06 Dec 08 I think I want this job

Forrester is looking to hire a social media analyst. As I just wrote to Jeremiah Owyang, I think I would excel at that job and would love doing it. Am I crazy to blog about this? Maybe not. It’s one way to make it clear that I don’t tell every prospective employer that I would excel at and love their open position. Those of you who have known me for a long time know that I was a very successful industry analyst, first to declare that multimedia computing would be the Next Big Thing. I think I’m fairly good at seeing where the industry is going, sometimes a bit too far ahead of the curve.

I started a buzz measurement company before most people even saw the need for it. Because we were first, I have four patents for that work and five applications pending. Not that I’m a big fan of software patents, but investors sure like them and I liked having investors. I jumped into social media long before it became the Next Big Thing, tracking the open source movement by analyzing social media, then joining a social media agency when hardly any such companies existed.

I actually tried to start a social media buzz measurement company much earlier, with a young man named Marc Andreesen, who had just moved to California from Illinois. Smart fellow, I thought, so I took him to lunch. Apparently somebody else thought he was pretty smart, too, and made him a better offer. He has done well.

The same thing happened when I was at Verity and met five guys with a search technology company operating out of a house in Cupertino. I thought they had something terrific and a week or so later, our CEO was offering to acquire them for a lot of cash (Verity had just gone public and had a pile of money to invest). They were also talking to Kleiner Perkins and decided they’d rather start a search service instead of being part of a search technology vendor. That company became Excite and those five guys have done very, very well.

Have lunch with Nick, go make millions. Not a bad consulting motto, perhaps.

Almost forgot – I went to an Oakland As game with Bill Gates and he became a billionaire. I’m not sure that counts, since he was already doing pretty darn well.

Feel free to add a comment here about why Forrester should hire me. Or write to Jeremiah if you think it is unseemly for me to solicit public praise (but if so, you apparently don’t understand how the whole industry analyst thing works).

This has to be the oddest thing I have every published… but I really think I want that job.