Xobni is hiring.

Who are we looking for?

We are looking for a top-quality hacker. For example:

• You can write a simple HTTP server in your sleep.
• You can explain how a Public Key Infrastructure system works, including pieces like a Certificate Authority and Certificate Revocation List.
• You know offhand how long a disk seek takes.
• You can implement a rudimentary but robust file system in a week.
• You have written multithreaded programs.

All of these examples are real; we have used all of these skills thus far.

The following are pluses:

• Proficiency in C# or Java
• Familiarity with the Windows API
• Experience building something people use
• Experience with product development workflow (testing with VMware, build scripts, source control, and so on)

We are looking for someone with the kind of energy you would expect in a founder.

We prefer full time recruits, but will consider exceptional students who want to take a year off from school. We are also willing to bring on the right students in part time roles.

Reward

The economic compensation includes a small salary and a large equity stake.

Aside from the possibility of becoming independently wealthy, we are offering a tremendous learning experience. We are building a software business; the person we hire will get exposure to the entire software process and the entire business process.

On the business side we are currently struggling with many questions. How much money should we raise, and when? What products should we develop? Which customers should we go after?

The software side is equally broad. We maintain a nightly build system, a couple of servers, and a whiteboard full of ideas.

Early hires will get exposure to all of these things.

We also provide a Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription to all employees.

Where Xobni Stands

Xobni is a four month old software company.

Our software has grown quickly; several private beta testers are using it. We have gone from

static void Main(String[] args) { }

to a software product that people are excited about. Here are some quotes from beta users.

“Great work so far”
“[Xobni Analytics] is really cool.”
“I’ve discovered things I never knew about my email.”

Exciting things are also going on under the hood. We build software that works with Microsoft Outlook, but we have invested into building our own abstractions on top of Outlook. I haven’t touched an Outlook API in the past week. This means that we can work from a higher level, so we can write software faster. Our system also allows us to access data over 100x faster than directly from Outlook.

Although our efforts are focused on helping people understand how they use email, only one third of our code is related to that product. The other two thirds of the code is our framework that we will leverage in all of our products.

So we have made significant investments into our code. We could probably license our framework on top of Outlook for a couple thousand dollars per developer seat. Instead, we are reserving it as a tremendous competitive advantage.

On the business side of the house, we have been busy talking with people and winning mindshare in the community. Aside from our initial funding from Y Combinator, we are in the middle of our next round. It is going well so far. We can give more details when talking to serious candidates.

We have also been talking to prospective customers about our enterprise offering. We have relationships with companies who are ready to try out our software when it becomes available.

Environment

Our goal is to find someone that we wouldn’t mind spending a couple thousand hours with.

Matt and I love what we are doing. We are doing something big, and having fun doing it.

But startup life can be stressful. Deals fall through, you miss release dates, and your ice cream supply runs out approaches zero.

The bumps on the road are significant, but so are our good natures. Matt and I maintain high morale in many ways. We eat good food, have good conversations, and enjoy the occasional break to do things like going to a friend’s lake house in New Hampshire.

Interested?

Are you interested? If so, the next step is to send us your resume and a description of something you’ve built.

Do you know of anyone who might be interested? Please put us in touch or send them a link to this posting.