Sorry about the hiatus, finishing up the semester and job-hunting (and Zelda ;)) have taken up way too much time and something had to give. Luckily not a lot has been going on over the past two and a half weeks. Now to get back into it…
TechCrunch reports that Jason Calacanis has joined VC firm Sequoia Capital as an "Entrepreneur in Action". Congrats to Jason!
This move is another data point for the idea that to become a VC, one needs industry experience first. Guy Kawasaki also talks about this in a recent post and even came up the VCAT, the Venture Capital Aptitude Test. I'm curious to see how Jason would score? Famed VC Mike Moritz didn't do too well, but I'd still want to see how a brand new VC scores.
Interestingly enough, the news broke almost 2 hours ago and its still not on TechMeme. The first Digg story showed up an hour and a half ago and the most popular one 45 minutes ago. Hmmm…
Technorati Tags: VC, Venture Capital, Jason Calacanis, AOL, Weblogs Inc, Sequoia Capital, Mike Moritz, Guy Kawasaki, VCAT, entrepreneurship
We're going to see job boards pop up all over the place since it's a much easier way to monetize a site than traditional banner ads. Compare pulling in $200-$250 a job post guaranteed versus the crapshoot that is AdSense et al (click-thru rate, cost per impression, # of clicks and # of impressions are all variable). If you've got the traffic already (as 37signals, Om Malik and TechCrunch do), then it's a no-brainer, especially once you take into account the fact that geekier audiences are more likely to ignore ads.
Mike Arrington writes about how both Jason Fried of 37signals and Om Malik turned down offers to join forces. Mike envisioned a job posting API and all sorts of interoperability. The problem is that these job boards are simple revenue-generating machines. By keeping the boards closed from one another, each company looking to hire will have to pay Mike, Om, and 37signals a separate listing fee. If we open the system up, then employers only have to pay one fee and all but one job board site lose.
While the idea of a job board API for interoperability sounds great, I don't think it can come from a job board site (at least not one bolted on to a blog), it will have to come from the employers themselves. And since the employers are each competing with each other for the best talent, I don't see any of them really taking a lead on the project (see 37signals' response above). Dave Winer has volunteered to develop the API, and he possesses the objectivity necessary to do so (at least for the time being), but for the same reason Jason Fried and Om Malik didn't join forces with CrunchBoard, I don't see them adopting any API either.
Technorati Tags: TechCrunch, Michael Arrington, CrunchBoard, jobs, Monster.com, job search, job board, Jason Fried, 37signals, Om Malik, GigaOM, Dave Winer, Scripting News, API, open network, walled garden
