Craig goes to iLike.com

Some of you may already know this, but I’ve accepted a position at iLike as a Product Manager. iLike is a funded technology startup in the music space. The purpose of their product is to introduce users to new artists and bands. Super cool. You may have heard of them from the web site: , or their . They also have a growing presence on other social networks like , and , and . The details of this transition are interesting, but before that, here’s an article about them from recently, which includes a video of our offices: Speaking of the offices, one of the cool perks, is that artists come in and give small performances for us. This month, (of Hootie and Blowfish fame) and will be coming by. Sweet. What are you doing at iLike? I’m the “Revenue” product manager, and I’ll largely be focused on anything that is revenue generating. This includes doing proposals for large ad campaigns from companies like Sony Pictures, McDonalds and Motorola. Working with ad networks, both locally and for the international markets. Working with concert promoters and labels who want to advertise tours or new albums. Doing A/B testing to optimize the site, and increase conversion on music sales, invites, ticket sales, etc. I’m hoping to learn a lot about this space, and I like that fact that I’ll be at the crux of advertising and music, which are both being interrupted by tech. I’m also working directly under Hadi and Ali Partovi, which I’m sure will be a great learning experience. I think I’m either employee number 29 or 30. So what about your outsourcing business? In short, it wasn’t turning out to be as exciting as I would want it to be, for something I was doing full time. I had offers for people who wanted me to consult/project manage, but I was only willing to do that if they were going to fully use my resources, as it wasn’t scalable otherwise. This is definitely not what I had in mind if you had asked me 12 months ago, but the last few months I discovered I really wasn’t enjoying working from home by myself, and that the interesting part of the outsourcing practice was the part in India, and the part of being a service provider here was rather tedious. The fact that I’m SUPER excited about iLike has made this transition pretty easy. I did learn a hell of a lot, and have a feeling it will come in handy at some point in the future. I’m keeping my partnerships with two companies in town. One does Silverlight/WPF work and the other focuses on Sharepoint integration and BI. Both are very high quality, and it’s not too much overhead to pass them work and keep that partnership alive. I’m largely separating from my companies in India, though I might work with a couple of them on a looser basis, just handing off work. It will not be my focus anymore, but who knows what will happen… So you’re full-time, normal 9-5 dude now? Well, kind of. 1) I’m happy to be in an actual office. I’ve discovered I don’t really like working from home. It’s lonely, and I’m not as effective, and it bleeds into the rest of my life. What I like is flexibility. This job will definitely mean less of that for now, but for many reasons, I’m okay with leaving my vagabond existence behind for some time. 2) The office is in cap hill, so it’s close, I’m biking, and yeah, I probably will be putting in many more than 40 hours a week. Any other details? I’ve been there for two weeks, and thus far, I’m super psyched about the work I’ve been doing. It’s important to the life of the company, I enjoy it, and I’m learning a lot. I also like biking to work, and the free Odwalla in the office. Oh yeah, and this was what spurred my transition to the Mac. Also, this is a lot of changes, and I’m really happy about them. I completely concede that it might all be cognitive dissonance/rationalization,… but I don’t really care. --> Tagged as: , , , ,