Team

BuzzPal’s founder and initial seed investor, Christopher Comella, is an American from Washington, DC, living in Gothenburg, Sweden. His background is venture finance in the media and communications space. He brings vision, passion, creativity, strategy, business model, marketing, operations, finance, and capital-raising/investing experience to the table. Read more about Chris and see his BuzzPal intro video. Chris is looking for you.

BUZZPAL IS LOOKING FOR YOU:

• Friendly, open, extremely smart and driven.
• Ability (95th percentile or higher) and the attitude (hungry and strong, yet humble -- i.e., no pricks).
• Work hard and play to win (but play fair).
• Able to work on a freelance basis to get started.
• Sign the usual documents with the usual clauses, such as NDA and Service Agreement with the usual clauses, such as non-compete, non-solicitation, IP assignment, etc.
• If our initial work goes well, we will both be in a position to discuss follow-on work and/or an expanded role, which could include stock/options, benefits, etc.
• Getting to this follow-on stage is our goal for you (and it should be your goal as well!).
• We think of our first work together as a real-time trial project (kind of like an internship or audition). We will work together to define a clear and attainable project description and timeline and go from there.

Able to fill one or more of these roles (see June 2009 Update, below this list):

1. Concept Development
2. Product Management
3. Interaction Design
4. User Experience Design
5. Information Architecture
6. Interface Design
7. Writing (brand voice, content, ads, emails, releases, etc.)
8. Marketing (PPC, SEO, email, viral, landing pages, bids, keywords, budget, spend, test, measure, optimize, etc.)
9. Visual Design (Adobe Creative Suite, etc.)
10. Graphic Design (Adobe Creative Suite, etc.)
11. Front-End Development (HTML, CSS, JS, AJAX, jQuery, etc.)
12. Architect, including use of cloud utilities (AWS, GAE, etc.)
13. Back-End Developer (Ruby on Rails -- not set in stone yet)
14. Database Expert (X SQL)
15. Sys Admin (Linux X, web server X, AWS, GAE, etc.)

Note: We are not looking for 15 people. We are looking for 2-4 people who can fill multiple roles on an agile and cross-functional team. Later there will be other roles and people, such as community manager, business development, marketing and PR, administration, etc.

The initial team may include 1-2 outside consultants. Consultants must be affordable -- we have startup money, not Google money. Dig it? Cool.

June 2009 Update: We just brought on a seasoned interaction, experience, and interface designer and information architect. What is our definition of "seasoned"? Fourteen-plus years of experience, including in Silicon Valley, with startups, and with Fortune 500 companies.

WHO ARE WE LOOKING FOR NEXT?

• Architect: Domain modeling, database architecture, system and application design, development planning, management, implementation, scaling, etc. Need as close to all this in one person as possible. (our skeleton)
• Visual/graphic design (our skin)
• Copywriting/content (or voice)
• Marketing, PR, advertising (or promoters)
• Go anywhere, do anything business person to help me and take some leads (our Navy Seal).

MORE INFORMATION & HOW TO GET STARTED:

While your initial involvement in BuzzPal can start small, it is designed to scale, subject to mutual interest and agreement, of course.

By starting this way, everybody can get a feel for the project, team, roles, goals, strategies, tactics, velocity, etc. This makes sense for all of us.

Starting small lets us all proceed incrementally, increasing our respective commitments as milestones are surpassed and risks are reduced.

The best part about this is that you get real options without having to make big commitments or take big risks -- and you get paid at the same time.

If things go well, you prove yourself a valuable team member and BuzzPal proves itself a promising startup, you will have the opportunity to exercise your real options, increasing your commitment in stages, up to and including becoming a co-owner of the company (through the stock options plan). While that outcome is unknown, the road starts here.

Learn more about BuzzPal's founder here and contact him here.

THE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS:

We have considered everything from Waterfall and PRINCE2 to SCRUM and XP ("Getting Real"). Based on this research, and discussions with other founders and developers, we believe that agile methods and rapid iterations are most suitable for this project (and our personality). That said, we believe a proper foundation of interaction design and architecture is required to create a high-performance, high usability application and interface.

THE FUTURE:

We will bring in other people over time and as necessary since no one person can do it all -- except Chuck Norris (but I think Google's already got him on retainer).

Thank you,