Watch an introduction to BarnBuildr with Jonas Lamis and Austin Gunter.
Barnbuildr feedHere’s a little video of what we do:
For a small e-mail list, BarnBuildr is making huge differences in Local Austin Start-Ups. Last week, I heard a fantastic story from Raj Metha, founder and CEO of Clikserv, and I had to share it with y’all. Raj is one of a few folks over the past few weeks who has found key positions for his start-up on the BarnBuildr list. He did this for free, no talent agency required!
Raj was kind enough to send me a BarnBuildr testimonial:
“What an amazing concept … people helping people build businesses!
One of the goals of BarnBuildr is creating a job community based on word of mouth communication. BarnBuildr is going to be a place where users can build a good reputation for their specialized work in one field or another.
We’re using LinkedIn as a model for the site because LinkedIn has a huge community of users who vouch for one another by virtue of connecting with them, or not. Users with more connections on LinkedIn are generally highly celebrated and highly prized in a job search or an entrepreneurial context. Why is this? Put simply, humans are communal beings and we rely on the experience of others to guide our decisions. If one of my friends says that Michael Dell makes a good computer, I’ll take notice. If TEN of my friends say that Steve Jobs makes a better one, the majority is very likely to sway my mind. None of my friends make a very big deal out of Toshiba, and I rarely think about it as an option for folks who are laptop shopping.
With your job search, things are very similar. The bigger your network is, the more people you’ll be able to potentially connect with for a job. We’re curious what your strategies are for building your network, and how you are using social networking sites to make this happen.
What are you looking for to begin 2010?
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was profiled in the New Yorker this week. I’m personally a big fan of the extent to which the New Yorker delves into the people it chooses to include amongst it’s cartoons. Each person they profile is fascinating, and they go into considerable depth, usually unearthing not only some of the darker side, but often illuminating personal philosophies that create a public figure.
John Mackey has some strong opinions on the world, and I wanted to share his perspective on Conscious Capitalism, as quoted in the New Yorker, with this group of intrepid entrepreneurs. Many of you will find value in his words.
“We’re trying to do good. And we’re trying to make money. The more money we make, the more good we can do.” By this, he had in mind not the traditional philanthropic argument that more money earned equals more to give away but, rather, that a good company—that is, his company—which sells good things and treats its employees, shareholders, customers, and suppliers well, can spread goodness simply by thriving.
Read more: http://bit.ly/4NYg4s
I’d invite everyone to think how this quote applies to you in 2010. Mackey’s statement rings very true with the entrepreneurial spirit that we see around the Tech Ranch and that we’re creating with BarnBuildr. Namely, that when an individual pursues success in business for their own reasons, they have a great opportunity to help people out around them simply by being successful.
To put it another way: the number of people that you help can be proportional to your entrepreneurial and financial success.
As we build out BarnBuildr in 2010, the goal will be to contribute to each of your entrepreneurial and financial goals so that you benefit, so that your families benefit, and so that you can hire some people too.
I’m going to be using individual success stories as a metric for the success of BarnBuildr. The more people we can help with this process, the more successful we will be. The more job creation we can facilitate, the better off each of us will be.
-Austin
Thanks to Matt at Door64 and Joshua of Job Cannon for hosting such a great event at Six. I heard that the final RSVP count was hovering around 370 attendees. Given the sheer number of people that I spoke with and exchanged cards with, I would agree. There was a full house of Austin’s Tech talent getting to know one another.
I really enjoyed taking the show on the road and meeting so many folks who have Barns to build and volunteers who will be Buildrs very very soon. The Door64 Christmas Party marks the public face of BarnBuildr. I barely got the logo on business cards in time. Getting the BarnBuildr Logo and business cards made came down to the wire. Crowdspring had almost 4 days of downtime which essentially meant that my logo was held hostage by IT woes until the day before the Christmas Party. My original plan for getting business cards printed and back in 5 days was unfeasible. Fortunately my dad told me about Minuteman Press, which gave me a turnaround in less than 24 hours. Card in hand, I was able to run out at meet the wonderful folks of Door64.
BarnBuildr is bringing on a Project Manager and a Drupal developer to create the space online for volunteers to find ventures. We are still using the Google Group to facilitate these connections. In 2010 we will do the migration over to a new site.
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