We are in the middle of our 2018 Analyst hiring process at USV.  For the last several hiring cycles, USV has had an open process where anyone can apply.  I actually wrote about it back in 2011, right before I joined, remarking at the high quality of applicants that the process produced. That is still the case today.  In this year's Analyst application produced 326 applicants, of remarkable accomplishment.  Albert has been writing updates about the process on the USV blog.  At this point, we have reviewed all of the applications, and are working towards a second round of interviews with semi-finalists. What I'll cover here is how we've managed the process this time. For the past 3 cycles we have solicited video responses as part of the application process, powered by Ziggeo.  Having video in the application process has really worked for us.  Even with short videos (our were 30 and 60 seconds, respectively), you can get a good sense of a person's manner of speaking, sense of confidence, thoughtfulness, etc.  While it doesn't tell the whole story, it's been a very helpful signal for us over the years. The first time, we used a custom web application that Oliver from Ziggeo helped us build (source code here).  The second time, we re-used that codebase with some modifications.  This time, we tried to make it even more simple, using only off-the-shelf tools. What we ended up with was a combination of FormAssembly for the form itself (because FormAssembly supports Ziggeo integration) Ziggeo for the videos, and Airtable for the ultimate data storage and workflow management. FormAssembly made it easy to build the form, including nice features like letting applicants save a partially-completed form and come back to it later.  The form looked like this:

Ziggeo made it really easy to capture the video.  Note the embedded video recorder in the form above, which looks like this when you fire it up:

For our internal process of reviewing applications, we needed something else, which is where Airtable comes in. For those who don't know Airtable, it's basically a hybrid spreadsheet / database, with handy aspects of each.  It's like a spreadsheet in that it's really easy to update the schema and edit data.  It's like a database in that you get persistent records that are linkable with one another (a feature that we didn't use here but we make lots of use of elsewhere internally), and that has a great API. There's not an automatic way to move records from FormAssembly to Airtable, so we just did CSV export/import.  Ultimately, we ended up with a view like this, where we could review applicants one-by-one and then comment/score/sort/etc:

You can see a stripped-down version of the Airtable we used for the process here. All in all, this setup worked great.  It took zero coding to build, had a really modest number of errors or mishaps, and handled our workflow well. There are, of course, a few things that could have been better.  Top of the list would be direct Ziggeo support within Airtable.  Airtable has a feature where you can expose a form that will collect data directly into a table in Airtable.  Ideally, you'd be able to have a "video" type form element that would embed a Ziggeo recorder directly in the Airtable form.  Then, on the back end, it would be great if you could view those videos directly in Airtable, rather than clicking out to a link -- imagine the screenshot above, but with embedded video players rather than links.  I suspect a lot of people use Airtable for applicant tracking, and I'm sure this kind of video support would be popular.  Another would be automated connectivity between FormAssembly and Airtable, maybe via Zapier. So, that's what we did.  Remarkably easy to manage this time around -- thank you to all the teams out there building the tools that make this kind of thing easier by the day.

I've written a bunch about why it's expensive to be poor, why we need better tools for managing money, and how to move from a labor mindset to a capital mindset.  A big takeaway for me is that accumulating wealth isn't just a functional activity, it's a mindset that needs to be learned, and taught. It has taken me a long time -- generationally speaking -- to begin to figure this out.  Both of my parents grew up poor.  My father grew up especially poor, but managed to break out.  In the 1960s he took a computer programming course and learned to code (50 years ahead of his time!), and then just before I was born he started a small business, which my parents run together to this day. While this business has been transformative for our family (it sent me to college - I'm the first one on my father's side ever to graduate), I think it's fair to say that it hasn't yet finished the job of helping us relate to money in the right way.  For example, I don't think I ever really learned, at a young age (or really into my late thirties), the concept of **investing**.  Saving was always a vaguely good idea, but spending was easier, and spending on debt even easier than that.  Basically, I think there is this transition, from having no money, to having some money (but spending all of it), to (in some cases) spending more than you have, to (if you're lucky) learning how to get money to work for you. Now that I have kids of my own, I'm trying to think about how to teach them about money.  I want them to learn about budgeting, about saving, and about investing.  I want them to see today's spending needs/wants as not the whole picture. I want them to learn that if you're smart about money, not only will you set a solid foundation for yourself, but other good things can happen (e.g., compounding interest). Here is my v0 approach -- no idea yet if this will work.  The primary way my kids spend money (of their own choosing) is on-demand videos.  We have a Roku TV in our living room, and occasionally they rent or buy TV shows or movies.  So, for starters, rather than having them simply ask every time if they can do it, we're instituting a budget.  The budget is $20 per month per kid.  (that gets you roughly two movies or ten episodes). The twist is that, at the end of each month, whatever they don't spend rolls over into the next month -- with 20% interest.  So if they spend $10 and save $10, they will roll over $10 + 20% or $2.  So next month they'd start out with $32.  The 20% monthly interest may seem unrealistic and overly generous, but I'm trying to compensate for both the low dollar amounts (hard to get excited about 1% monthly on $5), and also for converting to "kid time" (a month to them feels like a year to us). I explained the new plan to them the other day (March is our first month), and my heart skipped a beat when my daughter immediately responded: "I think I'll save most of it".  :-).  We will see what happens. I am hoping that one of them realizes that the 20% will compound pretty quickly, and decides not to spend any at all.   By my calculations, if they decided to keep 100% of the allowance, by the end of a year they'd each have $950. I'm curious to know what approaches others have taken to teaching kids about saving and investing.

We are in the middle of our 2018 Analyst hiring process at USV.  For the last several hiring cycles, USV has had an open process where anyone can apply.  I actually wrote about it back in 2011, right before I joined, remarking at the high quality of applicants that the process produced. That is still the case today.  In this year's Analyst application produced 326 applicants, of remarkable accomplishment.  Albert has been writing updates about the process on the USV blog.  At this point, we have reviewed all of the applications, and are working towards a second round of interviews with semi-finalists. What I'll cover here is how we've managed the process this time. For the past 3 cycles we have solicited video responses as part of the application process, powered by Ziggeo.  Having video in the application process has really worked for us.  Even with short videos (our were 30 and 60 seconds, respectively), you can get a good sense of a person's manner of speaking, sense of confidence, thoughtfulness, etc.  While it doesn't tell the whole story, it's been a very helpful signal for us over the years. The first time, we used a custom web application that Oliver from Ziggeo helped us build (source code here).  The second time, we re-used that codebase with some modifications.  This time, we tried to make it even more simple, using only off-the-shelf tools. What we ended up with was a combination of FormAssembly for the form itself (because FormAssembly supports Ziggeo integration) Ziggeo for the videos, and Airtable for the ultimate data storage and workflow management. FormAssembly made it easy to build the form, including nice features like letting applicants save a partially-completed form and come back to it later.  The form looked like this:

Ziggeo made it really easy to capture the video.  Note the embedded video recorder in the form above, which looks like this when you fire it up:

For our internal process of reviewing applications, we needed something else, which is where Airtable comes in. For those who don't know Airtable, it's basically a hybrid spreadsheet / database, with handy aspects of each.  It's like a spreadsheet in that it's really easy to update the schema and edit data.  It's like a database in that you get persistent records that are linkable with one another (a feature that we didn't use here but we make lots of use of elsewhere internally), and that has a great API. There's not an automatic way to move records from FormAssembly to Airtable, so we just did CSV export/import.  Ultimately, we ended up with a view like this, where we could review applicants one-by-one and then comment/score/sort/etc:

You can see a stripped-down version of the Airtable we used for the process here. All in all, this setup worked great.  It took zero coding to build, had a really modest number of errors or mishaps, and handled our workflow well. There are, of course, a few things that could have been better.  Top of the list would be direct Ziggeo support within Airtable.  Airtable has a feature where you can expose a form that will collect data directly into a table in Airtable.  Ideally, you'd be able to have a "video" type form element that would embed a Ziggeo recorder directly in the Airtable form.  Then, on the back end, it would be great if you could view those videos directly in Airtable, rather than clicking out to a link -- imagine the screenshot above, but with embedded video players rather than links.  I suspect a lot of people use Airtable for applicant tracking, and I'm sure this kind of video support would be popular.  Another would be automated connectivity between FormAssembly and Airtable, maybe via Zapier. So, that's what we did.  Remarkably easy to manage this time around -- thank you to all the teams out there building the tools that make this kind of thing easier by the day.

I've written a bunch about why it's expensive to be poor, why we need better tools for managing money, and how to move from a labor mindset to a capital mindset.  A big takeaway for me is that accumulating wealth isn't just a functional activity, it's a mindset that needs to be learned, and taught. It has taken me a long time -- generationally speaking -- to begin to figure this out.  Both of my parents grew up poor.  My father grew up especially poor, but managed to break out.  In the 1960s he took a computer programming course and learned to code (50 years ahead of his time!), and then just before I was born he started a small business, which my parents run together to this day. While this business has been transformative for our family (it sent me to college - I'm the first one on my father's side ever to graduate), I think it's fair to say that it hasn't yet finished the job of helping us relate to money in the right way.  For example, I don't think I ever really learned, at a young age (or really into my late thirties), the concept of **investing**.  Saving was always a vaguely good idea, but spending was easier, and spending on debt even easier than that.  Basically, I think there is this transition, from having no money, to having some money (but spending all of it), to (in some cases) spending more than you have, to (if you're lucky) learning how to get money to work for you. Now that I have kids of my own, I'm trying to think about how to teach them about money.  I want them to learn about budgeting, about saving, and about investing.  I want them to see today's spending needs/wants as not the whole picture. I want them to learn that if you're smart about money, not only will you set a solid foundation for yourself, but other good things can happen (e.g., compounding interest). Here is my v0 approach -- no idea yet if this will work.  The primary way my kids spend money (of their own choosing) is on-demand videos.  We have a Roku TV in our living room, and occasionally they rent or buy TV shows or movies.  So, for starters, rather than having them simply ask every time if they can do it, we're instituting a budget.  The budget is $20 per month per kid.  (that gets you roughly two movies or ten episodes). The twist is that, at the end of each month, whatever they don't spend rolls over into the next month -- with 20% interest.  So if they spend $10 and save $10, they will roll over $10 + 20% or $2.  So next month they'd start out with $32.  The 20% monthly interest may seem unrealistic and overly generous, but I'm trying to compensate for both the low dollar amounts (hard to get excited about 1% monthly on $5), and also for converting to "kid time" (a month to them feels like a year to us). I explained the new plan to them the other day (March is our first month), and my heart skipped a beat when my daughter immediately responded: "I think I'll save most of it".  :-).  We will see what happens. I am hoping that one of them realizes that the 20% will compound pretty quickly, and decides not to spend any at all.   By my calculations, if they decided to keep 100% of the allowance, by the end of a year they'd each have $950. I'm curious to know what approaches others have taken to teaching kids about saving and investing.