Web 2.0 technology and lots and lots of venture capital have paved the way for startups to get cranked out of tech assembly lines faster than you can complete your now irrelevant 140-character Tweet endorsing it.
Some stick around and get billion-dollar valuations, while others burn through a lot of cash too fast and find themselves dog-paddling in the deadpool.
Recruiting platform Jobster, which launched in 2004 as one of the most hyped startups in the recruiting space, seems to be acting as not just an incubator of ideas, but a breeding ground for successful entrepreneurs. Jobster may be going through an identity crisis, but their ex-employees are having no problem figuring out what they want to be known for.
Case in point comes with some big news today: those of you with an iPhone have probably downloaded UrbanSpoon, a popular restaurant service that was founded by three former Jobster employees, Ethan Lowry, Adam Doppelt and Patrick O’Donnell. Today Techcrunch reported that UrbanSpoon was bought (reportedly for millions) by IAC, the Internet Giant. UrbanSpoon could have survived on its own, but Lowry said the IAC sweetened the deal with “an offer [they] couldn’t refuse.” Translation: piles and piles of dough.
Another example finds ex-Jobster employees who really bring home the bacon. You may have heard (or tasted) the sensation that is Bacon Salt, a bacon-flavored seasoning that was devised by Dave Lefkow and Justin Esch, two former Jobster employees who translated a love of pork into an incredibly popular product. So popular, in fact, that the media Queen herself, Oprah Winfrey, has endorsed the Bacon Salt product as one of her favorite condiments. And last year’s sales were reported to be in the $1 million range. As for what’s next on their plate, the co-founders say they are working on bacon-scented soap, body spray, and lotion.
And we certainly can’t leave out former Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg, who left the company to start SocialMedian. SocialMedian, a New-York based news-filtering service, was sold last December to Xing for about $7.5 million. Goldberg packed his bags and shipped off to Xing HQ in Hamburg, Germany, where he is currently the VP of Xing’s application platform.
And it doesn’t stop there. Other ex-Jobster employees-turned-entrepreneurs include Andrew Wilmot, founder of Talent Maze, RecruitingBlogs.com founder Jason Davis, who worked with Jobster after selling them Recruiting.com, and Neil Crist, MD at Acture Ventures, Inc.
Whomever is (or was) in charge of hiring at Jobster should be credited for attracting such talented individuals – it’s not often that you see so many employees going on to achieve such notoriety.
Popularity: unranked [?]
April 29th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Other ex-Jobster employees-turned-entrepreneurs include Andrew Witt, founder of Talent Maze. Giving the man his due, his name is Andrew Wilmott-one of the nicest guys in the industry (no, this isn’t written by Andrew).
April 29th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Great post, Vanessa. I agree with your analysis. Congrats to UrbanSpoon and BaconSalt. Bacon Salt is rivaling Twitter for media coverage lately. Oprah seems to love them!
Two things of interest here:
1. There are several more start-ups founded / staffed by ex-Jobsters that are poised for similar success.
2. Jason did much of the recruiting at Jobster. John Bergen and several senior execs bought in great people, but Jason to the lead on much of the recruiting.
April 29th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
My fault. Mistake is corrected.
April 30th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Indeed great people and well marketed. I wouldn’t give Jason the props though. He was an arrogant MBAhole who was too caught up in his own ego than in how to run a business, listen to customers or how to nurture that great talent and let them help run the business. I almost went to work there myself but didn’t trust Jason who couldn’t look me in the eye and articulate their business model and then later tried to hard sell me as a prospective client. Maybe the market wasn’t ready for jobster yet or maybe Jason was too focused on rearranging deck chairs on the titanic loving himself talk about their latest “M&As” than listening to some of these great people that worked there.
May 4th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
We definitely had a great group of people at Jobster and I was learned a lot from them- and continue to learn from them. I’m also one of the many ex-Jobsters that have gone on to start their own company and many more are contributing to other startups in big ways.
May 11th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
A couple more to add – Tony Wright with RescueTime (www.rescuetime.com), they’ve gotten a ton of press for their approach to time-management and optimization software and are doing well. And Marty Unger from YouSaidIt (www.yousaidit.com), which is a very interesting feedback mechanism for companies. Probably forgetting someone… but there were a lot of very entpreneurial and smart folks there while I was there.