Malcolm Gladwell, author of best selling books such as “Blink” and “The Tipping Point” recently spoke at the 2008 New Yorker Conference with a presentation titled “Stories of the near future.” He’s apparently working on a new book that focuses on the frequent mismatches that occur when we try to measure and classify human performance to make informed hiring and recruitment decisions. According to Malcolm, the mismatch problem occurs when, “the criteria we use to prepare to assess someone’s ability to do a job, is radically out of step with the actual demands of the job itself.”

Besides the fun opportunity of watching an avid speaker as Malcolm is, the talk crystallizes the challenges we are faced with when we have to rely on traditional methods and metrics to assess the qualities people we consider hiring.

We just got our first post on TechCrunch, one of the leading technology and start-up business blogs. We are honored to be covered at this early stage, given that we just launched into private beta. While we’ll be letting in more and more people from our beta sign-up list, we are focused on providing a quality service right from the start. So we’ll take all feedback very seriously and we’ll be working hard to improve towards our public beta release in Juli. Meanwhile you can sign-up for our private beta if you want to be amongst the first to help us change the way small businesses work.

A big thank you to the TechCrunch team and happy birthday for their third anniversary!

I am delighted to tell you that today we’ve launched into private beta with SmibsNet, Doorbell and Buzzer. A first set of users have been invited and have already provided us with very positive and constructive feedback (thank you !). To ensure a high quality service from the start we’ll be inviting an increasing number of people on a daily basis to join the network and try our applications. Subscribe to our beta list if you wand to be amongst the first who help us change the way small businesses work.

We are very passionate about helping small businesses Grow Smart. SmibsNet, our social business network and Doorbell our Sales Software for Non-Sales People (both launching this month) were conceived out of a common small business frustration: the endless pursuit of winning new clients while working on projects that pay the bills. For most professional service providers there is always too much going on to stay on top of everything. We also found that we couldn’t really do very much with existing networks like LinkedIn except from collecting ‘connections’ to boost our ego. And finally we had to painfully experience that available sales software is too bulky, hard to learn and expensive.

So we decided to create Doorbell

Doorbell is the first sales software that is truly dedicated to what we call Non-Sales People. Creative professionals, IT service providers, consultants and other professional service providers can only devote a fraction of their time to actively selling their services. They have to dedicate small portions of their time in-between client projects to win the clients and projects they need and to grow their business in a smart and focused fashion. In service organizations it is increasingly common that all employees become ‘part-time sales people’ i.e. at social functions or when working on-site with a client. Doorbell is an easy to use, elegant and affordable web application that enables all employees in small and medium-sized businesses to take the driving seat in their sales vehicle without distracting them from their actual work. Another clear distinguishing feature is that Doorbell seamlessly integrates into SmibsNet (see below), where sales opportunities, contacts information and tasks can be shared to collaborate on an opportunity with team members from inside and outside the company. Starting with a free plan, Doorbell will be available based on a usage dependent and very affordable monthly subscription service. You can sign-up to join the Doorbell private beta at http://www.getdoorbell.com

The business network that gets things done

SmibsNet is a social business network that focuses on getting the things done that really matter: Winning clients, finding new talent, collaborating across organizations and Growing Smart. On SmibsNet, individuals and businesses can invite each other to collaborate right within the network. Smibs applications - like Doorbell - are fully integrated, turning SmibsNet into a powerful platform for self-promotion and business interaction. The Smibs Lounge is your personalized dashboard within SmibsNet. It provides quick and easy access to all personal and business contacts, as well as tasks, messages and applications. SmibsNet is fast, easy and free to use. You can sign-up for the SmibsNet public beta (starting in June 08) at http://www.smibs.com

Completing the picture with Buzzer

Buzzer is a personal Smibs application that helps people to stay in touch with their personal network. It inherited Doorbell’s contact, relationship and task management power so a user can ‘work’ with her contacts by managing related information, relationships between contacts, tasks and documents. Buzzer is integrated with SmibsNet: Smibs Friends are live-linked contacts that are automatically updated in your Buzzer when they change their contact information in their SmibsNet profile (i.e. a new address after moving). Buzzer will launch simultaneously with Doorbell. A free plan will be sufficient for most users, and a payed plan will satisfy even the most social ‘Power Buzzers’.

Oh, and who is behind Smibs Inc.

My name is Peter Urban and I am the founder (and Chief Executive Smibson) of Smibs Inc. I am an entrepreneur with 17 years of experience in starting and growing businesses from the ground up. As founder and president of the Plainpeak Group, I have consulted in the areas of strategic marketing and corporate communication for several Fortune 500 companies such as DaimlerChrysler, SAP and BASF and large public sector organizations such as the Government of Alberta (Canada) as well as countless small and medium-sized businesses. I recently moved from Germany to Canada (Edmonton / Alberta) where I live with my wonderful wife Christy and two lovely dogs. I enjoy fine art photography, design and art in general as well as cycling and running and the odd round of Squash during the long Albertan winters (all currently neglected to get Smibs started).

You can follow me on twitter for timely updates or check out my LinkedIn profile - soon to be replaced by my SmibsNet profile - for my professional background.

Forrest Zeisler is Co-Founder and Chief Systems Smibson at Smibs Inc. Forrest’s former position as software engineer at Plainpeak soon lead him to share Peter’s vision of software that helps businesses Grow Smart. His passion for technology, his talent for elegant and efficient solutions and his exceptional drive to achieve engineering excellence resulted in the invitation to become Co-Founder and lead system architect at Smibs Inc. Forrest lives and works in Edmonton and you won’t believe it, but when he’s done ’smibsing’ at his day job he relaxes with working on some ‘artificial intelligence programming experiments’ - weird hey?

Stay in touch or contact us for more questions

You can follow Smibs on twitter or join our Smibsonians Facebook Group to stay in touch. Please leave a comment on this post or send us an E-mail to support [at] smibs [dot] com if you have any questions, ideas or suggestions.

There is a common misconception that successful people or companies have always made the right decisions, done the right things and somehow always known how to become successful. Quite the contrary. In my experience, almost every great success story has been preceded by a whole array of failures.

– Win a free one-year Doorbell subscription: How many of Thomas Edison’s attempts to make a light bulb failed before he made it work? The first correct answer in this post’s comments wins. –

Most successful people have dealt with their share of failures before getting the first taste of success. And, many successful people and companies have failed again after achieving significant success.

In a post titled ”The liberating effect of failure” CNN Money explains why ”failure is the crucible that makes a leader into a hero”. They provide multiple examples including video interviews of CEO’s and founders that have rebounded after significant failures. There is a great deal to learn from this post, in that typical success stories often don’t show the full picture and are rarely a good role model for helping you to realize your own ambitions.