Recruitment: Berlekamp, Winograd, Donoho, Waller
Names of its 'advisors' and investors - Elwyn Berlekamp (Berkeley), Terry Winograd (Stanford), Bob Burnett (Cisco), Niels Waller (Vanderbilt), Dave Donoho were dropped, so were hints that it would sold for lots for money in future.Recruitment Ad 2000: Berlekamp, Winograd, Donoho, Waller, Burnett
Excerpts from that ad:
Our patent-pending technology combines state-of-the-art psychological profiling methods with the latest in Internet technologies to give users the Web that they want.
...
Our investors include Robert Burnett (founding VP of Engineering at Cisco) and Elwyn Berlekamp (former chair of the Berkeley Computer Science division). Our advisors include Vanderbilt University's Prof. Niels Waller (the leading psychometrician in the country), Prof. David Donoho (Stanford statistics professor and MacArthur "genius" fellow), and Prof. Terry Winograd (an HCI expert from Stanford).
Recruitment Ad That Lured Me
The following is a gem:
Unique Job Characteristics
-A visionary-type approach needed to craft a rigorous technology solution
-Multi-disciplinary approach to solve very complex problems
-Able to work with extremely smart engineers through inspiration, communications and knowledge
This ad also mentioned "We are seeking an individual with a very strong Mathematics and Statistics foundation..." and
This is a senior level data modeling and analysis position and the candidate must have the ability to contribute individually to create innovative and performance-efficient ways of deploying bleeding-edge methodologies/algorithms for the core product.
Recruitment Ad: 'Likely to be acquired'
This ad mentioned that "we are likely to be acquired in 18 months so there is potentially a lot of money to be made in a short time."