We have ramped up our search for engineers looking to take on a role within a company that is not only programming focused, but also adventure focused. We are in search of engineers who want to work with a company on a big mission, while seeing some of the world along the way. Do you fit the bill of an “Adventure Engineer” ?
Reach out and let us know why you should work at PayrollHero.
PayrollHero was one of 23 companies invited to take part in the C100’s annual 48Hrs In The Valley conference. It was 2 days and it was jam packed.
On the opening night, the team at Mozilla hosted us at their offices for a cocktail party and networking session so that the companies, sponsors, mentors and C100 Charter members could meet each other informally as a warm up to the next 48 hours. Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla and a fellow Canadian spoke to the group about thinking big and how as Canadian’s we have a different outlook on the world than our American counter parts.
Nearing the end of the night, the C100 made the sponsors do a “reverse pitch” where they get up in front of the companies and pitch their company. Some of the sponsors take it quite seriously including Brock Smith of Clark Wilson, who is the returning champ, I know this cause he mentioned it quite a few times. 🙂 Brock was up last and did a startup version of “The Hockey Song” and got the whole crowd involved. He did a fantastic job and was awarded first place, again.
The next day started at Rocket Space where we had a few panels and talks in the morning, followed by mentor sessions where each company was partnered up with 2 Candians in the valley to have one on one sessions to talk about the companies, their direction, problems, challenges and goals. It was a great way to get more outside feedback from people with huge experience in the tech industry.
Later in the afternoon of the first day, we moved over to Zendesk’s new office for a cocktail party, more networking and a talk from Zendesk COO Zack Urlocker who is also Canadian. This was a much larger party than the first night as the C100 crew invited quite a few more Canadians. There were Canadians from all of the major tech firms in San Francisco including Twitter and Facebook.
The next day we were off early in the morning on a bus to Silicon Valley for a few speakers at Nest GSV followed by lunch and then pitches at 8 different VC firms on Sand Hill Road. Each company was given 2 VC firms to pitch and get feedback from.
The afternoon ended at Rudy’s Patio in Silicon Valley where C100 co-founder Lars Leckie spoke while we had drinks and appetizers to close out the event.
All in all it was a fantastic event and worth it for all Canadian founders to apply. It was well run, fantastic speakers and mentors and an overall awesome time. Here are some pictures from the event thanks to Kris Krug, and you can see the rest here.
Ad-ven-ture En-gi-neer-ing
Noun: An unusual and exciting, experience or activity built around a flexible work schedule.
The PayrollHero team had a retreat this weekend in Saigon, Vietnam. Vietnam is a quick flight from Manila and a fantastic place to visit. We brought our Whistler team and Manila team together and popped over to Saigon.
At PayrollHero, we believe in “Adventure Engineering” and are committed to not only offering flexible work schedules so that team members can take advantage of “snow days” in Whistler or take “long” weekends to bounce around Southeast Asia but to see the world together. (more on adventure engineering below)
This weekend in Saigon, we fed monkeys and alligators, rode scooters, crawled through the Cu Chi Tunnels, ate frogs, saw the war museum and so much more.
We flew photographer Kris Krug in from Vancouver to document our journey through his lens. Kris is a rockstar photographer and this is not the first time we have brought him along on a PayrollHero trip. Last time we did this was to LAUNCH in San Francisco.
Here are just a couple of his photos from Saigon, but to see the whole collection, pop over to our Facebook page and check them out. Let us know which is your favorite!
PayrollHero Co-Founders Stephen Jagger and Michael Stephenson
Most of the PayrollHero team
Every morning (or afternoon depending on which office you are in) we run a daily standup meeting with the entire PayrollHero team. The idea is to keep the team in the know about what happened yesterday, what your working on today and anything that is blocking you from completing your work.
This morning, we took our standup meeting to the new Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf cafe across the street from our office in Manila as it was in its last week of prep, before they open the store on November 3rd 2012. Here are a couple pictures:
Twice a year the C100 invite “20 of Canada’s most promising startups to the Silicon Valley for two days of mentorship, workshops, investor meetings, strategic partner visits and networking.” This premier event is called “48 Hrs in the Valley”
We do lots of calls through Apple’s Facetime and Google Hangouts. We use Google Hangouts for our larger, daily, standup meetings so that we can see everyone’s face even though we are spread out around the world. Yesterday, I participated in our daily standup meeting with 9 other PayrollHero team members while sitting in my car. The quality of the call/video was awesome and I was connected through my iPhone 4S on 3G.
If you have not used Google Hangouts, check them out, it is a great way to have larger “calls” while on the move. To use your iPhone, just download the Google+ app from the app store.
The latest edition of the Founders Dinner was last night at the fabulous Q4 Restaurant on Broadway in Vancouver. I have been putting together these dinners in Vancouver and Manila for the past little while and it is always a good time. The idea is to get founders of tech companies together for a meal to chat about the startup world. No speakers, no presentations, just networking with some of the cities tech founders. Last night we had a great group that included;
Michael Stephenson – co-founder of Ubertor.com and PayrollHero.com
Nick Molnar and Matt Friesen – co-founders of Wantering.com
James Mazur – founder of AfterMyDeal.com
Olivier Vincent – founder of Hipparcos Technologies
Andrea Shillington – founder of BrandsForThePeople.com
Christian Cotichini – founder of 81Monkeys.com
Jeff Booth – co-founder of BuildDirect.com
Jason Billingsley – co-founder of Elastic Path and Zolo.ca
Barry Allen and Ryley Best – co-founders of Zolo.ca
Harry Yeh – founder of Comet Computing
John Vogel – founder of Line2.com
Brent Holliday – partner at CapWest.com
Bret Conkin – co-founder of fundfindr.com
Craig Hunter – Vancouver Manager – Uber.com
Devon Ash – founder of SocialFluency.com
Jon Cartright – co-founder of Food.ee
Andrew Covato – Analytical Lead at Google.com
Meredith Powell – CMO of Wantering.com
Some of the PayrollHero team was in attendance at the International Contact Center Conference & Expo (ICCCE) that ended yesterday. “ICCCE 2012 is the premier learning event for the contact center industry. It’s the must-attend conference for executives, managers, and professionals from both outsource and in-house call centers.” quote The President of the Philippines, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, even dropped by to check out the event.
Here are a few pictures from the event:
Amazon’s AWS ASEAN team, based in Singapore, was looking for a location for their 3 day “Architecting with AWS” event that they were planning on holding in Manila. We offered the PayrollHero offices, and this morning 35 engineers from some of the Philippines leading organizations showed up for three days of learning from Amazon’s AWS technical team.
Attendees needed to have some existing knowledge or experience with AWS and have a conceptual understanding of the key infrastructure services (EC2, S3, RDS, etc), their features, and how they are used.
Over the next 3 days, attendees will be immersed in all things AWS and will walk away with a great knowledge of what Amazon’s solution is truly capable of. Here are a couple of pictures from this morning. Looks like it is going to be a great few days!!
Last night was the first edition of Founders Drinks Manila. I first started attending a “Founders Drinks” event in San Francisco when Jonathan Swanson of Thumbtack.com would host them in his swanky waterfront condo downtown San Francisco. We borrowed the idea from his events and started running them in Vancouver and last night, we put together Founders Drinks Manila with the help of Jay from Proudcloud and Christian from Kickstart.
All in all it was an excellent event. We put together a group of 50 people, the vast majority founders of Philippine startups as well as a couple from the media and our friends at Amazon AWS. The event was invite only so that we could ensure only founders were in the room as a way to foster conversation about the startup community and network with others that are working to grow a business.
A big thank you to Amazon for picking up the food tab and to the Kickstart guys for the round of drinks!
We will do this event again… if you want to be on the list, be sure to reach out and introduce yourself.
Here are a couple pictures from the event… for more photos head on over to the PayrollHero Facebook page.
Erwin from Yahoo! Philippines and Franky from The Bobbery
John Arce from WebGeek.ph, Stephen Jagger and Marga Dumlao from PayrollHero
Erwin from Yahoo! Philippines
