We had a new employee join us today. Her name is Faelpar. Ok, she’s not human. She’s not even a mammal … But she’s incredibly smart.
Faelpar is our automatic verifyer. Faelpar goes out to the web, finds someone and finds an interesting tidbit about the person … Like confirming that Susie is a realtor or Bob also sells Pez dispensers on Edgeio and eBay.
And Faelpar is kind enough to leave a personal ratings on these people.
More on Faelpar coming soon …
over on the Rapleaf forums, Rapleaf co-founder Manish Shah posts an interesting story on the first time he sold something on craigslist:
Thanks to everyone that is helping us spread the message about Rapleaf’s hiring needs. see blogs:
Pete Caputa: Looking for Marketing/PR/Business Management Person for Internet Startup
Ben Casnocha: Rapleaf Is Hiring - Portable Ratings System for Buyers and Sellers
Jennifer Rice: Job opening, SF start-up
Jackie Danicki: Rapleaf is hiring
SocialTwister: Job Opportunity: Read the Leaves with RapLeaf
Tosten Jacobi: Rapleaf is hiring as well
full text of listing:
Rapleaf is looking to hire a non-engineer.
Rapleaf is a ratings system for commerce. We allow buyers and sellers (on sites like craigslist, classifieds, auctions, etc.) to rate each other. Rapleaf is backed by Silicon Valley’s most well-known angels. More at www.rapleaf.com
Our goal: to make it more profitable to be ethical
What will this person do?
Everything that is not engineering-oriented including:
• Marketing
• Business development
• Product stuff
• Finance
• Recruiting
• Customer service systems
• And more
This position will be one of two non-engineers at the company (me being the other person). The other four people at the company are engineers. We’re looking for a really smart, motivated, multi-tasking, entrepreneurial, and highly-adaptable person.
This person must:
• Be Pro-active
• Be Ready to work extreme hours and in a chaotic environment
• self-manage and potentially manage others
• Be able to quickly grow as the company grows
• Laugh a lot and generally be very happy
• Have a strong desire to build a more ethical society
Compensation:
We’re looking for the very best person … and we believe that person should be well-compensated:
• High salary and stock
• Opportunity to make commerce more profitable to be ethical
• Opportunity to change the world
• Be a part of a founding team of a game-changing company
Our office is in downtown San Francisco (one block from the Montgomery BART station) – the best location in the world. You will need to be located in San Francisco (or very close to San Francisco) … and we will relocate the right candidate.
Anyone can apply – zero to 25+ years of experience.
Please apply to:
jobs@rapleaf.com
(before applying, please be sure to sign up for Rapleaf and check out the product).
p.s. we are also looking for great software engineers.
yeah … i was reading Roger’s blog and come across his musing on Rapleaf on my Blog!!!???
he writes:
I want a widget/plugin for my blog that will summarise all RapLeaf information in my sidebar.
and makes a call for action:
Anyone developing anything like this for WordPress?
yeah … cool idea. Roger … let us know how we can help.
and … we just put up Rapleaf Forums in the last hour so people can discuss these ideas. people are encouraged to take on this thread there too.
Rapleaf grows up and moves out of my living room …we’re now in downtown San Francisco in a little office on New Montgomery and Mission. yup … it is official … i actually had to commute this morning (normally my commute is 10 feet from my bedroom). now my commute is 7 blocks … yup, i know, real tough. the blocks are long so i even took the bus to work today.
Manish is psyched he can move out of Fremont and head to San Francisco … entering the big leagues.
Today we experienced the famous Lee’s Deli for lunch. for about $5 and in less than 95 seconds, you can make yourself an amazing salad. Lee’s is right across the street (as is Specialties, Jamba Juice, and other fuel necessary for a start-up intent on changing the world).
We have been getting a ton of requests for the Rapleaf APIs recently.
The Rapleaf APIs are ready … but we’re still testing them so we’re not yet releasing them to general public yet. however, we have sent them to about 20 people who are currently using them. we have most of the server-side APIs done and we’re still working on the client-side APIs.
we’ll be releasing them to the general public by the end of the month.
if you are interested in getting hold of the APIs now, send an email to people@rapleaf.com and describe what you are doing and then we can send you the APIs and the API key. and happy mashing!
We’ve been getting a lot of mail about our use of the word “complement”
if you take a look at my Rapleaf profile, you’ll see what people said about me. if you want to see what i said about them, you can click on the “complement”
lots of people have written in suggesting we use “compliment” instead. “compliment” is defined as “An expression of praise, admiration, or congratulation”
on Rapleaf, the “complement” to a comment might not be a “compliment.” the complement could be praise but it could also be critical.
unfortunately, i’m just an engineer and my code is probably better than my english … so i am sure i’ll lose the grammar wars. but if anyone wants to back me up on this (or debate me), i look forward to hearing from you.
I had the opportunity to be interviewed by the very entertaining Cameron Reilly from down under yesterday. Cameron, of course, is the host of G’Day World — one of the top tech podcasts.
i love craigslist. i’ve furnished a good deal of my home on craigslist. and criagslist was a lot of the inspiration behind Rapleaf.
i just posted on craigslist:
treo 600 for sale - $65 (SOMA / south beach)
and to promote to people that I’m a good guy, I’ve included my Rapleaf Badge in the post. as you can see, it links back to my Rapleaf profile. and the image changes every time my Rapleaf information changes.
and i hope i sell my old treo soon … it is just sitting on my shelf and needs a new home …
we went live yesterday (saturday) at about 7:30pm (about 24 hours earlier than originally planned) … splash page is gone … bye bye … anyone can use Rapleaf now.
and here are the stats as of 12:30am this morning (5 hours after we went live):
Total Rapleaf Members: 353
Total Number of Ratings: 2,084
we think we’ll have a much better feel for the system once we hit one million ratings … so we’re 0.2% there 
since Rapleaf is still in private beta, we don’t have a lot of users yet. but ingenious people everywhere are already doing new things with Rapleaf. Philippe who writes the “AccessOWeb” blog has posted his Rapleaf badge on his blog.
see his post: Rapleaf - Votre réputation affichée sur le web
(yes, it is in French. as you know, the French are often the fashion trendsetters … and so we hope philippe is starting the trend).
thanks for the ingenuity Philippe!
(and speaking of other languages … Rapleaf - Busca y define la reputación como vendedor o comprador de cualquier persona.)
yup … that’s right … Rapleaf goes live on Sunday (May 7). yeah, we’re shivering in our boots because we’re sure there are still a lot of bugs out there. so please be kind to us as we deal with each issue.
in the site we have a Wall of Fame of people who have been really helpful to us. i thought i’d post the list of people here because we’d still be wandering aimlessly in the desert without them:
* Special Thanks to:
* - Michael Birch — advised us on better understanding viral marketing
* - Ben Bleikamp — for making our snazzy logo
* - Ron Bouganim — operations help
* - Cyan Callihan — intro’d us to some great people and gave us some key ideas
* - Dave Chiu — master beta tester who found more bugs and gave us more ideas than anyone else. thanks Dave!!
* - Shannon Clark — because he has more information than anyone on the planet
* - Jeff Clavier — helped us navigate the world of identity
* - James Currier — gave us a lot of insights into our future
* - Cory Doctorow — for inspiring us with his Whuffie currency system
* - Shawn Fanning — helped us think through the tech architecture
* - Saar Gur — this guy’s got game. He’s helped us in so many areas
* - Kaliya Hamlin — (aka Identity Woman) was instrumental in helping us navigate identity and what is coming in the future
* - Dick Hardt — the identity master helped us grapple with the issues
* - Kevin Hartz — helped us with our deck and gave us some great biz ideas
* - Christine Herron — for helping us with community
* - Mary Hodder — for helping us really understand reputation
* - Joe Hurd — great big picture business ideas
* - Niall Kennedy — for giving us the tools ideas to enhance our community
* - Katie Mitic — gave us key marketing ideas
* - Craig Newmark - for advice on fraud detection. And great moral support.
* - Elliott Ng — helped us with the initial business conception
* - Alan Peterson — help w technical architecture
* - Ariel Poler — helped us prioritize
* - Anne Raimondi — for introducing us to all the movers and shakers in the classifieds world
* - Tod Sacerdoti — business model help
* - Doc Searls — for giving us identity context
* - Kakul Srivastava — she gave us insights to ratings & communities
* - Zaw Thet — business model help
* - Dave Whorton — for business model help
(of course, this is just a partial list … there are dozens of others who have helped us immensely)
