One of the first things we focused on at Standout Jobs (a startup I co-founded in 2007 in the recruitment space) was recruitment videos designed to show off a company’s culture and attract the right people. I still think it’s a good idea–you can do so much more in a video that you can’t get across in text–but it does take a lot of work to pull off. The best video we ever produced (thanks Eddie Codel!) was with Xobni, which was recently acquired by Yahoo. The acquisition news got some of the Xobni (and ex-Xobni) folks talking; they dug up the video and started reminiscing about it. I went to take a look and it brought back a lot of great memories. Ultimately, Standout Jobs was not a huge success, but that story’s already been told. Today, I just want to remember some of the great videos we helped create, and some of the great people we worked with.

Here’s the Xobni recruitment video:

If you know the Xobni guys (Gabor Cselle, Matt Brezina, Adam Smith, et al.) you’ll laugh. Even if you don’t know them personally, you’ll laugh. If you don’t…well, you’re not a good fit to work there (or perhaps Yahoo now)!

One of the funniest bits is the cameo by Paul Buchheit (creator of Gmail). His first lines are, “Good evening ignorant pigs. Put down your crack pipes and beer bongs and listen up.” He was a fan of Xobni.

There’s a cameo from Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, as well.

On a slightly sentimental note, Matt Brezina (Xobni co-founder) and I have stayed in touch off and on since 2008 when we did the video. He provided a case study for Lean Analytics with his new company Sincerely, and has helped me out with his amazing network a couple times as well. It shows you, in part, the power of Silicon Valley–I met Matt at a dinner (which was organized by Katherine Barr at Mohr Davidow Ventures), pitched him on Standout Jobs and we pulled off the video. It wasn’t any harder than that to get connected. People in Silicon Valley (for the most part) want to help and are willing to help those chasing their dreams (at the time for me, that was building Standout Jobs). That didn’t work out … but we sure got a funny video out of it.