Monthly Archives: November 2011

You Should Work at Kicksend.

You are what you do, right? At Kicksend, we’re looking for people who can do a lot of different things, in ways that are significantly different from the norm.

Our mission is to help people send and receive the digital things they care about, with the people they care about. As such, working at Kicksend and talking to our users every day requires you to have above-average empathetic skills. Most of our users are non-technical, and we love them just the way they are.

As a software product, the technology behind Kicksend fades away, leaving behind only the user experience. Building a truly stellar user experience takes a bit of intuition (which can be learned), a lot of user testing and a lot of listening to the people who use your product. We hire people who understand this process, who can keep open minds, and can experiment.

Speaking of experiments, we are a highly data-driven shop. What does that mean? It means we measure pretty much everything, and most changes that we are uncertain about usually get tested against a baseline. It also means that we track the metrics that are core to the business and the product extensively, and as a team, work with laser-sharp intensity to improve them on a daily basis. We also run a lot of experiments, which is the one true path to building an amazing consumer product.

We also work blisteringly fast. Execution is everything, and at Kicksend, speed is a weapon. At any given moment, there are always multiple experiments under way within all of the major facets of the company. We hire people who wonder about improvements, then experiment rapidly, then win.

We work fast, but we don’t work dumb, which includes unsustainable behavior like working fourteen unfocused hours a day instead of eight or nine intensely focused ones. We avoid meetings whenever possible. Building consumer products is hard if you’re insular, and working with people who can only talk about code gets old after a while. So, we like to hire well-rounded, well-read people who have a wide variety of interests. 

At Kicksend, we optimize for your happiness. This means we pay better, give you opportunities to take more responsibility, and listen to your feedback. We also give you an equity stake. We don’t promote into incompetence but rather look for people who want to expand their skill-set and are willing to learn. Responsibility is handed out to those who step up and deliver. 

We also try to keep a sane balance with our work and personal lives, which results in better work done all around and a better environment for constant iteration and improvement.

We’re based out of beautiful, leafy and sunny Mountain View, California – it’s a prime startup hub smack in the middle of Silicon Valley. The current team consists of a lot of foodies and people who enjoy sunshine and the outdoors, which makes MV a great place to be. San Francisco, a truly world-class city, is a short train ride away.

Lastly, if you’re entrepreneurial at all, we are hooked into some serious Silicon Valley clout, and can help you make inroads when the time comes.

If you think you’ll be a good fit here at Kicksend, we want to talk to you! Apply right now.

Kicksend Gets Funded!

When we started Kicksend, we wanted to make a dead-simple way for people to send and receive things they care about, with the people they care about. 

In the past few months since we started working on Kicksend, a lot has happened. Our product has improved tremendously, people are using us on a daily basis, and every day we have more happy users.

Today, we are completely ecstatic to announce that we’ve acquired seed funding from some amazing investors who fully understand and support our vision for Kicksend.

Our seed round is led by the impressive team at True Ventures (especially Jon Callaghan and Adam D’Augelli) who have been absolutely phenomenal with their support and guidance. True are founder-friendly to their core, and we’re very, very excited to have them on board as we move forward.

Digital Garage, stellar investors from Japan, are also a part of this round and are going to help us with our Japanese efforts moving forward, something they are very good at. We’re also glad to bring on board SV Angel and Start Fund, two firms who have been helping us since we started Kicksend, along with the great folks at YCombinator.

Finally, we’re very excited to bring Jack Abraham of Milo on board as an angel investor. Jack was one of our early product advisors and is an all-around fantastic entrepreneur.

Oh, and we’re hiring :)