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June 28, 2007
Chief Scientist For NYC-based Natpal
Bessemer Venture Partners-backed Natpal has a search on for a Chief Scientist for its local onine advertising business.
A year ago, a 20-something Wharton Business School student had this Q&A session with a VC panel:
The venture capitalist, wearing an open-necked shirt and sitting with his arms crossed, cuts in. "You're up and running?" he asks.
"Yes, we have about $500,000 in sales."
"What's your cost per client acquisition?"
"About $300. And we have about an 85 percent retention rate."
The company was Natpal.com, a Wharton Business School incubated, and now a VC-backed start-up that says it is poised for a major national rollout. The startup says that in its phase 1 sales launch it validated the business model by acquiring over 250 customers in over 30 business categories in two major metro markets. Phase 2 is to repeat this method in a national rollout to every major US market.
What is did was to comb through the yellow pages and contact local businesses to convince them to move their marketing budgets to the Net using an ROI model. Natpal charges on a pay-for-performance basis. The platform integrates web plus phone analytics with targeted ad-serving to the major search engines and structured content.
Natpal is led by new CEO Court Cunningham, founder Nathaniel Stevens who was the Wharton School grad and CTO John Merryman who was CTO of Did-it Search Marketing. Bessemer Capital's Alex Ferrara led the investment, which has yet to be announced.
Naptal competes with ReachLocal, LocalLaunch, WebVisible, Leads.com, etc.
Apply to CEO Court Cunningham
Company Overview: Natpal is a Bessemer Ventures funded company in the midst of a major national rollout that will triple our client base in 2007. Natpal is transforming local online advertising by connecting local business owners with consumers in a simple, measurable and relevant way. We provide search-engine advertising and online lead generation services to small businesses. Natpal.com has developed an integrated approach to signing up and serving local businesses that are transitioning their marketing budgets online.
Candidate:
We are looking for a motivated Chief Scientist with a strong quantitative, optimization and statistics background to help lead the research and development efforts for the world’s first integrated media buying and web services application for small business.
The candidate will report to the president and should have a strong math background, preferably with experience in predictive modeling and optimization techniques. The candidate should have experience collaborating with engineering teams to design and implement algorithms. This individual should be passionate about technology and have a creative mind as this position as you will be defining the research initiatives for the Natpal. A successful candidate will also have hands experience working with data to prove and evaluate models.
This position will manage a group of three researchers and developers. In addition, this position will be collaborating with leading academics/researchers in Operations Research and Machine Learning in sponsored research projects at Upenn/Wharton.
A successful candidate must have a strong math and statistics background and may have a background in:
• Some game theory or auction theory
• Optimization & predictive modeling
• General Machine Learning
• Some understanding of Linguistics & Natural Language Processing
• Consumer Psychology is a plus
• Familiarity with Sponsored Search, Search Engines, and Contextual advertising is a plus
Key Areas of Focus:
• Improve statistical model to predict conversions based on historical web analytics data.
• Improve accuracy of bidding algorithms
– Incorporate auction ranking inputs into econometrics model to predict rank and click volume
• Create dynamic pricing system to maximize revenue based off of available leads in a clients geography
• Build forecasting tool to estimate inventory supply
• Developing and testing techniques for better attributing phone calls back to web sessions
Responsibilities:
• Work with the President and senior management team to conceive of new research initiatives for the business
• Develop are prioritize research agenda for firm with a focus on improving customer experience of improve company performance\
• Work with research team to design and test new algorithms and optimization techniques
Requirements:
• 4 yrs+ experience in applied research in a commercial environment
• Experience in marketing services is a plus
• PhD required (Statistics/Mathematics)
Other highly relevant tools/skills:
• Some knowledge of programming
• Background in Data analysis tools such as Stata, Matlab, SAS
Posted by BT at June 28, 2007 12:08 AM
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