May 4th, 2012. Demo day, after 100 days in the JFDI bootcamp!

You do what?

I don’t mean to be rude, but..
How do I know if your company is doing good things to change the community,
How do I know if your company is great to their people,
Has your company earned the right to hire so-called self motivated people?

I don’t mean to be rude, but..
What rocks your your world?
If it’s all about the money, it must be all about you!
When you are pissed off, what have you done to make the world less so.
Are you in the company of people who raise your level, or brings you down?

Managed to answer a question. Realised there is a real market need and clients are willing to offer a reward 10x higher than what we thought..

But ended up with a new question, as I ran right smack into one of the key problems to solve. Would people be motivated enough to refer a friend to a job?

Took a step back, and inspired by the post, the wrong problem, decided to see how i can draft a process that will allow me to fail faster, discover, and try again.

Took me 1 hour to launch the above feature, where people could post suggestions to a need. Hopefully this will help me understand the problem better, and ask the right questions.

Initial referral metrics were not good, but on further investigation, it was really about the quality of the referrers or node connectors that was important. Connectors in an industry had an interest to support a particular skill and refer others involved.

Couple other features I’m thinking about. A link for referrers to easily share on twitter, a list of well-connected headhunters, allow as many degrees of referrers, easily add employees and contractors to referral list, smart keyword search of friends who are in the same industry.

Have started sending roundup emails every 48 hours to the team, and friends that can add value to the next 81 days. There’s a positive pressure from it, when I say what new features have been done, or traction gained.

Couple of ideas from Robin Sharma. Enjoy the journey, and spend more time loving the family. Leave people better than you find them.

2 insights, on using TribeHired to search for skills on Facebook.

1. Is Facebook our secret alternative life? Well, no. Many of us at some point have asked for opinions or shared viewpoints on our Facebook wall so we can receive comments from friends, making it more real than alternative.

Google, and job boards tap into general searches of what people are talking about, the wisdom of the crowd. Facebook, taps into the wisdom of friends to get answers that take my preferences into account. A hybrid of this two is probably ideal.

2. With LinkedIn, if you pay for a premium search, you can effectively connect with someone up to 2 degrees. Which is great if you are looking for Ted, Business development guru in TribeHired. But if you search for copywriter in Malaysia, it returns 300 people.

At which point does the wisdom of friends kick in?

With TribeHired, 2 important things happen. One, the hirer gets introduced to candidate. Two, the introducer actively filters and selects the best fit guy for you.

The jungle is the 100 day bootcamp office with 12 startups, as featured on Channel News Asia. I’m the guy on the extreme left at the start of this video.

Here’s a great question. What do I need to fire myself from? I think I can only focus on a few things, and do them really well. And to get productive, means having a good team around me, who get things done.

Another question, What deadlines can I collapse? Turns out the work we do expands to fit the time available to do the work. That means what features can I get in within 48 hours to the web-app instead of 2 weeks.

The other 3 questions, ed, our potential business development ‘go-to’ guy, keeps coming back to when putting on the customer hat. what is it? why should i care? what’s in it for me?

Am thinking of taking the bus back from Singapore to KL today. It’ll give me time to spend in silence thinking about our mission. I’m deeply passionate about companies who want to do good work, and how TribeHired supports that growth.

Four ideas from the Robin Sharma programme:

1. Have dinner with at least 25 artists to open your mind.

2. Strategic rudeness is when meetings last only 40 minutes, and you get up even if the person is still talking on the 40th minute.

3. Be so good at what you do, that you’re the only one doing it at that level

4. 90 second rule. If a knew idea crops up, spend at least 90 seconds thinking about it.

Had a good meeting with our potential business development guy, to join us this week. I’m setting 48-hour goals that we have to meet.

Some context to TribeHired. Sandberg, COO of Facebook, alludes to the evolution of wisdom of friends over wisdom of crowds. TribeHired allows you to tap into this wisdom of friends to solve problems.

In the 1980′s, companies spam the entire country when they posted a job in the newspaper. And the country spam them back. I heard a story of an airlines organization getting a thousand resumes for 1 position a month (long story short, they dumped it in the dustbin).

In the mid 1990′s,  companies spammed the email inboxes of people unfortunate enough to register on job portals (how many still get emails to be an intern 10 years on..). In the mid 2000′s, anyone unfortunate enough to be working in Google, Facebook or Groupon is bound to be spammed by their ‘friends’ asking for a recommendation.

The solution now is for companies to use smart algorithms that suggest node connectors interested to make recommendations to talent and incentivize them.

Current pitch: TribeHired makes it easy for friends to recommend to friends skilled people to solve problems.

Had one to one meetings with mentors. Discussed ideas and problems with Phil Morle, CTO of Kazaa, and Scott Rafer, founder of Lumatic. Got to get daily tracking on my progress. One word, metrics. How are people interacting with my site? Web apps now win or lose on the small details.

Wind down the day with a talk by Melissa Clarke Reynolds. She had gone through a different bootcamp in UK, called Springboard, to launch minimonos, a virtual world for kids.

Melissa says: Don’t be shy about putting up an alpha product that’s not good enough, today. At least you understand what users want. Release new features every week, then ruthlessly rip out stuff. Make the most mistakes in the shortest time. If we think we know stuff, and try to prove it, it becomes expensive. Don’t be attached to be doing it right, truth is, we know nothing.

I’m trying to understand the launch market for tribehired. I think there are companies doing good work, based in Singapore and Malaysia. They need technology resources urgently, and are willing pay someone to find it.

Word for the day. Lean startup.

Last note. Do head on to tribehired.com now to get a beta invite.