Inquiries
Send all inquiries to our Talent Czar Jon Wong.
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Jobs
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Hi, we’re OogaLabs. And we want more engineers like us. Super intelligent, super nice, super good.
Jaw-droppingly brilliant engineers. You know, scary smart.
But more than that, we’re looking for people who aspire to be more than just another code monkey. We want people looking to build entire companies from the ground up.
As for us, we’re a group of entrepreneurs who have launched internet products over the last seven years that have registered 200 million people. And we’re looking to do it again with sites that make the world a better place like WonderHill.com, PlacePop.com and MedPedia.com.
We like exceptional engineering talent with a wide range of skills: Ruby, PHP, Flash, Front-end, design and more.
In addition to your salary, you’ll get equity in the companies you work on. You’ll be mentored by the best in the industry. And you’ll end every day more exhausted and more fulfilled than you could have imagined.
But first, you’ll have to send your bio to our talent czar Jon at jwong@oogalabs.com.
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A contentious topic in our office, we've taken to asking it in interviews. Turns out that there is absolutely no correlation between Pop-Tart toasting and being a talented engineer. We've also found absolutely no correlation between what school you went to, what degrees you have, how many acronyms you know, how many years of experience you have, or pretty much anything else that you find in most of the job ads here on craigslist. All those things tell you is how much on-the-job training a candidate will need.
At Ooga Labs, our philosophy is that we can't teach talent. We won't teach you how to program either - but, pretty much everything else is fair game. Ruby on Rails, how to scale, how to run a business - these are things that we can teach, or that you can learn given the chance. However, we must start with talent - we need to believe that our investment in time is going to be worth it in the end.
In the meantime, a short blurb about us. We are an internal incubator. Just like venture capitalists like to build up a portfolio of companies, to spread the risk and try to hit the home run, we do the same. We currently have three companies out there - WonderHill, Medpedia, and PlacePop. We have one more in private beta right now. The management team sold their previous company for $100 million.
We sit in an open office, and maintain a flat structure. Everyone spends time with either the CEO, CTO, or CCO (Chief Creative Officer). We want to be able to give people a task, and say "Make it happen." Consequently, we give everyone a lot of responsibility, and expect to see good judgment.
We ask our engineers to do as much of the stack as possible. If they can do design and/or product, even better. Engineers develop on OS X, production lives on Linux. Most of our sites are Ruby on Rails on top of MySQL, with a healthy dash of memcached. We have problems of scaling (a billion dynamic requests a month), and problems of starting (how to drive traffic to brand new sites that we launch). We would be considered an Agile shop, but do not follow any specific methodology.
Personality is important to us. We want to make sure that people like to play video games with each other (we have Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii), or drink a beer together (fully stocked beer fridge). There's also the dart board, but that doesn't see so much love these days.
If you're interested, great - send us an email. If you're not, we wish you luck in your search - and feel free to change your mind. :)
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Who are we?
An exciting new start-up working on the big enchilada – LBS. PlacePop (http://placepop.com) is a new location based-social app that provides a virtual loyalty card platform for brands and businesses.
We’re funded by top Silicon Valley investors, and have built and sold companies in the consumer Web before -- our last registered over 200 million people and sold for over $100 million. PlacePop simplifies the loyalty card experience for consumers by letting them collect and store on their mobile phone “virtual loyalty cards” for every business they visit, and connect their visits to Facebook and Twitter.
What we offer:
The opportunity to shape a new product you and your friends would use
The opportunity to program and design at the same time
A team of industry veterans who will challenge you to be the best you can be
An open, collaborative, and fun environment
Competitive compensation including equity and benefits
About you:
A passion for quality products, CSS/HTML and JavaScript
Is technology also your hobby?
Skilled with UI and UX design
The key benefits of PlacePop's mobile loyalty/affinity programs are:
• Eliminates need to retrain customers away from familiar loyalty and affinity card concepts;
• Leverages social features – such as integrating with Facebook and Twitter, while allowing group buying features (such as those popularized by Groupon);
• Maintains brand integrity, and program control, by allowing the flexibility to execute, test and revise multiple mobile marketing loyalty and affinity concepts
We offer Salary, Benefits, EQUITY, and a fully stocked kitchen, we are located downtown San Francisco near SFMoMa, BART, and Muni.
You can read our recent press coverage on TechCrunch:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/30/placepop-looks-to-give-any-business-its-own-rewards-program-raises-1-4m/
To see the mobile app in action, you can watch a video tour here:
http://www.placepop.com/about/tour
If this is you, contact our Talent Czar. Send him your resume, links to sites you have done, and any code samples or portfolio.
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OPPORTUNITY:
We are seeking a top-caliber, enthusiastic iPhone developer to join our well-funded location-based-services venture as a core member of an experienced, flat leadership team. The role will require design initiative and team collaboration, as well as extensive, efficient coding. This iPhone developer role will report to and collaborate with, the Lead Developer to deliver a novel platform from the ground-up.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Designing the application with the Lead Developer
- Developing and maintaining the iPhone application codebase
- Managing the App Store approval process
• Strong understanding of iPhone development and development tools.
• Experience in coding and shipping high-quality, attractive apps that appear in the iTunes App Store.
• Experience in utilizing web services on the iPhone (NSURL or ASIHttpRequest, JSON) a plus.
• Ruby On Rails experience a plus.
If you are interested in this position, please email your resume and something cool about yourself to our talent czar Jon at jwong@oogalabs.com
We offer a competitive salary, benefits and of course Equity along with cool offices downtown SF near SF MoMa, BART, and Muni.
If you aren't available but know someone who may be interested please feel free to pass this information along. We do offer a generous referral bonus!
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Who are we?
An exciting new start-up working on the big enchilada -- merging our social graphs (currently the providence of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) with finding useful information (currently the providence of Google). The space we are in is commonly called "Social Search" and would include companies like Aadvark and Quora. We’re funded by top Silicon Valley investors, and have built and sold companies in the consumer Web before -- our last registered over 200 million people and sold for over $100 million.
What we offer:
The opportunity to shape a new product you and your friends would use
The opportunity to program and design at the same time
A team of industry veterans who will challenge you to be the best you can be
An open, collaborative, and fun environment
Competitive compensation including equity and benefits
About you:
A passion for quality products, CSS/HTML and JavaScript
Is technology also your hobby?
Skilled with UI and UX design
Live in near Palo Alto or San Francisco, or are willing to relocate there
If this is you, contact our Talent Czar. Send him your resume, links to sites you have done, and any code samples or portfolio.
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Hi, we’re looking for a Flash programmer who’s talented and passionate enough not only to knock our socks off, but to bring the entire platform to its knees.
And we’re willing to blow you away in return: We already have 2 million users and 1 billion page views per month. You'll get to work with a team whose last company signed up over 200 million people, and you'll get to work with one of the legends of casual games who has done this three times before. In short, we're building an online games experience second to none.
More specifically, we’re building casual and social games targeting an older audience. Our games are nonviolent, high on social interaction, cooperation, and are intended to put people into a Zen-like state.
We love what we do and work our asses off. We see a huge opportunity in the casual games business over the next 4 years, and we’re racing toward the opportunity full throttle. We’re ready to take our company to the next level. And if you share that same dedication, we’re ready to share the rewards.
YOU:
Have exceptional Actionscript programming, a must.
Have developed social or casual games with strong visual appeal for web platforms or PC.
Have strong team building skills and the ability to communicate with other studio disciplines and management
Have strong knowledge of development lifecycle.
Are passionate about building viral consumer products
Have a B.S. in Computer Science or equivalent.
3+ years of solid software development experience
US:
We have senses of humor and we're pretty innovative, so you must be the same.
We’re innovative, flexible, and respectful and we check our egos at the door.
Our last company sold for over $100M. You'll be mentored here by the best in the industry. Our offices are in downtown San Francisco, near BART and Muni.
In addition to your salary, benefits and equity, you’ll be mentored by the best in the industry and you’ll end every day more inspired and more fulfilled than you could have imagined. We have a fully stocked kitchen, a weekly beer budget, 30-inch monitors and cool offices downtown.
To join our tribe, send your bio to our talent czar at jwong@oogalabs.com
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Medpedia is the world’s largest collaborative online encyclopedia of medicine. It has the potential to transform health care worldwide. It’s being developed in association with the world’s top medical and health organizations including Harvard Medical School, Stanford School of Medicine, Berkeley School of Public Health, and the University of Michigan Medical School.
The former CTO of Wikia is on the team, and Mitch Kapor is an Advisor to the company.
We are seeking a super-intelligent software engineer. This is an important role in an important, and potentially historic, online business. If things continue going as they have been over the last year, this is something you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren about.
Specifically we are looking for:
• Working knowledge of PHP, HTML, MySQL, AJAX, and Java Script
• Experience with Database Driven Design
• Knowledge of website usability and web development
• Ability to learn quickly and adapt to change
• Excellent interpersonal, Communication, and Organizational Skills
• Experience with MediaWiki or other wiki projects is a bonus
Medpedia is an Ooga Labs project. Ooga Labs is a technology greenhouse in San Francisco developing several mission-oriented companies to address major societal issues including health, education, and charity. Our products are focused on the user experience, so you'll need to be user focused on that as well. We have a world-class team drawn from Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Cal. We’re viral experts.