For many years we used to have Au Pairs to help with our children. The screening process to find a new Au Pair was quite cumbersome and mostly paper based. It was difficult to go through many possible candidates and try to form an opinion on them. That all changed when the agency we were using asked Au Pairs to start recording short videos of themselves. Now we were able to skip many profiles after just a short look at the video and focus on the ones we could imagine living with us for a year.

Similarly when we were recruiting for a new analyst at USV we asked candidates to answer several questions on video in addition to providing us with a link to their web presence. We had several hundred applicants and the videos proved crucial in narrowing down the field. The previous time we had done this we did not use videos and wound up spending a lot of time talking on the phone or even in person to candidates where it was clear within minutes that they would not be a personality fit.

Then when we moved to the city at the beginning of last year we had to find people to help around the house and with walking our dog. We wanted to use Craigslist but were daunted by the prospect of screening candidates. And that was the genesis of the idea for Ziggeo. Ziggeo is a simple video screening service. Ziggeo takes literally just a couple of minutes to set up and gives you a link which you can then share with candidates. The beauty of that approach is that people can publish a Ziggeo link for many different use cases including dating and finding roommates.

Ziggeo was founded by my wife Susan and our friend Oliver who has been working on it remotely from Germany. You can read more about it on Susan’s personal blog and the Ziggeo blog. So go check out Ziggeo and let Susan and Oliver know what you think about it!