gtuhl: startup IT and software development

Just got back from Startup Riot. I found it to be a lot of fun and I think it turned out really well. I met a lot of new people, reconnected with people I knew or had met during my Georgia Tech days, found out about several startups I had not previously heard of, got some resumes, and in general made a number of great new connections.

I personally wasn’t thrilled with my pitch but I suppose my pitching skills can be expected to have degraded after a year or so of heads down cranking instead of pitching. I stumbled twice due to tweaking the script and order of things right up until my slot and I somehow managed to run long despite my tendency to speak quickly in front of crowds and had to cut the last slide, the most important one, short.

In any case it was definitely worth attending. I thought the atmosphere was fantastic, the venue was ideal, and everyone was just there to talk, share, and connect. I didn’t get pitched by anyone but startups (no vendors, service providers, recruiters, or similar) which really was great and I think it changed the whole feel of the event. No dealing with high school girls peddling hosting plans they know nothing about as I have endured elsewhere.

Major props to Sanjay Parekh for putting it all together. The after party turned out wonderful as well. The rooftop deck (and office in general) of Nelson Mullins was pretty sick. Though I would have preferred to have a stout or porter to choose from there is absolutely nothing real to complain about.

Hopefully by the time the next one rolls around we’ll be able to assist as a sponsor.

I attended Barcamp Atlanta this past weekend and found it to be a great deal of fun. I met a lot of interesting people and heard some great content. I found the sessions lead by Stephen Fleming to be particularly excellent. For my own session I guess introductory database admin/tuning just isn’t very inspiring, i’ll do something appropriately cooler next time. Much of the late night discussion (which unfortunately corresponded in time to a big production issue I had to be distracted by - see previous post if you care to know what issue I hit) was Startup Weekend Atlanta specific and left me wishing i’d known about the signups sooner. I just joined the wait list as a backend developer and/or sysadmin.

There was a fair amount of discussion about the Atlanta startup environment in general and thoughts on what factors prevent it from being better. Though I may not have the year and company counts that more experienced area entrepreneurs hold I have co-founded 2 startups and been employed by 2 more in the last 4ish years and have a lot of thoughts about this. I also realize I have a tremendous amount to learn through future experience.

The biggest issue we’ve faced is finding and keeping talent. We’ve managed to succeed with a mixture of contract and full-time help but in general I think qualified people are in short supply here. Obviously this is not a problem isolated to our company as we’ve lost a few to poaching by other startups. Perhaps going forward we’ll be able to collect advice and guidance from these older/wiser area entrepreneurs instead of painfully unwanted profit increases - they aren’t always a good thing

I rarely talk about work directly here, but as the newly crowned Minister of Libations at my company, i’d like to mention that we are looking to make several hires in both development and QA. Check out our website at wethecitizens.com and if you might be interested shoot me an e-mail at juhl [at] wethecitizens [dot] com. The code involves Java 1.5, Spring, Hibernate, and DWR (lots of Ajax) running against a stout PostgreSQL database. The interfaces are a mixture of publicly-accessible webpages and a more powerful application exposed to certain users that is delivered through webrunner.

It is a startup and while the work can be tough I also find it to be particularly rewarding. We work on a lot of nontrivial problems and interact with front-page customers and the opportunities ahead are excellent. We’ve been around for a few years, are well funded, have a committed and dedicated board, and as a startup actually have substantive revenue. Competitive salary, stock options, benefits (health and dental), flexible hours, snacks and drinks, proper workstations (Aerons while supplies last + Dual Screen + Laptop or Desktop), beer on Friday at close of business, and a committed core group of people make this a pretty great place to work in my opinion.