As I posted a while back we are hiring at an alarming rate. Sadly it's not the glorious task that I had so hoped it would be. There was a week where we interviewed 40 people and hired 2 of them, which I think is actually not a bad percentage but it was really painful. One disappointing trend I am seeing is the rise of candidates who have made half-assed attempts at starting businesses that are based on nothing b As I posted a while back we are hiring at an alarming rate. Sadly it’s not the glorious task that I had so hoped it would be. There was a week where we interviewed 40 people and hired 2 of them, which I think is actually not a bad percentage but it was really painful.One disappointing trend I am seeing is the rise of candidates who have made half-assed attempts at starting businesses that are based on nothing but buzzwords, which have now failed and they are looking for real jobs. Monetizing the “wisdom of crowds” is not a business model, and taking advantage of “long-tail” economics is not why startups are successful.There is absolutely nothing wrong with starting your own company. In fact I encourage everyone to do it. But, you should be smart about it. And when I see these things on resumes from “founders” of companies that can’t articulate what their business is, or why someone should care I immediately discount them as a candidate. On the other side, I have recently met several very interesting startups that may not have totally figured things out but are working to focus themselves and their businesses. Startup mechanics require more than a misspelled name and AJAX you need to understand your market and create a great product that has viable long-term revenue. And if you want to work somewhere as you figure things out be honest about why your idea is where it is. Just because you can create a decent application doesn’t mean anyone will actually use it. Nor should you expect to build a business on only one revenue stream—especially not one as fickle as advertising. When I saw Zack’s post on GOOG surpassing IBM’s market cap I started to wonder what would happen if there was some global incident that took down Google (unlikely but not totally impossible.) In that case Google’s revenue would go away and IBM would still be standing. And all the companies that rely on advertising for monetization would all be dead. Go out and build a product that has value and your company will be far more successful than if you try to ride a weak trend. Disclaimer: Open source may be a trend. I haven’t decided yet. However it’s clear that there is not a bubble like Web 2.0. Open Source