A little job ad…

From now on until the end of April 2007, I’ll be helping – alongside with yet another Jeremy – my friend Rupert start a company, a software start-up actually. We are three enthusiast guys looking for a couple .Net platform software developers. We don’t give a damn if you master C#, Java, C++, Visual Basic or even Cobol – all you’ll have to do is hack amazing code. We want a straight-to-the point software developer with a good understanding of business in general, since the software will be aimed at easing business processes in a certain industry. I can’t disclose more information since I’m not the project owner.

You will work from home and the whole team is to meet physically, once or twice a week. Only over-than-outstanding – not to say extra-terrestrial, candidates will be considered for remote work. You can either get shares of the company, a monthly or hourly salary (if you’re a free-lancer), or agree with us on a global project fee based on deliverables (if you’re a company or a free-lancer). For your information, there are already two people working on the actual development, including myself (and I’ll be dealing with many other things like administrative shit, sales, etc.). We both are beginner in coding, not experienced developers; but we are sharp thinkers, fast movers and open-minded people. So expect some craze and fun working long hours. FYI again, it was agreed that I’m working on a part-time basis and will leave the project on April 27th 2007 (the day my contract ends), to start my own career – I will whatsoever remain involved in the project as an investor and shareholder though.

Chance is high that we’ll select someone with a potential in the mid-run to take further, managerial responsibilities (CTO or CEO). However, our main criterion remains technical excellence: we want a top software developer, a geek able to hack code like Yoda masters the lightsaber.

The actual job is likely to start in mid-December 2006. The application process is crystal clear: send me your CV (my e-mail address is here) first; I’ll contact you soon after to make an appointment. Of course, since we’re 3 people working on this project, you may expect to meet all of us separately before any decision is made. Apply only if you are looking for a great human adventure mixed with some uncertainties and if you want to have some fun, enjoying your job.

Addendum: the StratosCube website.

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You’ve all read about it: Yahoo! announced two weeks ago that it would start buying back stock for 3 bn$.

3 billion US dollars! That for sure is peanuts for nobody. I was really surprised by the announcement, which came along the release of Q3 profit figures down 37% despite a 20% revenue growth. In other words, and although the Internet is still a fast-growing industry, the Yahoo! business model has lost momentum.

On October 16th 2006, I was happy to read about Yahoo!’s new e-Commerce strategy aiming at putting small businesses on the digital map (see Infoworld article right here). But on October 18th 2006, I was extremely disappointed to hear about the buy back plan.

The signal sent by the management to financial markets couldn’t be darker. Let me try to phrase it: “we, at Yahoo!, believe that the way we will create most value for our shareholders will be by buying back our own stock instead of investing it in our future development, growth and successes”. In my humble opinion, stock buy backs are for oil companies and cosmetics giants, not for trendy cool Silicon Valley Internet creatures.

Douglas MacIntyre, on AOL’s bloggingstocks via 24/7 Wall St., thought about growth paths for Yahoo!: buying YouTube and MySpace would’ve still left cash available, maybe for Facebook, from these 3 bn $.

My take: Yahoo! is agonizing. Overtaken by Google in the online ad market, a third-tier player in online video & podcasts; a search engine not providing top quality results. Yahoo!’s 3 assets are Flickr, its web-hosted e-mail service and Yahoo! Messenger – still N.1 in the US.

This is not enough: RSS has made Yahoo! lose edge in Internet users’ quest for information, online video has been developing at a very fast pace, social networking (professional & dating) is maturing, and new ways to communicate (data, voice, text, images converging) are spreading as fast as Skype deploys its technology worldwide. In the meantime, unless you’re a porn website, two business models have proven successful: e-Commerce (you make a margin on a product or service you sell; e.g. VistaPrint) and brokerage commissions (on e-Commerce sales , e.g. eBay, or via advertising revenues, e.g. Google).

Sorry to say so, but I couldn’t position Yahoo! on one of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant anymore. Yahoo! is stuck-in-the-middle, sending unclear contradictory signals to its users, the market and its employees. On the Internet, you’re either a growth, aggressive, ambitious company – and in this case you keep these 3 bn$ to develop further, or you’re not.

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