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"I want you to make me a promise," he says, leaning in and sounding like Lyndon Johnson. "If there are any concerns, I want you to let me know. I want you to be open with me." Kelley says, "I'm a woman. My gut's going to tell me what to do." Her gut says, No way.
The labor market in the Valley is so tight that start-up CEOs spend most of their time recruiting. New entrepreneurs speak in religious tones about the importance of bringing in "the A people," of getting the right "office mix," about assembling "the team." (Typical usage: "At the end of the day, it's not the business plan that matters. It's all about the team.") That job is slightly easier for pre-IPO firms, which can lure young bodies with fat equity packages, than it is for larger Valley companies, which can offer more security but less potential reward. Radio stations are jammed with spots from companies such as Oracle that beg for employees.
Companies operating in stealth mode have a perverse advantage in recruiting. Kris Hagerman, founder of a start-up called Affinia, which helps people sell stuff on their personal websites, uncovered this phenomenon last spring when he set up a table at a career fair at Stanford's business school. He called his company "Trade Routes Inc., a hush-hush Valley start-up." That was it for details. "You're in for a really tough night," a recruiter for an established software company told him, figuring Hagerman would get no takers. Within five minutes, a line started snaking around the table. By the end of the event, Affinia had 150 resumes; the Compaq recruiter left 45 minutes early.
Never before have the unemployed been so cocky. At a job fair at San Francisco's Exploratorium hosted by a headhunting software company called BridgePath, 2,400, applicants approach potential employers from various start-ups. "I'm Danny. What's the two-minute overview?" an applicant with a mouthful of nachos says by way of introduction to Jeff Reed and Pratap Mukherjee, ex-consultants who are launching an online used-car site. Their company, BestOffer.com like most of the start-ups at the job fair, is still in stealth mode. Reed and Mukherjee err by being the only company not to hand out free stuff. They should also have hired a deejay, as did Topica; a clown, a juggler and a woman on stilts, as did Trapezo; or simply have run up to everyone the second they walk in and ask, "Are you an engineer?," as Entera is doing. At the fair, Mukherjee runs into job seeker Dave Morris, who interviewed the day before. "I'm being careful about who I'm handing my resume to. I don't have the bandwidth to meet with everyone," he says.