If you’ve got questions you want answered, add them to the comments on this blog post, or this thread in the forum.

To recap:

What: Ben answering all your deepest, darkest questions

When: Tonight, 5:30pm ET

Where: Quirky’s uStream channel

See you then!

If your looking for an internship where you will be given task A,B,C (one of which is to get Mr. Smith his daily coffee) and will generally be left alone as your rewrite your resume with all of the “amazing” things you learned over the summer (like cane sugar is different than white sugar) then please move to the next posting.

If you are looking for something else, keep reading.

We are looking for someone to jump in and help us with the real challenges that our consumer products company is faced with on a day-to-day basis. You will be working closely with Quirky’s Marketing team on product / market research, financial analysis, and pricing.

Responsibilities:

-Conduct competitor product market research; develop pricing models, research relative size and profitability of addressable markets.

-Conduct market research on long-term consumer marketplace trends.

-Use Microsoft Excel to manipulate and display large amounts of data.

-Develop product spec and pricing spreadsheets. -Work with full-time employees on projects as they arise.

Some questions to ask yourself before applying:

1. Do I love consumer products and want to help create the next iconic brand?

2. Am I a current student (bachelor’s degree)/recent graduate who has the time and drive to work at Quirky? (We work hard)

3. Am I studying Math, Finance, Statistics, Engineering, or some other applicable field to what we do at Quirky and what this internship entails?

4. Can Iwork in Manhattan (NoHo) on a daily basis? (Given current study/ living arrangements)

5. Can I deal with ambiguity, incomplete data, and the generally chaotic atmosphere of working at a startup?

6. Do I have original ideas/novel ways of solving problems?

7. Do I want to be part of an awesome, disruptive startup who is changing the way the world develops products?

If you are now bored, you should go for a walk. It’s good for the soul.

If you answered yes to quite a few of these questions, then we want to hear from you!

We are looking for someone to start as soon as possible. Applicants must be able to commit at least 20 hours per week at Quirky and will be offered a stipend.

Ideally you would work for Quirky throughout the entire academic year (part time during the school year and full time for the remainder of the summer).

We look for the right interns based on skill-set, applicable experience, and educational background. But, we also look for the right fit in our entrepreneurial culture. So, please write your cover letter accordingly, should you decide to apply.

TO APPLY:

STEP 1: Check us out at www.quirky.com. Learn about us by browsing around the site. If you fall in love, move on down.

STEP 2: Let’s have a real conversation. If you’ve got a beautiful standard cover letter you use to apply for other job postings, cool. But that will not land you this internship. Instead, email Joe (at marketingintern@quirky.com) a very brief personal note, explaining why you think you’re the perfect fit for this position, and of course include a copy of your resume.

Ensure your email is addressed to Joe, with the subject line: “Sales & Marketing Internship– [Your name] – [place you found the job posting]. The cover letter should be in the body of the email and your resume attached as a PDF.

Good luck!

We’re a company called Quirky. What are we Quirky about? We make invention accessible to everyone in the world. We develop two brand new consumer products every week. The ideas for those products come from anyone who has had “wouldn’t it be cool if…” type ideas for decades.

So yeah, two products per week, that’s why we’re writing this job description. We need a brilliant analyst to join our marketing team: one who can produce clear, insightful tools for managing our meteoric growth.

RESPONSIBILITIES

Do you want to feel like your contributions will be noticed and that you won’t be walled away in some analyst hell where you are disconnected from what is actually going on in the business? Good, because you will report directly to the CMO and that’s not how she rolls. Here’s what you need to be able to do:

● Make the budget and monthly forecast a way of life at quirky. Work with quirky’s leadership to understand the plan, its assumptions, implications and to tell the story of what happened (good and bad) each month. 
● Work with team quirky to develop and maintain the critical actions needed to address things that are broken and the things that are killing it. We want to lean into our winners and fix or kill or mistakes quickly. 
● Get deep into the bowels of what makes each product and channel profitable and work with the team to identify and implement actions that drive results. 
● Keep an eye our competitors so that we know where we stand and what we need to focus on.

QUALIFICATIONS

● Ridiculous Excel skills (seriously, did we mention there is a test?) 
● Unrelenting intellectual curiosity and pride in doing awesome work. 
● The ability to think independently and to constantly improve raw, unrefined observations. 
● Natural born leader with entrepreneurial spirit. Must be a self-starter that does not wait for things to come to them; instead actively seeks and drives results. 
● Undergraduate degree in math, physics, or engineering. 
● Excellent interpersonal and communication skills. 
● Action and detail oriented. 
● Highly motivated to drive projects to completion. 
● Knowledge of retail sales is a plus but not required.

TO APPLY : 
• STEP 1: Learn about us by browsing around the site. If you fall in love, move on down.

• STEP 2: Let’s have a real conversation. Take off the suit- you’re not in Cincinnati anymore. My name is Lisa, not “Dear Sir.” You’ve got a beautiful standard cover letter you use to apply for other job postings. Cool. But that will not land you this job. Instead, write a very brief personal note explaining why you think you’re the perfect fit for this position.

• Send a note along with your resume to analyst@quirky.com. In your note, please use the subject line “Marketing Financial Analyst – Your first name (Where you saw the job)” on your email. In your note to me, please let us know why you’re interested in working here. The note should be in the text of your email, and your resume should be attached.

Looks simple, doesn’t it? Just a search box and a couple buttons. A link or two at the top. A pleasant and simple page. Cute colors, too.

But make no mistake. This page is the gatekeeper of the internet. By 2008 it saw 240,000,000 searches per day. It’s powered by data centers that require as much electricity as the city of Newcastle. And it has substantial influence in international politics.

People come to Google to find what they’re looking for. In doing so, they’re relying on Google to sort the internet for them, decide what’s relevant and what’s not. Google sends millions of internet users to sites that it chooses. Those who aren’t chosen are at a severe disadvantage.

And as a result, the art of convincing Google that your site is relevant to a query is a very big business. There’s a whole industry called Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) which is exactly that. The job of an SEO practitioner is to reverse engineer Google, to figure out what makes it tick, and use that knowledge to send search traffic to your site.

Since it’s a topic I find interesting and am pretty well versed in, my next few blog posts are going to be focused on what is SEO, how is SEO done, and what does all this mean for Quirky.

We’ll get into the nerdy stuff next time, but to tide you over I’ll give you an appetizer. Behold the spheres and lines that rule the internet:

Until next time, keep quirking.

Pleased to meet the lot of you! My name’s Matt, and I’m the first wave of Quirky.com’s newly invigorated sales push.

I’ve been brought in to the illustrious Quirky team to lead our direct sales efforts from our online store. In short, I’m here to bring more people into the site, and to encourage those more people to buy more things. In shorter, I’m here to turn your hard-earned influence into checks in your mailbox!

A few of the things I’ll be looking at in the near future are improving the site’s presence in organic search (SEO, for those in the know), managing paid search and other direct marketing campaigns, and tirelessly working on tweaking the Quirky.com store into the sleekest ecommerce engine it can be.

I’ll be getting into all of this in more detail on later posts. But there’s one thing I’d like to get into as soon as possible with all of you:

We want your help!

I’ve been really inspired by the strength of the Quirky community in getting out the word about this site. This includes, but is not limited to, the enthusiasm that you have all shown for Quirky’s Social Sales Links. We really want to expand that program, as well as make some more like it, so you Quirks can control your own sales destiny as much as possible.

We’ve been kicking some ideas around over here, but I was wondering what’s floating around out there! Great ideas are the Quirky community’s stock in trade, right? Any great ideas for marketing projects out there that the community can participate in? What would you want to do to earn more money while promoting your Quirky products?

My ears are always open to any suggestions you have for community marketing projects, as well as any other ideas you’d care to kick around involving the Quirky community cashing in through the site.

Take care, Quirks! Looking forward to hearing your suggestions and working together to make Quirky.com the greatest success of the information age.

-Matt

P.S. One piece of unsolicited advice for all you out there. When you start a new job, never, ever be the first person to use the brand new drip coffee maker in your office. If you must, certainly don’t let your new boss taste it. The first pot in a new machine always tastes like the elephant house at the zoo smells, and you will never live it down.

Take for example:

Does there really exist a sizable market segment consisting of people in retirement communities buying lame hot pants? I think not, but I suppose it is larger than discerning babies who might own an Apple product, shop at places such as Urban Outfitters, and control their household’s grocery spending.

However, such things have not gone unnoticed (just Google “Gerber hipster babies” or the like). Unfortunately, I suspect the noticing and commentary from such social media pundits (young people with Macs) will only drive these campaigns into overdrive as they shall be seen as evidence of their success. All of this will lead to the alienation of such alternative verticals and the eventual collapse of Western style capitalism. What comes after? An economy based on personal currencies pegged to an individual’s retweets and Facebook likes.

At least in Judi Sigler’s new animated MugStir promo video they do! This here video is an excellent example of creative product promotion, which introduces an awesome new idea: a new “product promotion” phase of development for creative marketing and advertising ideas! What do you think?