Improve the child welfare system with innovative technology that can help the most vulnerable families and children – that’s our mission at Case Commons.

You can play a big part in transforming public sector human services by helping us take our Casebook™ case management system from pilot to platform, enabling case workers to use modern social networking technologies to track cases better, see the connections among the various people and agencies involved cases, be more effective and efficient, and improve the quality of life for families and children.

Your contribution will play out on a huge stage. Casebook is being used by a growing number of private and public child welfare agencies and many policymakers believe that Casebook can become the integration portal for additional government services, including health, education and human services.

Case Commons is funded by the $2.5 billion Annie E. Casey Foundation, which has spent 20 years pursuing human services system reform. Since 2007, AECF has been building Casebook™ in partnership with Tipping Point Partners.

We’re looking for a Director of Engineering to lead our technology efforts. This is a role that requires leadership and management skills as well as deep (and current) technology chops. You will direct our external vendors and partners and you will build, manage and mentor our internal team. You’ll also have to be excited by getting into the code and having an direct impact on architectural decisions. You’ll report to the COO and will interface directly with our CEO, Board, investors and key partners.

Basically, we need someone who is as comfortable in an all-night pizza-fueled coding session as they are evangelizing the platform in front of policymakers and funders.

DESCRIPTION

• You will lead the engineering team building Casebook™, reporting to the Chief Operating Officer
• You will assume a leadership position, revolutionizing technology for people serving less advantaged children and families, with high visibility among government, foundation, venture capital, and business leaders
• You will work with a unique team that consists of proven domain leaders, successful entrepreneurs who have helped transform other technology market segments, and software developers from Pivotal Labs, the top Ruby on Rails software development consultancy in the world
• Salaried position in a non-profit organization located in New York City
• Significant travel – up to 30% of time

REQUIREMENTS

• You have the passion and skills to succeed in a startup: tenacious, self-directed, flexible, strategic but can turn on a dime, able to inspire others and to be inspired
• You go the extra mile
• You spent 10 years in information technology, preferably in application development, application management, and operations within a Fortune 500 company or government organization
• Optional but especially valuable would be experience with government software for human services, such as homeless services, public health, temporary/disability assistance
• You have rolled out software to several thousand users within a large organization
• You have 3-5 years of managing small engineering teams (< 25)
• You have delivered software on time and within budget
• You have managed vendors for software development, web hosting, and security
• You are familiar with best practices for securing web applications including but not limited to OWASP, security scanning, secure network design
• Your prior work involved sensitive customer data, such as financial information, transactions, HIPAA data, credit cards, or personal health information (experience with SAS 70 and ISO 27001-compliant technology operations a plus)
• You have personal or professional Web application projects in Ruby on Rails, LAMP or similar technology stacks
• You are expert in agile development processes, and want to transform software development processes within governments and large organizations
• You have made mistakes part of your process and know how to create a culture that identifies and surfaces problems early
• You are passionate about our mission

Contact: heather@casecommons.org

Are you interested in working your way up in a high-growth setting? Tipping Point Partners is seeking an entry-level administrative assistant and receptionist for our incubator, which houses many young technology companies. The role is critically important in allowing us to build our business and set the tone for our company’s social life and internal culture. You would work closely with a supportive, fun-loving and smart team.

You:

• Self-starter, proficient with communications tools for social media and business
• Exceptional writing, organizational and caring skills
• Common sense, limitless curiosity, sense of humor and an appreciation for the absurd
• Have to love technology and people
• Liberal arts major from a top school
• Make people smile, shy people feel comfortable, and strangers feel welcome
• Roll-up-the-sleeves problem solver

The Position:

• Administrative assistant/receptionist
• Manage public spaces and set the social tone
• Assist with events that connect the firm’s network and enhance the social atmosphere in Tipping Point’s 20,000 SF multi-company space
• 4 weeks paid vacation; health benefits

Tipping Point builds and renovates Internet-based startups using innovative approaches to solving business model challenges. We create new businesses that have significant social and/or cultural importance in markets that are ripe for disruption, both for-profit and not.  Since 2005, Tipping Point Partners’ unique approach to startups has included co-founding, interim management, strategic deal making, financing, investing and strategy, generally all at the same time.

INTERESTED?

Send resume, biography, and anything that you think would help us get to know you and what you can do to art@tippingpointpartners.com, with a copy to aliza@tippingpointpartners.com.

My wife and I booked a room at the Thompson Beverly Hills. The hotel was “fully booked” (I say overbooked) and we checked into a “lovely room on the seventh floor” with “a great view of Los Angeles”. Disappointingly, our guest room was the small salon room to a two-room suite. Our bed was a small pull-out sofa bed!

What is good customer service? Meeting a customer’s expectations is good customer service and exceeding those expectations is great customer service. In your business’ branding, marketing and sales efforts, what expectations are you encouraging your customers to have about your business? What promises are you making about your product or service? If there’s a mismatch between what your business promises and what you’re actually able to give, providing good customer service will be a hard hill to climb.

I’m a low maintenance hotel guest and don’t subject a hotel and its staff with demanding expectations. But one basic expectation I have of a hotel like the Thompson is to have a real bed in my room. In addition, since it was a salon room, it didn’t have many of the items I expect to find in a normal guest room, such as end tables, hotel guide, luggage rack and a clock within reach of the bed.

Receiving a terrible room was enough to mean poor customer service, but how the hotel went about it, made it worse. They presented the room as a standard room and when we inquired about why our bed was a sofa bed, their reaction made us feel like we were high maintenance guests. How should your business deal with potentially poor customer service? Should your business be proactive or reactive? If the hotel had been proactive, explained the situation and offered us a guest room at another nearby hotel or an affiliate hotel and perhaps given us some small complimentary items or services, we would have felt the hotel provided good customer service despite the hassle of going to a different hotel. By not being proactive, the hotel dug itself an even deeper customer service hole from which to climb out. A company trying to pull a fast one with a customer is a sign that it doesn’t care about its customers’ experiences.

Proactive actions may often cost a business more in the short-term, but it helps build a foundation for longer-term repeat business and favorable word of mouth. Reactive actions may often avoid costs in the short-term, but destroys longer-term relationships. In our case, the hotel received a couple of nights of room charge, parking and internet service revenue. However, they lost food & beverage revenue and any future visit revenue from us and perhaps others.

Of course, there may always be those folks who aren’t satisfied no matter how much your business tries to meet their expectations. Still, you try your best and when you realize that their expectations are out of whack with what you’re offering, then it’s time to part ways. They’re a disproportionate drain on your time and resources anyway.

This concept of customer satisfaction could be expanded to how people in businesses interact with others. Everyone else that you interact with is a customer. Within a business, your boss, subordinates and colleagues are your customers and outside a business, employees at your vendors and customers (in the traditional sense of the word) are also your customers. Why should you give your subordinates and vendors good customer service, after all don’t they work for you? Because by giving others good service, you’ll receive better service yourself. After all, you can’t do everything yourself anyway.

Providing good customer service should be a primary goal of every company that wants to be successful and every person that wants to succeed at work. Treat everyone as your customer, present your capabilities realistically and exceed expectations.

Last month, we were surprised (or not?!) to find that we all had eerily similar Meyers-Briggs personality types.  But on our team retreat to Shelter Island this week, we discovered we had even more in common!

Fondness for FIFO

It didn’t take long to realize we share a fondness for FIFO.  As Wikipedia explains, FIFO stands for First In, First Out, “an abstraction in ways of organizing and manipulation of data relative to time and prioritization.”  Now, preparing a meal with Art is awesome, but preparing a meal with a team of FIFO All-stars is even better!  In accordance with the credo, we queued tasks seamlessly, self-selecting for skill level and completing each task in its entirety, including cleanup, before beginning another.  For a First-in, First-outer, lending a hand is not just about generosity, it’s an instinct.  Turns out Tipping Point can’t have too many chefs in the kitchen!

The Knack for Falling

Later in the day, the incredible Paddle Diva, Gina Bradley gave us our first Stand-Up Paddleboarding lesson in Gardiners Bay.  It was the perfect group activity; we could paddle together but separately, all in one direction but each at our own speed.  More than any of these things though, what we enjoyed most was falling.  Art was the earliest proponent of “Fall-Down Paddleboarding,” but it was Brad who really made tipping-over tempting.  He dared me to edge forward on my board, to test the physics, to cease trying not to fall.  Giving in was a powerful reminder that falling can be exhilarating and even self-indulgent.  A reminder that fear of failure is a fun-kill.  That it is paddling, not balance, that moves you forward, and as Buddha once said, “the foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.”

What a great experience on the perfect summer day.  There were so many memorable moments; I guess that’s why they call it a “re-treat.”

I’ve long believed that failure is replicable, while success always contains an element of luck. That is, the reasons why companies fail are often repeated across the spectrum of startups, and taking a deep dive into the causes of failure can be incredibly helpful to entrepreneurs at any stage. The lessons of failure often drill down to the nuts and bolts of entrepreneurship — relationships with team members, technology and marketing decisions, hiring and other core elements that can get lost in blow-the-doors-off success stories, but are utterly critical to giving yourself the best shot at creating a great company.

Matt and I are in the position of having a fairly amicable end to our venture, so it’s not too difficult to talk about. According to the event description, Matt and I will be talking about “[our] experience running a kickass business into the ground”. Should be fun.

If you’re interested,  check out the event here.

Brad caught red-handed.

Thanks to Lauren Perkins and Charles Simon for joining!

Consider these pics from our trial run. Everyone did a great job and we’ll be in there tomorrow again…though this time at 5PM (the work/sweat factor needed to be considered!)

Thank you, Kara!!!!

Getting started...

The Library of Congress, which has the power to define exceptions to an important copyright law, said on Monday that it was legal to bypass a phone’s controls on what software it will run to get “lawfully obtained” programs to work.

via www.nytimes.com

App developers, rejoice!  The Library of Congress has brought down the walls around Apple’s walled garden.  Developers can a) circumvent Apple’s copyright restrictions to deliver non-Apple-approved apps to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch; and b) leverage the wireless connectivity provided by those devices.

Who knew the Library of Congress had such awesome power!   It’s news to me.  Follow this link to read the ruling – for the impatient, go immediately to bullets (2) and (3).

Why do we need more apps, with over 225,000 apps on the app store and 5 billion downloads by June 2010?  Judge for yourself: rejected apps range from the silly to the baffling.

Apple seemed bent on making itself the Mayberry of content.  Let porn, gambling and pureplay ads reside on the Internet.  Keep apps on the Apple platform squeaky clean and support Apple’s premium positioning.  Let Android be the place for everyone else’s apps.

Who will benefit?  Clear beneficiaries include:

• developers impatient with Apple’s review process
• advertisers seeking a more direct appeal to audiences
• content creators who want unfettered creativity
• entrepreneurs pushing the boundaries of what a the combination of high-speed wireless connection, GPS, gyroscope, touch screen and rich media can provide, and
• of course, porn, gambling and all the other naughty and nasty vices that are publicly condemned and privately enjoyed.

Any guess on how long it will take to get Adobe Flash on the platform?

Tia Ba started working for my family 7 years ago and for Tipping Point since the day we started the business in 2005.  Tia has now decided to change her perspective by moving 20 feet down the hall to a wonderful opportunity at Rapid Ratings, a Tipping Point portfolio company that Tia has helped nurture in the financial administration role for over a year.

6 years ago, I met Christine Brown and wanted to work with her. 4 years later I finally got my wish. Now, she’s moving 3,000 miles away to follow love and theater. Both Andy and the Seattle theater scene are very fortunate.

Tia and Christine have been intrinsic elements of Tipping Point’s growth and development, supporting our clients, portfolio companies, our team and me with dedication and joie de vivre. Neither Tipping Point nor I would be where we are today without you. Thank you.

Additions: I am very pleased to announce the following additions to Tipping Point Partners:

Aliza Pearlson (pronounced a-lee’-za) (aliza@tippingpointpartners.com) started this week as the “new Christine” and will be developing a very ambitious Tipping Point events calendar, starting off with activities in support of our new incubator, which will launch July 15. Aliza comes to us via stints at Hermès, Penguin/Perry Ellis and Columbia University Press. Aliza grew up in Florida and graduated from Barnard.

Kara Martin (kara@tippingpointpartners.com) started a couple weeks ago as Tipping Point’s Controller, working with Tipping Point’s CFO, Stan Lau. Kara will help Stan further professionalize Tipping Point’s financial management capabilities for our clients, portfolio companies, and our own operations. Kara is a CPA and certified Pilates instructor who comes to us via HBO, CBS/Viacom, Insound and FTI. Kara grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from UMass, Amherst.

We found that when users came directly to Cookstr from google search, they would typically come directly to a recipe page, and not realize Cookstr was a website with thousands more recipes.If you search for Spaghetti Bolognese in Google, (and made it to the 4th page of results…) you’d find a Sheila Lukins recipe. And you might click on it. But  if this recipe wasn’t exactly what you were looking for, you wouldn’t know that Cookstr also has a ragu bolognese by Lidia Bastianich, and you certainly wouldn’t know they had a recipe for Bolognese Polenta and Apple Cake by Jamie Oliver. (I didn’t know what a bolognese polenta and apple cake was until I wrote this, fyi). But you see what I mean.

So now, when you’re on a recipe page, you can see “other recipes you might like.” Might seem like a simple feature, but in start-up world, new features are a really big deal.

Hopefully Cookstr’s users will find this very useful in their search for recipes. We’re always looking for feedback, so if you haven’t played around with Cookstr, give it a try. Would love to know what you think.