StarPound is on the move.  We have some big announcements that will hit the wire soon, including one that is going to send tremors through an entire industry.  Wish I could say more about it right now …

At any rate, the good news is that we’re hiring.  Job descriptions below - if you know someone that might be a good fit, I’d certainly appreciate any referrals.

Immediate opportunities (details for each are down below):

• Enterprise Project Manager
• Network Administrator
• System Administrator
• Business Analyst
• Java/J2EE Developer

StarPound provides an on-demand, open-source platform for enabling large enterprise customers to design, deliver and adapt communication-enabled business processes. Additionally, we provide an entire PBX and call center suite built on top of our core platform.

Successful candidates must be comfortable wearing a lot of hats in a fast-growth, emerging startup company (venture-backed).  And, they must be passionate about your job, and willing to do whatever it takes to be successful.  If you are interested, please visit our website (www.starpound.net) or contact Dottie Thornton via email with your resume (dthornton at starpoundtech.com).

Enterprise Project Manager

Requirements:

• Project reporting, monitoring, and milestone success on complex enterprise projects
• Experience within contact center, CRM, telecommunication services, or e-business industries is desirable
• Experience with web services, web integration is a plus
• Leadership and mentoring experience.
• Minimum 7 years relevant project management experience required.
• Excellent communication, presentation and interpersonal skills.
• Strong organizational and time management skills.
• Project Management professional (PMP) Certification a plus
• Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent Project Management work experience

Network Administrator

Requirements:

• 3+ years of professional experience in networking field
• One or more of the following industry recognized certifications (or equivalent experience)
  • Cisco CCIE (R/S, SP, Security, Voice, Storage)
  • Cisco CCNP, CCIP, CCDP, CCSP, CCVP
  • Juniper JNCIE (M/T, ER)
  • Juniper JNCIP-MT, JNCIS-M/T, JNCIS-ER, JNCIS-FWV
  • Foundry FNCNE, FNCNP
  • ISC2 CISSP
• Deep Expertise in at least one of the following areas:
  • Data Center Network Architectures and Design
  • OSPF, BGP, MPLS, QoS
• Highly Desirable Skills:
  • Advanced understanding of IP/MPLS communications theory, design and functionality - Advanced understanding of VoIP technologies, such as H.323 & SIP
  • Experience designing and implementing QoS standards and technologies across platforms to ensure strict service guarantees (SLAs) for Voice and Video.
  • Strong working knowledge of network management and testing tools (at a minimum ethereal/wireshark)

System Administrator

Requirements:

• 3+ years of experience required
• Linux, MySQL, load balancing routers
• Asterisk, shell scripts, cron
• Distributed architectures, Fault tolerant clustering
• SIP, telephony experience a plus
• Performance tuning

Business Analyst

Requirements:

• Experience within contact center, CRM, financial services, or e-business industries is desirable
• Minimum 3-5 years relevant experience required.
• Excellent communication, presentation and interpersonal skills.
• Strong organizational and time management skills.
• Experience with CRM systems and processes is desirable.
• Experience with process modeling tools is desirable.
• Must have strong experience with J2EE Middleware
• At least a basic understanding of BPMN

Java/J2EE Developer

Requirements:

• 3+ years of experience required
• JBoss, MySQL, JSF, Struts, Linux
• GWT, WSDL, XML, Eclipse plugin development
• Asterisk, VoIP, SIP, PBX, ACD, IVR, CTI
• VoiceXML, UML, BPMN, Model-driven development

Cheers.

The other day, someone wrote me an email asking me to explaining how StarPound’s platform compared to Asterisk.  After I replied, it occurred to me that it might be worth taking a moment to blog about this topic.

First, if  you aren’t familiar with Asterisk, it is the leading open-source software PBX and telephony package out in the marketplace.  They’ve done a remarkable job in creating something of enormous value.  I will go so far as to say I think Asterisk has quickly become an integral part of the open source enterprise stack.  Asterisk was created by Mark Spencer of Digium fame.

Asterisk is a telephony engine and toolkit.  Meaning you can use it as the underpinning of lots of really cool telephony apps.  You can use it as a PBX, a gateway, a media server, and even in call center contexts.

StarPound, while also an engine and toolkit, builds on top of toolkits like Asterisk.  StarPound consists of a visual business process modeling tool, and a suite of application servers that allow you to automate those processes.  For those processes that need to be “communication-enabled” (see: CEBP at Wikipedia), StarPound’s platform has telephony-related tools that tie into components at the Asterisk level.

StarPound relies upon external telephony engines like Asterisk to provide under-the-hood call control and media serving functionality.  Note:  We’ve done in-house integration and testing of FreeSwitch, and will be rolling out production support for that platform soon.

On top of all of these components, we have developed a suite of enterprise applications specifically aimed at call centers and enterprise PBX users.  These applications are incredible on their own merit, but also serve as great examples of the types of applications that can be built with the StarPound platform.  A lot of the confusion comes from people who equate StarPound as a “PBX in the cloud” company solely.  They think “PBX in the cloud”, and then immediately think Asterisk.

Even though we have a cloud-based PBX application, we typically don’t host it for individual companies.  That isn’t our model - that is the model of Vocalocity and others.  We are the type of company that powers another company that wants to be in that space.  We’ll have some big announcements to make soon on that …

So the short answer is, we are built on top of telephony toolkits like Asterisk and FreeSwitch, but that is really only a small portion of our overall capabilities.  StarPound is more accurately described as a software platform that automates business processes by turning them into web and voice services.  In fact, our PBX and call center applications are driven by, guess what?  Business process models automated through StarPound!  If you want to change something in your PBX or call center, you don’t fiddle with config files - you visually edit the “way” the application is supposed to work - the process model.

A great way to describe it  … with StarPound, you model what an application is supposed to do, not necessarily how it is supposed to do it.

Cheers.

The folks at TAG asked me to help get the word out on their new entrepreneurial survey.  Details and link below!

Subject:  GA Entrepreneurs: Join TAG’s Research Panel

Let your opinion be known: Opt in to TAG’s Entrepreneur Survey

Dear Georgia Entrepreneur,

Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) requests your participation in an important entrepreneur needs assessment survey currently underway.

Your feedback will directly influence programs and policies that affect all entrepreneurs in Georgia.  This is your chance to be heard.

Please take one minute to join our research panel by clicking here: Entrepreneur Survey Opt-in.

Within two weeks of joining the TAG Research Panel, you will receive the “Entrepreneur Needs Assessment Survey” with questions about your needs and experiences.  After you complete our survey, Technology Association of Georgia (TAG) will send you a free copy of “2008 State of the Industry Report: Technology in Georgia.”  This report, which will be published in March, will include hundreds of charts showing technology job growth, venture funding practices, sector growth, the results of this survey, and much more.

We thank you in advance for your participation.

Sincerely,

Tino J. Mantella - President, Technology Association of Georgia (TAG)

The Entrepreneur Survey is sponsored by the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), an independent non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and economic advancement of Georgia’s technology industry.

Cheers.

The down market seems to be working in our favor. This probably isn’t going to news to some of you, but I thought I’d share a few random thoughts on this.

As a FOSS (Free, Open Source Solution) company, that also offers a cloud-based software-as-a-service option, we’re sorting through more deal opportunities than we can handle right now. We’re hiring based upon real growth … which is the ultimate barometer of any startup’s progression.

CIOs and other tech decision makers still have the same problems to solve within their organizations, they just don’t have a blank check book to work with anymore.  No one ever got fired for bringing in a Microsoft, Avaya, SAP, or any other market leader to implement a solution.  But if they can’t afford to do that, they can either look to a startup or smaller company for a solution, or postpone the project until the market gets better. Tech decision makers like to be heroes, so cater to that.  Give them a solution that makes sense to them in a down market. A down market is a GREAT time for an emerging company to secure a beachhead against established players.

So how do you cater to them in a down market?  I suppose there isn’t one correct answer - it will vary depending upon your business, but … here are some thought starters based on what we’re seeing.

Startups can be more agile and creative with pricing and infrastructure. You don’t have 25,000 mouths to feed.  Yet … You have a handful.  Be aggressive with pricing - don’t try to get your whole nut on your first deal or two.  Get creative. Options are limitless - per seat, per transaction, per CPU hour, etc.  Are those up-front professional services fees getting in the way of closing the deal?  Waive them, and incorporate them into a transaction fee where the customer can pay for them over time.

Make your solution solve a real problem. In this market, the checks are being written to solution providers who can truly offer an efficiency or savings (of either time or money, or hopefully both).  If you aren’t doing this, you probably won’t last in the enterprise space. Don’t make your internal champion go back and explain why his or her boss needs to write a check to you.  Instead, arm them so they go back and show how much time and money they’ll save by bringing you in AND how painless it will be to get started. Everyone wants an on-demand solution these days - the days of NIH are shrinking.

If your solution doesn’t really solve a problem - make it solve one.

Get the deal DONE (especially if it involves a reference customer). If you can do this, others will dial down their perceived risk of entrusting a critical function to a startup provider.  It could even be worth losing money on a deal like that if you know it will open other doors for you - plus it slows your burn or at least helps you get to breakeven.

Put it in the cloud. Hardware is now a commodity.  It is a lot easier and cheaper to build a cloud solution these days.  Blade server prices are down to incredibly advantageous levels.  And if you can’t or don’t want to do it yourself, check out Scalr.net, which has a fantastic interface around Amazon’s EC2 service.

Enterprise services are the “ultimate mashup”. If you are an enterprise services startup, and you can effectively add value somewhere in a chain of web services, you have a decent shot at surviving this “Great Correction” as I’m calling the current market - but you are going to have to get deals done outside of the box.

Would love to hear some other thoughts …

Cheers.

Our bizdev guy jockeying for the top spot.  FAIL!

I’ve been involved in no less than two dozen software or Internet-related launches in my career.  Having just finished the initial launch of StarPound, I thought I’d drop a few notes here about launching.  This post will ramble a bit, as I am still really decompressing from the launch.

I will preface this by saying that no matter how many times you’ve launched stuff, you will learn something new each time.  Embrace it!

The Launch Date

Putting a flag in the ground and declaring the date to the whole team is a big motivator, but it can be risky. But just do it. You can’t hit a date unless you first have a date to hit.  And your team has to have input and buy-off on that date.  It should be a stretch goal, otherwise, it is meaningless. 

If your engineers are telling you it will take 60 days, set an internal date of 45 days.  Get everyone motivated to hit that date.  If you are excited about things, they will, in turn, get excited about those things and will become superhuman during the last two weeks leading up to the launch.

But be careful about publishing your engineering date to the market … :)  You really need to know your engineering capabilities and what pitfalls might crop up ahead of the launch - otherwise, you could be setting yourself up for embarrassment.

And of course, don’t commit the whole team to a date and be “that guy” (or gal) that does’t do anything to  help them get there.  Which leads me into …

Don’t be Afraid to Get your Hands Dirty

If your the type of leader that likes to sit back and delegate, you shouldn’t have left your nice job at Bellsouth (unless you had no choice, of course).  Funny thing about people - they respond very well by being lead from the front, and not the rear.

Back when I was in the Army (under Reagan - sheesh I’m getting old) there was this one Lieutenant that all the guys wanted to serve under.  Young guy - green as hell - but he got his hands dirty.  He wasn’t above pitching in to get the job done.  Whatever it took.

When I arrived in Germany to my line unit in 1987, my new platoon sergeant has to break me in, so he dogged me and made me serve motor pool duty for a week - in the cold rain - scrubbing a whole fleet of original 105MM M1 tanks that were covered in mud (they had just come back from a big field exercise).  While the more veteran guys walked by me hazing me for being a new recruit, this Lieutenant walks up and asked me what I was doing. I told him.  He took his parka off, rolled up his sleeves and helped me wash every single tank on the line.  Most of the other officers were lame in comparison.  This guy gave a sh*t about his team, and we responded in kind.  We would have walked through the fire for that guy - and some of us did.

In any startup, people are expected to wear multiple hats, each and every day. 

If someone has a problem with that, you need to get rid of them - period - because they will kill you in the end, one way or another.  I recall one day a few weeks ago where my schedule roughly consisted of the following tasks:

• Morning status meeting with the whole team
• Writing PHP code for our new web site
• Biz Dev: meeting with a new Fortune 500 customer
• Meeting with potential investor
• Using Photoshop to create new buttons for our app
• Market research - then working on marketing packets
• Interview new sales guy

And this was just my schedule.  Other people had it much worse.  If you cannot willingly wear multiple hats, or  you don’t have the skills needed to wear multiple hats, you have already made your journey that much more difficult. If you really don’t have the skills to help out in other areas, make an effort to learn.  It’ll make you a better leader in so many ways.

In short - delegation is a fine skill to have, but you have to earn the right to use it, and you earn that right by leading from the front, not the rear.

Sales and Business Development

Don’t ignore the sales effort while you are prepping for the launch. You don’t want to wake up with a nice launch, and no one to show it to. If you aren’t balancing sales and business development calls with launch-related stuff, you are heading down a very slippery slope.  The technology dead pool is full of companies that blew their wad on great launches, but they ended up mostly being “all hat and no cattle.”

At the same time, don’t distract your engineers with too much sales support - they need to stay focused on the task at hand, which is getting product to market.  if you do need to tap your engineers for sales support, try to streamline their involvement as much as possible.  Do you really need to drag your whole development team into a pre-sales meeting?  How about just the CTO?  Another approach is to set aside a certain block of time each week that they can be available for sales support, rather than ad hoc’ing everything.

Patience.

People will miss things, so accept it now - certain tasks, even critical ones, can get lost in the noise. You’ve gotta stay on top of everything and everyone.  And guess what, you will miss things, too.  Get over it.

Your team’s level of motivation and attention to detail is going to have a fairly direct correlation to your ability to keep things moving forward, despite the cyclone spinning around you.

The 90% Solution

This is something I’ve espoused for a long time, and it is rarely more fitting than when you are trying to launch something new.  The 100% solution is never attainable - so forget about.  Strive for 90% and try to get that part right. The rest will come in time.

If you had a splitting migraine, would you pay someone for a pill that solved 90% of your pain, or are you willing to suffer in misery while they work on the pill that solves it all?

Cheers.

My StartupLounge.com partner in crime Mike Blake is gonna hate me for this, but I can’t help myself.

Besides sharing a deep-rooted passion for helping entrepreneurs, we also share a fanatical love of video games - good ones, bad ones, doesn’t matter.  Lately, we’ve been playing Madden NFL 2009 a few nights a week on our XBOX 360s.  Good stuff.  Gotta love Internet play.

I always play the Falcons, because, well, I’m a real fan.  I’ve been a Falcons fan since the pre-Bartkowski days when Auburn QB standout Pat Sullivan warmed up the bench behind Bob Lee and Kim McQuilken.  Blake tends to rotate his teams from night to night - but lately, he’s been fond of trotting out the Raiders.

Madden 09 has a great post-game feature that lets you take any play from the game and turn it into a highlight reel.  You can choose the camera angle and what not, and then publish to EASportsWorld.com for sharing. 

Lately we’ve been having some pretty competitive games - many of them coming down to the wire. Big surprise - the risk taking entrepreneur (me) is usually going for it on anything less than 4th and 5 outside of my own 20. The conservative finance guy (Mike) won’t hesitate to trot out the punter. He usually wins in the end, mostly because I can’t control my urge to roll the dice.

But the other night, I got my revenge.

Here is my inaugural video recording - a single back formation, halfback draw to Michael “The Burner” Turner, who breaks no less than 4 tackles and victimizes the Mike Blake-led Raiders defense on his way to a 63 yard TD run. Booyah!

Sorry, Mike - couldn’t resist

Cheers.

Due to logistics, we’ve had to change the event venue from the Galleria to the ADTC - same time - 2pm.

Let me repeat – PitchCamp will NOT be held at the Galleria, but on the 3rd Floor (Hodges Room) at the ATDC. You can get address/map info here:

http://www.atdc.org/contact/

Thanks to Lance and crew at the ATDC for helping us out!

Cheers.