Cooliris : Building an A+ Team
Group 3
Introduction
• Cooliris, Inc. is a US corporation. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Cooliris develops
products intended to enhance user experience of online media. As of 2011, the firm
offers four freeware applications: LiveShare, Cooliris, CoolPreviews and
Discover.
• Cooliris, Inc. was founded in January, 2006, and later launched Cooliris Previews for
Firefox, followed by versions for Internet Explorer and Safari. In May, 2006, the
company released Coolringer, and introduced PicLens in October, 2006.
• Early versions of Cooliris Previews displayed the contents of a link in image form,
which limited the user's ability to explore the contents of the page.
• Cooliris, Inc. received funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in July 2007.
• Recognition:
1. In 2008, Cooliris won The Crunchies 2008 Best Design award by TechCrunch.
2. In 2009, Cooliris was listed in the The Guardian's list of the "100 top sites for the
year ahead".
3. In 2010, Cooliris received 2010 SPIFFY Award for Engineering Excellence.
4. In 2010, Cooliris was recognized as one of the "Hottest Silicon Valley Companies" by
Lead411.
Products
 Cooliris is a plugin that provides interactive full-screen slideshows of online images.
The software places a small icon in the corner of an image thumbnail when the
mouse moves over it, which launches into a full-screen photo viewer when clicked.
 CoolPreviews opens a preview of the underlying content of a web link when the
mouse hovers over the link. The stated goal of the software is to optimize browsing by
allowing review of multiple links while preserving the context of the originating page.
For example, one could preview a list of news headlines before deciding which article
to read in depth.
 Cooliris also develops apps for Apple iPhone, and more recently, for Google Android
devices.
 Discover is an iPad application that allows users to explore Wikipedia in a
magazine-style interface. The application pulls from the Wikipedia featured article
and the featured picture to create a magazine cover that updates daily.
 Liveshare is a mobile and web application used to share photos from many people
at an event in real-time to one live photostream. The photostream is accessed via
Facebook, the web or mobile devices.
 Decks is an iPad application that lets users create a personalized set of shopping
catalogs as decks of cards that update continuously.
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• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt_mHvFzaY
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAKvmli2tF
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Cooliris Hiring Process
• Hiring a top-notch technical team as one of the
most critical actions
• Recruit people both entrepreneurial and
technically briliant
• Motto: “A players hire A players, B players hire C
players, and C players hire bozos.”
• Hiring great team seemed as a comparatively
easy task
• The leader of a hiring team : cofounder Josh
Cooliris Hiring Process (cont)
• Where to search for a recruiters:
1. Company´s social network profiles, Josh´s social
profile, and KPCB´s profile
• To motivate extented social network, Cooliris will
pay $1,000 for a candidate recommendation that
led to a hire
2. Search online databases such as LinkedIn and
Google
3. Post advertisments on LinkedIn and the San
Francisco Bay Area edition of Craigslist
• Tapping the team´s social networks produced the
best results
Cooliris Hiring Process (cont)
• The reason for the bad response: candidates with significant
talent ignored ads (whey were receiving good job offers
through other channels)
• From over 1,200 resumes, Josh took 400 to the further
process (sending introductory email)
• First round interview- 50 candidates
• Interview : - ten minute outline about the company
- screening the candidate for his technical ability
• Second round interview- 9 candidates
• Interview focus on deeper technical discussion
• Very important: open and clear communication about
the potential upsidies and risks
• Offers to be as financially competitive as possible
The Results
• Of the five offers- four offers were turned down
• Fift candidate verbally accepted offer before
going for a trip to Europe
• After coming back from the trip, the only
candidate refused offer as well
• THE FAILURE OF THE RECRUITING
PROCESS
• Who is actually an “A player”?
• How do you attract those people to join your
team?
Question 1
• If my team has to innovate in complitely new area, I will emphazise
on ingenuity more than on experience (“how innovative you are”
tests, programming questions, general logic puzzles, personality
checks)
• Identify company´s culture? Do candidates fit?
• Where would I look for my candidates: networking, industry
contacts, hire headhunters (or recruit professionals), campus
scouting
• Put my ad at the place where profesionals are looking for, make a
good (and true) job description, identify my company´s culture, as
well as requirements one has to pose (be specific and clear)
Question 2
• Overall, Cooliris recruitment program is not good enough
• What they should do:
1.
Managing better candidate experience
2. They are looking for a people to fill different job positions, but, they use
the same recruitment process
3. Make faster hiring decisions (process lasted for too long)
4. Assume that interviews don´t have to be too accurate (do not rely only on
it)
5. Do not post ad on searching job engines (only candidates who are looking
for a job will reply, but what is with other professionals who are not
actively looking for a job)
6. Identify job acceptance criteria
7. If they are competing with Google in hiring process, they should revise
their list of benefits (do not think money is the only motivation for a job)
Question 3
• Hiring engineers is not the same as hiring sales
manager
• Make a precise job description (expectations), so
that candidate can apply for the right position
• During the job interview, ask specific questions
related to the potential position
• In the outline of the company introduce sales to
sales person, technical part to engineers etc.
• Thank You!