6 ms·

Wow! I've been an avid 'Varker for sometime now and this is very surprising! I think this is probably more of a talent acquisition than anything: Just the _hi

by bgraves 17y ago

Wow! I've been an avid 'Varker for sometime now and this is very surprising! I think this is probably more of a talent acquisition than anything: Just the _highlights_ from http://vark.com/team http://vark.com/team * Max Ventilla - former Googler; marketing and monetization * Nathan Stoll - former Googler; headed Google News for three years * Fritz Schneider - former Googler; founded and led Google's Firefox and Safe Browsing teams * Winton Davies - founding member of Yahoo Research Labs and a Principal Research Engineer at Overture, GoTo, and Cadabra. * Bill MacCartney - former Googler; designed an automated question answering system at Google Research * Sameer Paranjpye - founded and headed Yahoo’s Grid Computing team, responsible for the Apache Hadoop project -- Aardvark has also come out with some great research projects in the past few weeks/months. [http://vark.com/aardvarkFinalWWW2010.pdf http://vark.com/aardvarkFinalWWW2010.pdf] "Back in October, we wrote a research paper entitled 'Anatomy of a Large-Scale Social Search Engine' and submitted it to WWW 2010. We found out last week that it has been accepted, so we wanted to share a preview with you today! Our paper was inspired by the classic Google paper, 'Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine', in which =>Sergey Brin and Larry Page<= originally describe the algorithms and architecture of Google. This paper was published 12 years ago in the same WWW conference."

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
rdouble 17y ago
Re-hiring a bunch of ex-employees does not look like a talent acquisition. It looks more like someone was shrewd enough to become buddies with the M&A department the first time around.
- bgraves 17y ago
  Sorry, would you care to elaborate? I'm not really sure what you mean by "the M&A department the first time around". I think the fact that only _some_ of the team members are ex-Googlers is significant. Additionally, what other business case could their be to purchase such a small, new company. Couldn't Google just have integrated these features into their shiny new Buzz service _last week_ and have overshadowed Vark very quickly?
  - henrikschroder 17y ago
    If you quit a company, do a successful startup, and then get re-acquired by the company you quit in the first place, chances are that you don't want to go back to work for them again. If you did, why did you quit your job in the first place?
    - bgraves 17y ago
      It would depend on the events which led up to leaving Google in the first place. I doubt the original team left Google because it wasn't challenging enough or there wasn't enough flexibility, both of which would be reason enough to leave a lesser company to go out on your own. If your logic was accurate, then why would Aardvark have even sold out to Google in the first place?
      - robryan 17y ago
        Possibly these people liked their idea enough and though they could make a lot more going it alone, now they like the idea of Google support in perusing continuing to peruse their idea. Just a guess really, but what they are doing now make be considerably more exciting than what they were doing at Google previously.
    - alavrik 17y ago
      To make a lot more money, for example.
      - Timothee 17y ago
        Though in their case, with 4 founders, $6M invested and a $50M exit, it's not "that much" money. I wouldn't spit on it obviously, but considering some of these guys' former positions at Google, they had probably made a good amount from stocks and such. What I'm trying to say is that it's probably in the same order of magnitude of their worth before that.
        rwebb 17y ago
seiji 17y ago
There was a time I believed all corporate activities were based only on merit. Anything not completely merit derived would be illegal. That's what we're made to believe with all kinds of anti-descriminition laws (you can't ask age, about kids, etc during interviews for example). It turns out, everything is friend based. Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too. Have a project you don't want to do inside of Google? Just quit, make it anyway, then they'll re-hire you with a $5M per head bonus. I'd find it delightful if I were in such a position, but I'm not. Not only am I not, but the more technical side of me doesn't want to play social games to become ingratiated to the decision makers. Deep down, I still believe the world is merit based -- and that's one reason why I'm still a nobody doing nothing going nowhere. I'd be better off not reading HN most days.
- falsestprophet 17y ago
  Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too. I can confirm this. Contrariwise, knowing poor people can help you get poor. Such is life.
- paul 17y ago
  You just want to world to recognize you as "having merit" and give you money? You want to be successful, but are unwilling to make any sort of effort? Create something remarkable and people with money will find you.
  - seiji 17y ago
    I see how it can be read that way. By "merit," I meant actual accomplishments and not some ethereal quality of a person or group just sitting idle. I'm glad you chimed in though because you're one of the cases that kind-of fits the model above. From a complete outsider's point of view, it looks like friends giving friends tens of millions of dollars for nebulous reasons. * Disclaimer: Text is a poor medium of communication and usually comes across more hostile in the reader's eyes than intended. There is much levity here.
    - paul 17y ago
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
fjabre 17y ago
Seems like a pretty large founding team and a lot of ex-googlers there. I counted 11 senior/founding members on their site. $50 million sounds like a lot initially but considering the size of the founding team and that they raised 6 million from VCs I don't think any of them would want to retire just yet.

by bgraves 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

rdouble 17y ago

Re-hiring a bunch of ex-employees does not look like a talent acquisition. It looks more like someone was shrewd enough to become buddies with the M&A department the first time around.

bgraves 17y ago
Sorry, would you care to elaborate? I'm not really sure what you mean by "the M&A department the first time around". I think the fact that only _some_ of the team members are ex-Googlers is significant. Additionally, what other business case could their be to purchase such a small, new company. Couldn't Google just have integrated these features into their shiny new Buzz service _last week_ and have overshadowed Vark very quickly?
- henrikschroder 17y ago
  If you quit a company, do a successful startup, and then get re-acquired by the company you quit in the first place, chances are that you don't want to go back to work for them again. If you did, why did you quit your job in the first place?
  - bgraves 17y ago
    It would depend on the events which led up to leaving Google in the first place. I doubt the original team left Google because it wasn't challenging enough or there wasn't enough flexibility, both of which would be reason enough to leave a lesser company to go out on your own. If your logic was accurate, then why would Aardvark have even sold out to Google in the first place?
    - robryan 17y ago
      Possibly these people liked their idea enough and though they could make a lot more going it alone, now they like the idea of Google support in perusing continuing to peruse their idea. Just a guess really, but what they are doing now make be considerably more exciting than what they were doing at Google previously.
  - alavrik 17y ago
    To make a lot more money, for example.
    - Timothee 17y ago
      Though in their case, with 4 founders, $6M invested and a $50M exit, it's not "that much" money. I wouldn't spit on it obviously, but considering some of these guys' former positions at Google, they had probably made a good amount from stocks and such. What I'm trying to say is that it's probably in the same order of magnitude of their worth before that.
      - rwebb 17y ago

seiji 17y ago

There was a time I believed all corporate activities were based only on merit. Anything not completely merit derived would be illegal. That's what we're made to believe with all kinds of anti-descriminition laws (you can't ask age, about kids, etc during interviews for example). It turns out, everything is friend based. Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too. Have a project you don't want to do inside of Google? Just quit, make it anyway, then they'll re-hire you with a $5M per head bonus. I'd find it delightful if I were in such a position, but I'm not. Not only am I not, but the more technical side of me doesn't want to play social games to become ingratiated to the decision makers. Deep down, I still believe the world is merit based -- and that's one reason why I'm still a nobody doing nothing going nowhere. I'd be better off not reading HN most days.

falsestprophet 17y ago
Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too. I can confirm this. Contrariwise, knowing poor people can help you get poor. Such is life.
paul 17y ago
You just want to world to recognize you as "having merit" and give you money? You want to be successful, but are unwilling to make any sort of effort? Create something remarkable and people with money will find you.
- seiji 17y ago
  I see how it can be read that way. By "merit," I meant actual accomplishments and not some ethereal quality of a person or group just sitting idle. I'm glad you chimed in though because you're one of the cases that kind-of fits the model above. From a complete outsider's point of view, it looks like friends giving friends tens of millions of dollars for nebulous reasons. * Disclaimer: Text is a poor medium of communication and usually comes across more hostile in the reader's eyes than intended. There is much levity here.
  - paul 17y ago

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

fjabre 17y ago

Seems like a pretty large founding team and a lot of ex-googlers there. I counted 11 senior/founding members on their site. $50 million sounds like a lot initially but considering the size of the founding team and that they raised 6 million from VCs I don't think any of them would want to retire just yet.