Big tech companies may be preparing to downsize, but startups are still hiring like mad. Particularly engineers.

It’s hard for one startup to get noticed above the crowd, but what if twenty of them pool their resources, hold a competition and throw a five day party for top recruits? That’s the goal of Gnip and 19 other Boulder, Colorado based startups who are pitching in $5,000 each to host a multi-day job fair at the end of October.

Engineers are invited to upload their resumes and apply for 100 spots at the event. The applications will be reviewed by the companies, and a total of 100 people will be invited out for an all-expenses paid three day trip. Twenty applicants are rotated through each day over a five day period, with dinners and parties each night.

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This sounds like a perfect project for Toronto startups!  Anyone interested in helping to organize something like this please contact: rsmith[at]innovationtoronto.com.  Let’s see if we can’t build some momentum.

photo credit: Thomas Hawk

For almost ten years now, we have been witnessing a decisive shift from client-server software to software as a service. Google, eBay, and Amazon.com established the value of multi-tenant internet applications in the consumer market, and salesforce.com, Google, and others have been proving that this same multi-tenant model is winning in the enterprise as well.

This shift to Web-based applications has generated two powerful waves so far. Now, we are seeing a third wave—one that we are calling Web 3.0—and it may prove to be the most significant and disruptive yet to the traditional software industry.

While the world doesn’t need another buzzword, I feel that both the emerging generation of entrepreneurs and developers, as well as traditional software ISVs, need to grasp the enormity of Web 3.0 and its potential to create change, disruption, and opportunity. Web 3.0 is about replacing existing software platforms with a new generation of platforms as a service.

To put Web 3.0 into perspective, we need to look at all of the major waves in the history of the Web. They are not defined by distinct periods of time, but are best seen as overlapping waves of adoption.

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Rails

Symfony

Matt

The app we built is a simple tool that allows you to post to multiple Twitter accounts. We learned a ton during the experience so I’d like to share some of those lessons with you.

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Some great tips for the next startup gathering . . . - IT

(During the first half of 2008, 42 companies were in registration for an IPO, but they never pulled the trigger—versus 70 for the same period in 2007).

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Anyone involved in startups should pay attention . . . - IT

photo credit: spike55151

“We get a ton of pitches at TechCrunch every single day. It is a deluge we can hardly keep up with. Some are amusing, some are horrible, and a select few rise to the level of deserving a post. The large majority, though, never see the light of day. We thought: Why not let startups connect directly with our audience, and let the audience decide which ideas are worthy and which ones are not?

So today we are launching a little video project here at TechCrunch called Elevator Pitches. The premise is pretty simple: Startup founders and CEOs give us a 60-second video pitch about their companies, and our audience (that would be you) votes them up or down. You can think of it as a YouTube for elevator pitches (and, in fact, we are hosting the videos on YouTube and simply embedding them on the site).”

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photo credit: Edward Faulkner

With oil prices so high, how much would it cost to convert every registered car in America to an electric vehicle? Nothing, according to computer scientist Philip Greenspun. Well, nothing more than we are spending already in oil.

He figures that if we took the $400 billion that Americans spend every year on oil that goes into cars, we could use that money instead to pay the interest on an $8 trillion loan. That would be more than enough to swap out the 250 million registered cars in the country with electric vehicles, and still have trillion of dollars left over to start building new power plants based on renewable or nuclear energy. (But even if we stick with coal plants, they are still more energy efficient than car engines). Here is his math:

* total oil consumption in the U.S.: 21 million barrels every day (CIA Factbook)
* cost per barrel: $130
* days in year: 365
* total spent per year: $1 trillion
* percentage of oil consumed by passenger cars: 40
* total spent per year on oil for passenger cars: $400 billion
* at 5 interest, how much we could we borrow and pay $400 billion every year in interest: $8 trillion
* number of registered cars in the U.S.: 250 million (Wikipedia)
* cost of a new electric car, if mass-produced: $20,000
* value of a used car, if exported to Latin America or China: $5,000
* cost to upgrade average existing American car to a brand-new electric car: $15,000
* number that could be converted for $8 trillion: more than 500 million cars (i.e., twice as many as we have now)

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Majority Stake In MyPlayList Free To A Good Home

Bootstrapped service MyPlayList, the free music/ Flickr mashup service we wrote about earlier this month, is on the market, but with a twist: a majority stake (51%) is being offered free to a good home.

AngentBleu writes:

I believe this application has the potential to become a hot destination (applications in the same space have very large teams and sky high valuations) however, I do not believe that I alone can manage this project.

Until now I have been developing my little applications as an ‘independent developer’ in solitude without external funds, bootstrapping them until they support themselves, which is fine as a hobby - but having already been the architect of one very successful disruptive company I am acutely aware of the many challenges that face new emerging technologies.

Thus rather than being plagued with business and political challenges for which I have no ambitions, I instead wish to remain committed to developing and hacking which is my core passion, particularly because I have other projects that I am currently developing which I believe will also be game changers within their own sectors (with verified business models).

Therefore I am looking for a partner to whom I am prepared to give full control (51%) of Myplaylist in exchange for becoming part of a larger dynamic exciting team, where I can continue exploring and developing potential prospects (with support) rather than being burdened with the ‘management’ of yet another disruptive company.

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Image via Wikipedia

Anyone who’s been reading this blog for more than a few months knows I’m bullish on mobile social networking.

The space is wide open at this point - no one has created an application that has gotten enough traction to go mainstream. That’s partly because of tech limitations - browser based networks don’t leverage the power of the mobile device, and client based applications are blocked by service providers and handset limitations.

But it’s coming. A few years from now we’ll use our mobile devices to help us remember details of people we know, but not well. And it will help us meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn-type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar.

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You didn’t really think that Silicon Valley would be immune to the general convulsions in the overall economy, did you? I am not sure it is as bad as the NYT gleefully makes it out to be, but there is growing evidence of a tech slowdown, including M&A deals and IPOs drying up, slower job growth, signs of weakness on Web advertising, cautious corporate IT spending, and rising costs for companies that offshore their labor force due to the decline of the dollar.

The latest numbers from the National Venture Capital Association show that the startup economy was starting to feel some pain in the first quarter. Venture-backed M&A deals hit the lowest level in a decade, with only 56 deals announced in the first quarter, down from 83 in the fourth quarter of 2007. The IPO market also dried up, with only five venture-backed IPOs, compared to 31 in the fourth quarter of 2007. (See chart above). The average amount raised for each IPO was $56.6 million (down 42 percent quarter-over-quarter). And the average M&A deal size was $124.6 million (down 40 percent quarter-over-quarter)

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photo credit: Mars Hill Church Seattle

Despite the broader economic rumblings, it’ s never been cheaper to start a company and there’s still a ton of venture money out there. In fact, Ressi told me that there is so much money out there for startups that VCs are now offering to partially buy out founders’ personal stakes to get deals. In effect, they are paying off the founders to pick them. Below is some of his advice for entrepreneurs from his presentation that he just finished onstage:

The only time your lawyers will be honest with you in the venture raising process is when you interview them. After that don’t trust anything they say because their motivation is to close the deal and get the fee.

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