Middle Market Deals and how to buy, sell and raise capital from $5 to $500 million

• More interviews:  because the interviews can be conducted at the convenience of the interviewee and can be viewed at the convenience of the hiring manager, we were able to interview many more people.
• Fair process:  the HireVue process gives each person the exact same opportunity to answer the same questions (we wrote the questions).  This allowed us to avoid variations in the interviewer's questions so that we can fairly compare one interview to another.
• Peer Review:  because the interviews can be viewed on-line, they can be shared with everyone who may wish to influence the hiring process, giving us buy-in from the whole team.
  

I recently spent some time with Will Allred, CEO and Founder of Firepoll.  He also helped me with this video profile of his business.

From the Firepoll web site: "Firepoll helps our clients know now. We offer a web-based research tool that gives marketers and researchers access to immediate consumer response and precise demographic targeting."

Firepoll uses a proprietary instant messenger technology to reach thousands of respondents virtually instantly.  When a client needs feedback from high school and college age people, they go to Firepoll to get the answer. 

Ryan's comment suggested to me that I should add a bit to my comments about dutch auctions. 

Some have written that one of the big advantages of a dutch auction is that lower fees result.  Clearly, there is a lot I don't know, but I can't see how lower fees are inherent in this alternative process.  Well executed, I don't think there is much difference in the amount of work required--and therefore the costs associated--with one method of distribution over another.

In fact, the role of the investment banker is vitally important and should be well rewarded even in a Dutch Auction IPO.  For instance, we had a client a few years ago that spent in the neighborhood of a quarter million dollars preparing software and legal filings to conduct a self managed IPO.  Didn't work.  Period.

Ryan Money, the CEO and founder of HireVue just sent this over.  What HireVue does is to faciliate video capture of employment candidates for prospective employers to use.  It allows the employer to get a much better sense of potential employees--before bringing them in for interviews.

Brialliant idea!

Watch this: