How do you get people to make connections? Plus meat cravings, financial planning, and creative amphibians
Hi friends,
This week: how do you get people to make connections? Plus meat cravings, financial planning, and creative amphibians.
Hinge is the dating app that is “designed to be deleted.” The interesting thing about working here is that your goal as an employee would be to create connections, to get people off their phones and into relationships and experiences in the real world. And how do you do that when all you start with is a non-committal download from the app store, a population of pre-portrait-mode selfies, and a dominant tendency for half the world to send horrible pick up lines? You are working contrary to inertia; it’s an interesting challenge that requires big empathy for the self-consciousness and hope of everyone who has ever used a dating app.
They’re hiring in ops, engineering, and marketing for their NYC office. As a benefit, they give you a $200/month stipend to go on dates and “build relationships outside of the office.”
This company’s goal is to “beat the cow.” In other words, Impossible Foods wants to solve “humanity’s greatest problem” (animal agriculture destroying the planet), but they know that expecting people to eliminate or reduce their carnivorous habits is unrealistic. Their solution is to create an amazing, plant-based product that looks and acts like meat; you may have heard of them as the notorious creators of “the vegan burger that bleeds.” They did a lot of research to locate the exact molecule that makes meat taste delicious, known as heme (pronounced “heem,” short for leghemoglobin), and they found a way to isolate it from plants instead of animals. The process requires only a fraction of the resources used in traditional meat production but yields many of the same nutritional benefits (namely, iron content). For those curious about the wündercompound, see a 2 minute docu here.
They’re currently looking for a content intern, research assistants, event planner, multiple positions in product development, and a Heme Technician (for which all you need is some culinary experience, an undergrad degree, and computer skills).
How does the timing of your paycheck affect how you financially plan? In most jobs, you get paid biweekly or once a month. Once you receive the deposit, you translate that figure into a proper daily expenditure while accounting for regular bills like rent and utilities and Spotify premium. On top of this, you try to leave room for week-to-week, spontaneous expenses: a cavity, a new coat, a trip home. The less money you make, the more friction you experience in each of these steps. The fact that the employee payment process makes financial planning difficult in these subtle ways is the driving sentiment behind DailyPay. Their payroll software allows a user to access all earned revenue at any moment; they can choose how and when they want to be paid. It’s a simple and elegant idea that also helps the companies that are buying it by reducing employee turnover. They want to bring this service to 50% of the US workforce by 2020.
They’re currently hiring ~20 or so positions for their NYC office (development, sales, marketing, HR). Please note that we have been drastically won over by their policy to give every employee the ability to order unlimited books from Amazon.
It is traditionally very difficult for design companies to differentiate themselves, but Frog has a lot to brag about. They emerged in the 1960s with a novel approach to the computer revolution: an insistence that “form follows emotion,” that tech should feel personal. One of their early hits was the ‘79 SONY Walkman, a revolutionary cassette player that begat the habit of listening to music whenever and wherever. The 14oz blue-and-silver machine was entirely portable and even had a second earphone jack for two people to listen at once (take note Apple). Today, Frog tackles problems in diverse fields like architecture, “organizational activation”, and CX, which works because their first principle — designing based upon how people feel — transcends industry.
They have studios all around the world and are currently hiring creative associates in San Francisco and New York, and a design technology intern in Shanghai.
See you next week.
Love,
Your Caring Parents
(Dana & Lea)