PartnerUp helps co-founders find each other

July 17, 2007 | Dan Kaplan | Comments |

partneruplogo.jpgPartnerUp wants to help entrepreneurs find the people they need to get their concepts off the ground.

There are plenty of job search sites on the web, and one can use LinkedIn to browse for talent, but PartnerUp, with its focus on fledgling start-ups, aims to help start-ups build their core team.

Similar to conventional job sites like Monster and HotJobs, PartnerUp lets companies post opportunities and makes it easy for interested people to browse them. However, as its name suggests, PartnerUp lists opportunities for equity partnerships in brand new companies, positions on start-up boards, and co-founder status for companies that don’t yet exist.

Some start-ups list these types of openings on job boards on popular blogs, but these listings cost money. PartnerUp is free — though there is a $25 premium option that allows you to search for people with certain skill sets to be partners or prospective employees. (The free service limits you to posting and searching for opportunities.)

The idea for the site came after ParterUp’s founder, Steve Nielsen, wanted to launch an radio-frequency identification (RFID) company, and could not find an electrical engineer. Later, after giving up, he was at a conference and encountered an RFID engineer who had been looking for a start-up to join, but didn’t know where to look. PartnerUp wants to be that place. Down the road, it intends to add free listings for commercial real-estate to help start-ups find affordable office space.

The Minneapolis-based company has only been around since late April, and the listings are a little thin, but if it catches on, it could be quite useful for entrepreneurs that need to fill out their team. PartnerUp is currently self-funded, and intends to stay that way for a while.

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About the Author, Dan Kaplan

Once upon a time, Dan considered himself a magazine journalist with dreams of "The New Yorker" and a couple of well-reviewed but only mildly successful books. Then one day, life, as it is known to do, decided it was time for rebirth. Like so many things before it, this rebirth was conceived on a mostly-empty plane to Reno. Now, instead of magazine writing, Dan would plunge into the world of New Media and write for Matt Marshall's blog.

It's funny how it goes.

  • This is a great niche and there's been a real gap for this sort of service for years, so best of luck to Steve.
  • This service has the classic chicken and egg problem. Unless the site has users there is a very little use in posting an opening on it or trying to find someone on it. Someone like Linked In (with a critical mass of users) is probably well-quipped to provide something like this as an add-on service.
  • Jeff
    I am glad that you posted this company. I am in the process of starting a company and am looking for a partner with business development experience. PartnerUp is exactly what I need and it seems to have a fair amount of content and members already.

    Pran- I am also a LinkedIn user and LinkedIn works well for what I use it for. However, I can say that I wouldn't use LinkedIn to find a partner. The reason being that I couldn't have my boss or someone at the company that I work for find out that I am currently starting a company. So, LinkedIn would have to change their system to allow users to remain anonymous, which would be completely contrary to their mission.

    I think that LinkedIn should instead focus their effort on improving their Answers functionality, introducing IM/chat type functionality, and integrating with Facebook. That would be a powerful platform!
  • Kumar
    I agree with the poster above who said this site has a chicken and egg problem. I just joined it a few hours ago, and I had to pay for 3 months -- $100 to start out. I do think they are trying to solve a good problem, however by charging a steep fee in initial phase, where the ROI is not so good, they will have more difficulty in attaining critical mass. Ergo..Chicken and Egg..Short sightedness I would add...
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