the EU for Dropbox its a shame they've decided to open up in Dublin, as my accountant would say its a good "tax optimisation" strategy.
Sure, hate the game not the player, but they could have scored some major plus points on the day Public Accounts Committee in the UK have poured scorn on Google, Amazon and Starbucks:
Yep, my startup business Powered Now is pure B2B. The same methodologies apply regardless of the market, however I take your point about stable processes. I think (and would love a discussion on it) the idea of a "stable process" comes with scale, the larger the orginisation the less likely they are to consider adapting or trying new things, although that might be a sweeping generalisation.
Regardless of the size of the business there are always people on the cutting edge, the early adopters you need to find and involve.
Best of luck, I'll watch this thread with interest.
The challenge is to take enough from the feedback to be useful and informative while keeping your focus. Its VERY easy to become obsessed about delivering what your customers / friends want and loose the original vision. Its about time for everyones fave Henry Ford quote "if I listened to my customers I would have built them a faster Horse".
Rather than simply asking "what do you think of X" I like to ask people about their pain points and then try to put two and two together. It can be frustrating and rewarding at the same time.