There’s nothing like a hot cuppa coffee on a chilly fall day, and we at gwabbit find that coffee just tastes better out of one of our authentic gwabbit coffee mugs!
You’re in luck! Now you can have your very own gwabbit mug!
Here’s all you have to do:
Give the gift of gwab to 3 of your colleagues, employees, boss, or friends (or even yourself!) You can buy either gwabbit for Outlook or gwabbit for BlackBerry (or both) to qualify.
Just click this link:
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Buy Now
add 3 or more gwabbits to your shopping cart and complete the order. That’s it! We’ll send you your very own gwabbit mug.
Declared a “headslappingly simple solution to a grating problem” by Business Week, the award-winning gwabbit automagically recognizes and gwabs contacts from your emails and imports them into your address book with one click! No more dumpster diving in your inbox looking for contact information buried in an email. You’ll be amazed how much time you save and how fast your address book grows.
This offer is good until October 31, 2009 So give the gift of gwab – and gwab a mug!
This offer is open only to legal residents of the forty-eight (48) contiguous states of the United States. Must be 18 or older to participate.
News address book, contact capture, Contact management, give the gift of gwab, gwabbit, gwabbit mug
gwabbit LLC Founder and President Todd Miller shares his thoughts on “virtual officing” and innovative ways of conducting business
I rarely meet people before I hire them.
Seriously.
The reason why I lead off this installment of Virtuality with this particular factoid is because, in some 12 years of virtual officing, this is the one that has consistently drawn the greatest surprise from others. Actually, I would never have given my blind recruiting a second thought if not for the shock and awe reaction I typically receive in response to this particular revelation.
Why do I pass on face interviews? I think the better question is: “why conduct face interviews?” My rationale is this: if the employee is not going to have a public face, what do I care what they look like? My primary interest is in results. If an unattractive person gets the job done, that’s terrific. In 12 years of virtual officing, I can say with confidence that there is no correlation between looks and job performance.
Of course, there’s much more to our virtual recruiting practices than what doesn’t meet the eye.
For example, we not only don’t care what our employees look like; we don’t care where they live either. When we recruit new employees, we don’t constrain our net to a particular area, we draw from the entire 50 states. This enables us to search for talent in less competitive places, which substantially drives down our payroll expense, while driving up our retention. For example, we have successfully recruited from small college towns with little local industry. Graduates may love the town, but may find the local pickings slim. They’re often willing to give up some premium in compensation in order to enjoy college town life rather than pick up and move to the big city and swim with the sharks.
Another factoid: I never look at a software developer’s resume until they’ve passed a test
When we place a job ad for a software developer, it’s not unusual for us to receive hundreds of applications. Over time, I found that there tended to be an inverse relationship between a software developer’s job-hunting skills and their development skills. The slicker the resume and the smoother the interview, the worse the code. After getting burned a few times, I asked my developers to assemble a test to probe the skill sets we needed from our recruits. Our job ads informed prospective employees that their applications would be screened by test results. Overnight, our world changed for the better. From the hundreds of respondents that applied, only a dozen or so would bother to take the test. From that number, only 3 or 4 would deliver satisfactory results. Suddenly, instead of spending dozens of hours vetting resumes only to be disappointed with the eventual hires, I might spend 30 minutes reviewing resumes, another hour or so in interviews, and I was almost always happy with the new additions to our team. It’s worth noting again that I have never met a software developer before hiring them.
Job jumpers need not apply
Early in my virtual management career, I was confounded at the number of resumes I received from job hunters who, although relatively young, had already had scores of jobs on their CV. It was rare for these people to last a year at a job, yet it did not seem to be a particular impediment to their career. People kept hiring these job jumpers despite the long odds against them being around to celebrate a single anniversary. Why invest in someone who is going to leave, either voluntarily or involuntarily?
Then it finally dawned on me: the people who are hiring them are job jumpers too!
These managers may rationalize their hiring behavior – perhaps they actually believe that those who exhibit loyalty and longevity are complacent or even lazy, when the reality can usually be filed under one of the following categories:
* The employee left voluntarily for a better opportunity – i.e. a shortcut to better compensation and status
* The employee left voluntarily because he/she just didn’t like the job
* The employee left involuntarily because he/she did not perform well on the job
Which of these would you prefer as your dream employee?
Of course, there are situations where things just don’t work out – the company downsized, the job was a bad fit, etc. However, if I see a consistent pattern of short-lived job experiences, it instantly hoists a big red flag for me. It costs money to recruit and train. Moreover, there is enormous opportunity cost associated with the organization trusting an employee to be on the job and supporting their proportionate weight of the company workload. It is extremely disruptive to an organization (and, therefore, costly) to replace an employee in midstream.
No adult supervision required
As I’ve written previously, one of the principal objections to the virtual office is management’s inability to physically supervise employees. My response to this is: why would you want to hire an employee that requires supervision?
Duh.
Professionals will deliver professional results without the additional overhead of constant supervision. If you treat employees like children, you can expect childish behavior in return.
Features Contact management, In Search of Excellence, opportunity cost, Passion for Excellence, Todd Miller, Tom Peters, virtual office, virtuality
San Francisco, CA – August 31, 2009 – gwabbit, LLC, the only provider of automatic email contact management (ECM) solutions for the contact cloud today announced that the company has achieved profitability only six months after its product launch at DEMO ’09.
“In these challenging economic times, it is an impressive achievement to bring a technology start-up to profitability in such a short period,” said Chris Shipley, chairman and CEO, Guidewire Group. “To do it without the benefit of outside venture capital is remarkable. gwabbit is a strong proof point that priced software remains a viable—and perhaps most viable—business model.”
gwabbit launched its flagship product, gwabbit for Outlook, at DEMO ’09 in March, winning a DEMOgod award, the highest honor bestowed by the nation’s premier technology conference for launching startup companies. gwabbit followed up in May with the launch of its first mobile product, gwabbit for BlackBerry. The gwabbit products use semantic technology to automatically scan incoming emails, identify and grab embedded contact information, and import it into the user’s address book with one click. gwabbit has garnered both industry and user acclaim.
“By achieving profitability in such a brief time, without the benefit of venture capital, gwabbit is demonstrating a new paradigm for technology start-ups for the new economy, with a focus on efficiency and productivity,” said Todd Miller, president and founder of gwabbit. “Companies can be successfully launched and grown without millions in venture investments and years of losses.”
Miller attributes gwabbit’s rapid ascent to profitability to a combination of solid user-intuitive product offerings, a back-to-basics revenue model, and lean and mean business practices, such as virtual officing. Miller is pioneer in virtual officing, launching one of the world’s first successful 100% virtual companies, WebFeat, in 1998.
Pricing and Availability
gwabbit for Outlook is available for a one-time charge of $19.95 at www.gwabbit.com. Both products are available for a free 14-day/20-contact trial. gwabbit for BlackBerry downloads in less than a minute on BlackBerry smartphones and is available for only $9.99 annually on BlackBerry App World (www.blackberry.com/appworld), as well as online at www.gwabbit.com. gwabbit is available for all BlackBerry smartphones including the BlackBerry® Bold™, BlackBerry® Storm™, BlackBerry® Curve™ series and BlackBerry® Pearl™ series of smartphones.
About gwabbit, LLC
Founded in 2008 gwabbit (formerly Technicopia, LLC) is the only provider of applications designed to automatically feed the contact cloud. Its flagship product gwabbit grabs contact information embedded in emails and automatically updates or creates new contact files. Recipient of the DEMO 09 DEMOgod awards, gwabbit for Outlook and gwabbit for BlackBerry are the fastest ways to capture and manage contacts on a mobile device or desktop. Whether you are on the road or at the desk, gwabbit delivers Email Contact Management (ECM) solutions that boost productivity and increase your competitive edge. For more information or to purchase gwabbit, visit www.gwabbit.com.
News AppWorld, BlackBerry, Contact Cloud, Demo09, Email Contact Management, outlook, virtual office
The new gwabbit recognition engine, version 2.0, supports gwabbit for BlackBerry application version 1.0.33, and gwabbit for Outlook application version 1.1.0.0. This is a free upgrade for all gwabbit customers.
With gwabbit for BlackBerry, the upgrade is automatic, the current application version is already realizing the benefits of the upgrade.
The gwabbit for Outlook product was upgraded prior to the new recognition engine announcement. Many customers already have the latest version in place, and are seeing the benefits of the new engine.
To check your version, from the gwabbit Toolbar, click on Options, then Upgrade. If you have version 1.1.0.0, you have the latest version with the new recognition engine in place. If you have a different version listed, you can follow the prompts from the upgrade page to download the latest version from our website. Should you need any assistance, contact gwabbit Customer Support at support@gwabbit.com.
Features gwabbit, recognition engine
The gwabbit recognition engine has been upgraded, and realizes many improvements based on the feedback and issues reported by our customers. We truly appreciate and welcome your feedback – it helps us bring you enhanced performance in a better, stwonger gwabbit!We’re listening and responding.
Both our gwabbit for Outlook and gwabbit for BlackBerry now incorporate our latest version 2.0 recognition engine. The following is a list of items that have been addressed in this latest upgrade:
- The engine now correctly handles the text added by anti-virus programs such as AVG
- The Improve Results feature (gwabbit for Outlook) is greatly improved, now recognizing a much higher percentage of contact blocks
- Better recognition of non-US phone numbers and non-US addresses
- Better recognition and parsing of HTML emails, taking into account the formatting of the signature block, including stylized text
- Improved handling for new varieties of signature structures, based on the feedback submitted
- Better separation of the “thread” (older email in the same conversation) so as to more accurately identify contact information of the sender. This improvement is especially noticeable in gwabbit for BlackBerry
- Overall improved recognition
We at gwabbit thank you very much for your input and feedback. Please keep it coming! We’ll keep making gwabbit better!
Features BlackBerry, BlackBerry App World, contact capture, Contact Cloud, contact grabber, Contact management, DEMOgod, gwabbit, Microsoft Outlook
Falls River Group
Falls River Group, “FRG”, is a boutique mergers and acquisitions firm based out of Naples, Florida. FRG is known for its excellence in investment banking, which is reflected through our attention to client service and satisfaction. We pride ourselves in the relationships that we have established with past and current clients; they start as clients and become our friends.
Kerry Dustin founded FRG in 1992 with the intention of developing a middle market M&A firm that revolves around customer service, creative thinking and attention to detail. FRG is a member of IMAP, a worldwide M&A organization. IMAP transactions completed in 2008 totaled $13.1 billion. Kerry is a past president of IMAP and is the current North America IMAP Chairman. IMAP has allowed FRG to provide its clients true global reach through its 63 partner firms. FRG combined with IMAP is a unique and specialized M&A firm that, as our clients would attest, is in a league of its own.
The Challenge
FRG has an active client base, an extensive prospect base and an additional target base for every needed sector. Tracking past, current and prospective clients and targets is a challenge to say the least. We have an estimated 5,000 contacts. Internally, there can be up to 6 different people updating the contact list, adding new contacts, editing existing and deleting duplicates. Over the years, FRG has tried tracking these lists via Excel, Microsoft Outlook and Word but nothing has seemed to extract the information in a consistently accurate manner.
The Solution
Kerry Dustin, the founder of FRG, came across gwabbit and requested that FRG’s senior analyst, Trisch Garthoeffner, explore the idea of implementing the program into FRG’s day‐to‐day activities. After a short trial, we were hooked. With every new contact, as well as existing contacts that need to be updated, the option to “gwabbit” is offered. Every employee within FRG uses gwabbit. It is a simple solution to capturing contact information into one comprehensive Microsoft Outlook contact database.
Conclusions
Our database is far from perfect but, now with gwabbit, we are on the right track to a solution. The service is simple to use and, additionally, pricing for the license is reasonable.
Lastly, the phone of choice at FRG is the I‐Phone, and we are excited that gwabbit will soon be offering its services on the I‐Phone. We are looking forward to having the capability to “gwabbit” remotely.
Good work gwabbit, keep us updated with new services offered and upgrades to existing services!
Case studies Contact management, gwabbit, Investment banking, iPhone, mergers and acquisitions, Microsoft Outlook
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