THE LATEST -- web startup in West LA -- All Skills Needed
TheLatest.com —
Los Angeles, CA
Greetings. My name is Jeff Hall, CEO of THE LATEST (www.thelatest.com).
"The Latest" is a very catchy name, highly memorable. Everyone wants to know "the latest."
Last month, 55 million Google searches included the word "latest" (the latest news, latest justin bieber, latest iphone, etc.). SEO guys say we're sitting on a goldmine.
Some partners and I have been working for a very long time on coming up with a site concept that's as promising as our domain name. It's not easy coming up with something new and different on the Internet. Zillions of great ideas have already been done by others.
After three years of much work and plenty of trial and error, I think we're finally there now. A lady who has done design work for Disney just finished our front-end design and we are quite pleased. Some programmers will now start building out the site. Our goal is to put on a real blitz effort this summer and launch in September.
This is a long post, but I encourage you to read to the bottom, since we're so excited about this -- and want you to be as well.
I'm a former VP at the LA Times; as part of our team, we have a former managing editor from the LA Times and a former president of a major television studio. We also have a CFO, some twentysomethings who will help with social media, etc.
Some top schools are represented by our leadership group (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Princeton, Berkeley, USC, etc.). It's a good group. Actually, it's an amazing group.
Last summer, we had a bunch of student interns helping with this. We want to do it again this summer. Alas, these internships are unpaid but the experience will be terrific and I think it's accurate to say last summer's interns had a ball. We loved them, too! The Internet is a young person's game and your ideas are very, very welcome. As part of the deal, our senior advisers will serve as your mentors. Each team will meet with its team leader once or twice a week.
It's possible this could turn into a paying job for some at some point, but as of now, we're unfunded and nobody (including the leadership team), is getting paid. We hope to raise money soon but we're not quite ready to do that. Stock options are another possibility for those who stick with this. We're not there yet, either.
We have several, wide-ranging projects in mind for the summer. See the range of possibilities, below.