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EXTRAORDINARY INTERACTION TOOLS DESIGNED FOR BUSINESS.

Over the last 30 years, the shift has been to digitize the person. They have become a number, a profile, a keyword, a resume, a bullet on a piece of paper. It isn't anybody's fault - it comes down to scale and there is nothing scalable about live, real time interaction. Fundamentally though, people are voices, stories, experiences and personalities. 

BUILT FOR HUMANS.

The goal of HireVue Labs is to bring "human" back to "human capital". More importantly what if the way people interact could be reimagined and scaled to a point that thousands of interactions could occur instantly and they could all be consumed in 1% the time it usually takes.

We've done it with job interviews. Think about all of the other personal interactions between people. What's next?

HireVue Labs?

I'm at HireVue building new startups? How did that happen?

Since I updated my LinkedIn profile I've been contacted by a number of friends and contacts who have asked what HireVue is and what I'm going to be doing there.

HireVue is the worlds leading video interviewing company with clients that include Starbucks, GE, Dow Jones, Red Bull, Ocean Spray, Geico, Living Social and  a few hundred others. Something like 20% of the Fortune 100 are now using Hirevue to time-shift their interviews, shred their hiring costs, and improve their new hires. Hirevue's sitting a the junction of a sea-change in HR and the trend is only going to accelerate.

My role at HireVue is to build startup teams and products to expand HireVue's core technologies outside of video interviewing by building new products and - where needed - new startup teams. I'll be running an entity that's currently referred to as "HireVue Labs" which will be taking on special projects as well as another entity that will be outside of HireVue and is as of yet still unnamed. 

The goal of HireVue Labs is to utilize all of the new methodologies and tactics around lean startups, minimum viable products, business model canvas, and blue oceans to quickly discover customers, build and launch new products, and iterate. These are exciting times at HireVue and we're going to be building some incredibly interesting products and services across social networks, healthcare and education We'll also be open to helping other startup teams who might utilize HireVue's technology or who are in a market of interest where we can help with technology, team building or help financing.

I'll also be handing businesses that HireVue either acquires, or spins off. The first of these is a company called CodeEval, a 'code testing' community that came out of I/O Ventures incubator program and is based in San Francisco. HireVue acquired CodeEval to help develop HireVue's capabilities around technical 'coding' hires and turned into "CodeVue".

Of course all of this is risky and unusual. Failure to focus is a know and common killer for startups... exactly why all of these projects and teams will be built outside of HireVue, preventing distractions that could compromised HireVue's domination of the video interviewing market (where they're killing it).  Undoubtedly, we'll make some mistakes and go down a dead end or two, but we'll be trying to be smart about what bets we make, and when we'll cut bait or let the winners run. 

So, if you've got a startup or company that could leverage HireVue's technology or core competencies, we should talk.

Wassup

I haven't posted on this, my personal blog, for what seems a long, long time.

In many cases, a personal blog suffers when business needs heat up and this one has been no exception. I think I may try to turn this into a stream of conciousness since it's not commercial and probably the best form it can take is the use for which the term 'blog' was coined... a journal.

Of course, I have been pretty busy having fun. (We're designing a house and hopefully I'll get it built this year.)

Medical Spa MD and Freelance MD (my physician communities) have grown a great deal and I recently (a few months ago) hooked up with some medical school students and launched Uncommon Student MD. All of these are pretty fun and put me in contact with a lot of interesting physicians around the world, some of whom are doing some really interesting things in healtcare.

Additionally, I've been helping some great little companies get bigger as an advisor. (AppleCore is now changing it's strategic direction and becomming more self-controled.) There are some other companies that are also in this category that I'm working with, mostly in the technology/internet space.

I'm in agreement with Kevin Ryan about the best advice he ever got: Article

 "When I was 32, I joined DoubleClick a couple of months after it was started by Kevin O'Connor and Dwight Merriman. Before, I had always worked for large companies. After two weeks Kevin came to me and said, 'You need to move faster. The only advantage that a startup has is that it moves faster.'

The Top 10 Reasons You Should Go To Medical School... And The Single Best Reason Not To

Jeremy Weaver is a medical school student I'm working with as one of the editors over at Uncommon Student MD where he's written a really good post on The Top 10 Reasons You Should Go To Medical School, And The Single Reason Not To.

Whether you're a first year medical student or a practicing physican, there's a good chance you've asked yourself the quesion, "WHY the @#$% DID I GO TO MEDICAL SCHOOL?" Here are a few EXCELLENT reasons... and one bad one.

Just as the blisses of Christmas break was ending for most of us tortured souls who fly the banner of "medical student," and sail these uncertain scholarly seas, Uncommon Student MD got some serious traction with medical students around the world. I believe timing had a large part to do with the explosion in its popularity. Simply put, after christmas break a lot of medical people were thinking, “what am I doing here?!” - A case of mass buyers remorse.

Click to read more ...

Life In A Day

Frontdesk Waiting Room Videos For Plastic Surgeons & Medical Spas

Frontdesk's truly awesome waiting room videos and DVDs for doctors, dentists, chiropractors, medical spas, and laser clinics...

Putting a jaw-dropping, attention grabbing video in your waiting room or lobby is the perfect way to add additional sales and profits to a clinics bottom line.

The benefits are obvious. You're marketing directly to a captive audience that's already in your business with information about your products and services. Your clients will be entertained at the same time that you're educating and informing them of the scope of your services. Special offers? New services? Packages or gift certificates? Video marketing will 'soft-sell' your clients and get conversations started that result in increased sales!

I started this new business as a way to get my wife Shelly involved in some of our online ventures and it's worked out really well since she's a wiz at this stuff having been a long-time advertising director for DSW and then Euro-RSCG.

She's bringing all of her experience with clients like Intel, Iomega, Microsoft and Alphagraphics, as well as her time with our cosmetic practices (Surface) and plugging it into this new venture.

Groupon Turns Into Nimble

Groupon wasn't exactly the same, but now it's becoming Nimble.

Oie. If only.

Many of my friends who know about my former startup Nimble and are aware of the massive growth of Groupon give me a conciliatory pat on the back when they see me.

Nimble, that I founded in 2004 allowed any local business to sell it's inventory at a discount in real time. And it worked.

(Of course we were tiny compared to Groupon and I made many typical startup mistakes. Mainly, that I didn't have the right team in place.)

Now, Groupon is actually starting to copy Nimble: CNN Article

...a new mobile application that the company hopes will change when and how society chooses to eat, shop and play.

The application, known as Groupon Now, is remarkably and elegantly simple, yet it's a radical departure from Groupon's current deal-a-day business model. When a user opens up the smartphone app, he or she will be presented with just two buttons: "I'm hungry" and "I'm bored."

Clicking either button will open up a list of time-specific daily deals, based on his or her location.

The familiar $10 coupons for $20 worth of food are still there, but they're not one-time offers. Instead, businesses can choose when they want these deals to be available.

Say a restaurant is incredibly busy on Saturdays but could use more business on Wednesdays. With Groupon Now, that business can fill its seats during slow business days using time-specific deals.

That's the beauty of Groupon Now: local businesses have never really had a simple way to manage their perishable inventory, especially labor and food. Why waste those resources during slow periods when you can bring savings-savvy consumers through the doors with a highly targeted Groupon deal?

"For merchants, the daily deal is like teeth whitening, and Groupon Now is like brushing your teeth. It can be an everyday thing to keep your business going," Groupon founder and CEO Andrew Mason told Bloomberg Businessweek in an extensive interview on the new product.

The daily deals company has been on a tear recently -- in fact it is the fastest growing company in history -- but it faces stiff competition from companies with increasing muscle.

Oh, this kills me.

If only...

Read this post on: Medical Spas & Groupon

Maddy

My little girl.

Strategic Marketing & Sales Communications

Good sales communications can make a brilliant statement about your business.

The Package that Calistoga Ranch is using is a phenomenal example of sales materials that set the stage for immediate followup and move the sales process down the field.

I was impressed when I opened this communications. Not only is the Calistoga Ranch Package beautifully executed sales message, it also delivers just the message that a high end real estate community want's to deliver. A great execution for sales acceleration.

Headshot Photographer NYC

My good friend Chia Messina is a terrific headshot photographer in NYC.

Chia's been shooting actors headshot and has expanded into advertising and lifestyle photography. I had to laugh when Chia told me recently she'd taken the headshot of the actress Gennifer Goodwin who plays the youngest wife 'Margine' in the HBO series Big Love.

About two months I had a conversation with Chia around social media, blogging and the like. Chia alredy had a site, Twitter account and a Twitpic feed. Unfortunately her site was in Flash wich posed some nasty problems around adding or changing content and wasn't filling her SEO needs at all. I finally talked her into letting me put together a headshot blog that could reallys showcase her photography and let actors who might be potential clients to read a few posts and build up a comfort level before picking up the phone and making a call.

On the plus side she's a photographer. That give her ready access to the kind of images that the rest of us can only dream about and have to buy from iStock.

Email Never Looked Like This

Beautiful Sales & Marketing Communications.

I've been building some training Packages for Sendside's sales automation clients and I have to say, they're some really beautiful communications. Don't you wish your sales and marketing emails looked like this?

Once you get the hang of how the peices fit together and get your noggin around the fact that you can actually send any content using one of the different tab tipes (Text Editor Tabs for HTML that's built in the editor, Web Page Tabs for embedding any URL or web page, and File Tabs for showing document inside a tab) you can do some incredible things that provide real business value.

Not only do they look great, but you can see when they're opened and what content's being read. If you're using a CRM you can track all of that information all the way through to sales. It's no wonder that we have clients whose close rates have jumped by as much as 500% within  three months of implementing Sendside into their sales process. Yowza!

For any sales automation and acceleration clients of Sendside that's using Packages, you'll be recieving the Package above shortly.

Photography of people

Here's a video I produced for my friend Chia. She's a NYC photographer.

Big Hug Marketing

You have to love this kind of feel-good stuff.

jetBlue Just Blew It

jetBlue just tripped over a dollar to pick up a dime.

Here's the deal. I'm flying to Boston next month. While there are a bunch of other airlines that offer direct flights to Boston and have a much shorter actual 'trip time', I bought a ticket on jetBlue. You see, I used to fiy to NY all the time on jetBlue where their hub is and flying on jetBlue feels something like the home team.

I just got off of the phone with jetBlue customer service. It was an example of complete mistrust and obfuscation which surprised me more than a little. You see, I loved jetBlue...

But I'm not loving jetBlue right now.

You see, when I booked my flight last night I used their online system (good) and made a mistake in booking the date for my return (bad). I'm going to Boston for the weekend and accidently booked by return flight a month later in August instead of the 4 days I was looking for.

Of course their site has a lot of bookings and almost no one makes an error like this. But any UI designer who looks at their site could see that it's absolutly possible since the length of the trip is never revealed except for the flight dates. (I"m arguing that they could put in a little fading header that tells you how long your trip is for.) If' I'd see anywhere that my trip was scheduled for 35 days I'd have immediately know there was an issue. (I could make a simple change to the jetBlue UI that would solve this problem for everyone within a day.)

Today when I looked at my emailed itinerary I immediately spotted the problem and went online to change my ticket. They have a $100 change fee which I paid thinking I'd give them a call and that surely they'd waive that. After all, it wasn't a change I was asking for, it was the ticket I wanted in the first place. It was less than 24 hours and the flight wasn't for a month.

But no.

In speaking to the customer service rep who 'called' a manager. I was informed that I had only a 4 hour window to make any changes and that after that, there was nothing anyone could do. You see, no one at jetBlue customer service has the 'authority' to refuse this fee. It was company policy that they couldn't actually do anything.

What kind of a company has a customer service department that can't service customers?

I was instructed that my 'only recourse' was to submit feedback on their web site. That's it. Evidently they wouldn't even be entering it as a note. I couldn't even talk to the manager. I was just informed what she supposedly said.

Look, I run customer service for Sendside and deal with customers all of the time. I know unreasonable when I hear it. But asking for a change fee to be waived when it's obvious you made a mistake is not unreasonable.

Evidently jetBlue doesn't trust their own employees enough to make any decisions, at least until you get somewhere past the 'Manager' level. That's sad, and indicative of a company that doesn't really value customer service. Customer service should allow the people in the trenches making decisions. jetBlue just became another airline in my view.

I'll cease to sing the jetBlue song. I won't book with them if there's a shorter trip. And I won't give them any preference at all when having all of our corporate travel booked.

So jetBlue will make an additional $100 from me, but they're losing so much more.

Boom Startup's First 10

Boom Startup's chosen the first 10 statups to include in their mentoring program.

It's not Techstars yet for sure... a number of these guys don't have websites yet so you know it's pretty early.

Orem, Utah – May 10, 2010 – BoomStartup, a seed capital and mentor-focused investment program for web and software start-ups, today announced it has selected 10 companies to participate in its inaugural three-month program. The companies in the Class of 2010 include 3PointData, Bazari, Case Rover, Fashion Genome Project, IActionable, Khumbu, MashWorx, No Ink Publishing, O-Codes, and Voycit.

Each selected company will receive up to $15,000 in seed capital, free office resources, professional services and mentoring from a group of seasoned and successful entrepreneurs. Companies will be paired with one of the investor-mentors, who will guide each start-up and connect them with people in their networks to help them get their businesses off on the right foot.

“Utah has a proven track record of creating and supporting great technology companies, and we’re confident that these 10 start-ups will be among the growing list of innovative companies to come out of our state,” said Robb Kunz, co-founder and co-Managing Partner of BoomStartup. “These companies have great ideas and technologies that will push their individual markets to new heights due to their innovation and the mentoring that they will receive from our group of successful investor-mentors.”

The selected companies are as follows:

3PointData solves the decision maker’s data problem by creating real-time data streams to make better decisions, better products, and more money. 3PointData delivers weather, stock, geo IP, zip code, sales tax, traffic, and much more, right to a spreadsheet, database or custom application.

Bazari is a text message-based platform that provides the benefits of ecommerce to markets without internet access. Through the platform, customers can browse for products, purchase the specified product, make the payment, and have the product delivered similar to shopping on eBay or Amazon.

Case Rover is a software-as-a service (SaaS) platform targeted at the multi-billion dollar U.S. litigation support and compliance markets.

The Fashion Genome Project is the next big thing in online clothes shopping, utilizing revolutionary technology to eliminate the pain points and unpredictable results that usually come in the process.

IActionable is a SaaS-based application that helps sites and services attract new users, retain existing users, and increase desirable actions by providing customizable achievement and points systems. IActionable enables any site to define and automatically award public badges and points to their users when specific actions are performed.

Khumbu is helping consumers simplify their wallet while creating affinity programs for vendors, by offering virtual loyalty cards for mobile devices. Khumbu weaves affinity tracking with social media. Khumbu’s clearinghouse allows consumers to trade, redeem, and consolidate partially used loyalty cards, while also providing intuitive offers and promotions for related vendors.

MashWorx creates permission-based applications designed to help companies better serve their customers beyond the limits of a single site. MashWorx’s apps, or mashups, enable people to choose their own web experience.

No Ink Publishing provides an online authoring system for do-it-yourself mobile publishing, with an initial focus on interactive, animated children’s books for the Apple iPad.

O-Codes creates small text codes that appear in offline media (magazines, newspapers, brochures, billboards, TV, movie trailers, coupons, catalogs, business cards, etc). Consumers can “bookmark” the offline content they like, share that content (to Facebook, Twitter, and Evernote), and even make purchases using simple text messages, and without using a computer.

Voycit is a political, social website where citizens can come to get informed on political issues, current events, legislation, voting histories, and candidate platforms, get involved by voting on current legislation, completing polls and organizing for action, and hold elected officials accountable. In turn, Lawmakers can engage with their constituents, get real feedback on legislation and clarify positions and voting.

All companies will be headquartered at the Canyon Park Technology Center, Building J (1401 N. Research Way, Orem, Utah). In addition to providing companies with seed capital and free resources, the companies will complete an education curriculum designed to teach each entrepreneur the fundamentals that will help them become successful as they grow their companies.

The three-month program will conclude with an Investor Day in September hosted by BoomStartup that allows interested investors to meet with each company.