As blist develops and we get closer to launching the service, it’s been fun and rewarding to demo the application to people who have deep opinions and pedigrees in the space in which we plan to operate. Over the last few weeks I’ve been fortunate to conduct two specific demos of this sort. I’ll admit I had some anxiety initially. It’s akin to talking about black holes with Stephen Hawking.

The first demo was with the co-founder and CEO of not one, but two significant database companies. He’s truly a pioneer in the space. He was skeptical of taking a meeting with us initially as he thought he had seen it all and heard it all already. With the help of a persuasive friend of blist, he ultimately accepted our meeting request. In three short weeks he’s gone from doubter to a big believer and a strong advocate. He’s excited about the innovations we showed him and is equally enthusiastic about where we plan to take blist. He shared with me that he’s impressed that we’re thinking and investing at both ends of the database spectrum. At one end, we’re investing in building a database as a service that scales to Internet scale. At the other end, we’re investing and making great advances in usability so that mainstream users can organize data without dependence on a DBA.

His vote of confidence matters to me.

The second demo was to James Hamilton, my boss while I was at Microsoft. James was a core architect of both Microsoft’s SQL Server and IBM’s DB2. He’s the co-author of a number of whitepapers on database theory and internals. He’s one of the smartest technologists I’ve ever known. I gave him a demo of blist and he was impressed with how much we’ve accomplished since starting development earlier this year. James and I share a passion for big scale ops - running really large web services at Internet scale. Most of our conversations over the last two-and-a-half years have been in this area, so I think James was surprised by the significant innovations we’ve made on the user interface. He’s very enthusiastic about blist.

His vote of confidence matters to me.

We’re excited about what we’re building at blist. At the end of the day our success will not be measured by what two industry veterans think, but instead by whether people adopt and embrace blist in large numbers. For now, though, I’m content with two votes of confidence from two people who collectively have more than 50 years of peerless domain experience. And while I generally think most people in this database world are too set in their thinking, these two in particular moved on from the database world because there wasn’t enough new thinking.

Their votes of confidence matter to me.

We’re ready to expand the team again, for several disciplines, but for this post I’ll focus on software engineers. If you are a phenomenal software engineer, or know one, drop me a note at my first name dot last name at blist.com. 

What’s in it for you?

1) You’ll get to work on a really cool product that’s resonating well with our target audience.

2) You’ll get to work on some fun and interesting technologies - Flash (Flex), ActionScript, Ruby on Rails.

3) You’ll get to try to solve some really challenging problems:

    a) Creating the world’s easiest database by changing the metaphor of what it means to organize data

    b) Developing a massively scalable, high performance, distributed data store

4) You’ll get to work with people who are as passionate about technology as you are.

5) You’ll get in early enough to make a huge difference.

6) You’ll get to work in fast paced environment without undue bureaucracy, heavy specs or too many program managers. We employ scrum with very rapid, two-week sprints.

7) You’ll get paid pretty well, including full benefits and stock options.

What kind of software engineer are we looking for?

1) We value technical diversity. We don’t care so much if you’ve worked with Flash or Rails as long as you’re smart, resourceful and have demonstrated excellence in programming in other environments.

2) We build software from the bottom up, so you should have really strong fundamentals. Usually this means you have an undergrad or masters degree in CS or EE from a top university, but we’ve been impressed by more than a few folks who’ve come through other paths.

3) We’re looking for people who want to get in early on something that’s going to be big.  These folks are attracted to the big systems challenges and opportunities of a Google or Facebook, but those companies are now too big for them.

4) We look for people who can be stars if they chose to work alone, but who’d rather work in a small, nimble team where everyone’s contributions matter.

5) We think past success is an indicator of future success. We look for people who can demonstrate how they’ve solved big problems in the past and how solving those problems really mattered.

6) While we care a lot less about what languages you’ve programmed in the past, we do appreciate people who’ve experienced building Internet software that scales.

7) We look for people who have a really strong passion for what we’re building. Read up on us on our website and TechCrunch. If it doesn’t interest you, by all means don’t apply. Life’s too short. Have some fun while you’re here.

What Next?

If you’re interested, send me an email. If you have a current resume, great. If not, we’ll get that later. I like to look at code, so send me some. Send me the solution to the following programming challenge:

Without using any built in date or time functions, write a function or method that accepts two mandatory arguments. The first argument is a string of the format "[H]H:MM {AM|PM}" and the second argument is an integer. Assume the integer is the number of minutes to add to the string. The return value of the function should be a string of the same format as the first argument. For example AddMinutes("9:13 AM", 10) would return "9:23 AM". The exercise isn’t meant to be too hard. I just want to see how you code. Feel free to do it procedurally or in an object oriented way, whichever you prefer. Use any language you want. Write production quality code.

I look forward to hearing from you.

One of the things I love about blogging is that it allows me to share with the world some sense of identity about who blist it. This is the first of what I hope are many annual Thanksgiving posts in which we candidly share some of the things for which we’re thankful.

1) I’m thankful for the American economic system that encourages entrepreneurship. Ideas can be incubated. Capital can be raised. Products can be brought to market. Employees can viably work for fledgling entities. Wealth can be shared by all the direct and indirect contributors. These possibilities exist in part because we have an economic system that supports it. I’m happy to see this economic model spread to eastern Europe, India, China and Vietnam among other places. Access to resources has the ability to dramatically and beneficially change the lives of so many people in need.

2) I’m thankful for the Internet. Without it we wouldn’t be able to successfully market blist, much less deliver it. It seems like eons ago, but it was only 10 years ago when the thought of sharing an application with someone meant the recipient had to painfully install software on their PC. Now, it’s as easy as sending a link. So thanks to Al Gore for inventing the Internet.

3) I’m thankful for a sacrificing, supportive family who not only allow me follow my dreams but adopt my dreams as their own. You know you share too much of the passion when your two-year-old asks "what’s a blist?" at the dinner table.

4) I’m thankful for courageous, visionary employees who had the strength to join us when all we had was a vision in our minds eye of what we were building.

5) I’m thankful for the advice of others. We learn so much through our own successes and failures as well as from those generous enough to share their experiences with us.

What are you thankful for? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

Last week was a big one for blist. We took a small step towards a future of meeting accelerated milestones and great features rolling into blist.

We added another software engineer to the team.

Big deal you say. Startups add software engineers all the time and it’s not newsworthy. This time was different. It was a big deal for me personally. Chi, my long time colleague, friend and one of my favorite people, joined us at blist.

Chi and I began working together in January, 1997. He was the biggest contributor in building Prospector, which as I’ve shared previously, was an application from whose DNA blist has evolved. In February 2003, Chi became MessageRite’s first employee. When MessageRite was acquired by FrontBridge, Chi came along too. When Microsoft acquired FrontBridge, Chi came along that time too. When I left Microsoft last fall to start laying the foundation for blist, it was the first time in 10 years that Chi and I were no longer colleagues. Chi signed up for a two-year stint at Microsoft and was fulfilling that commitment.

While we still haven’t disclosed too many details of what we’re building at blist, I can say we’re ahead of schedule by almost every measure. The primary reason for this is that we have a phenomenal founding team, all of whom are new to working with me. Every one of the core blist team is an all-star and an argument could be made that we don’t need him. We’ve certainly accomplished much without Chi.

As the CEO, I internally struggled with the thought of having Chi join us. On one hand, he’s a great engineer whose capabilities and talents I know well. On the other hand, the new team was already doing well, in large part because they’ve gelled together. Team chemistry is vastly underrated in the productivity of software engineering teams.

You already know how it turned out. Chi has joined us. I’m excited about his involvement with blist for many reasons, not the least of which is that he’s a great software engineer. But the deciding factor was something far less tangible and much harder to describe. It’s like putting on your high school baseball glove again for the thousandth time and having it feel as good on your hand as it did decades before. It’s the comfort of the familiar.

When assembling your startup team, scour within and beyond your network for the best talent you can find. New people bring energy, fresh perspectives and new skills and you definitely want them. But save a spot or two for friendly, familiar faces. It’s been a week since Chi joined us and it’s already clear that it was the right choice to make.

Welcome to the blist corporate blog. While we get the question less often now that we’ve changed the way we print our name to all lower case letters, one of the questions we get from time to time is how to pronounce our name. Is it “B List” as in the A-list vs. the B-list? Or is it blist, as in rhymes with twist? It’s the latter.

Our name parallels the word blog, which you know is a portmanteau (spork = spoon + fork) for web log. blist is a portmanteau for web list. Say it fast a few times. Web list. Web list. Web list… blist. We aren’t creating yet another simple list editor. There’s much more to it than that, but what we’re developing is so easy to use, it’s as easy as building a web blist. Ease of use is so important we wanted to pick a name for our company that emphasized how easy it is. If you can make a list, you can make a blist.

Over the past few months I’ve been interviewing folks for various marketing roles. Through our name I’ve learned that marketers opinions blow in the wind. When I first meet a marketer, I’ll usually introduce myself “Hi, I’m Kevin Merritt from blist.” They’ll respond. “Oh, it’s blist, not B-list? We’re going to have change the company name right away, before it sticks.” Then I’ll spend my typical introductory hour describing what we’re building and by the end of the discussion they’ll take a 180 on the company name. “Actually, I love it. It really fits.”

Like blog, we use it as both noun and verb:

• - Did you see Kevin’s wine blist?
• - Hey, why don’t we just blist this so everyone can share it?

It’s blist. Got a list? Make a blist.