Doostang, a Silicon Valley company that seeks to hook up highly qualified people with high-end employers, has raised $3.5 million in a round led by Shasta Ventures.
Doostang is in a very crowded industry. It is filled job-oriented sites like TheLadders, a job board for six-figure salaries and up, and more specialized job boards on multitudes of niche-oriented Web sites. Also, sites like LinkedIn are gaining currency among highly networked people - who ask their friends to give them suggestions about specific job openings.
Partners at Shasta Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture firm, say they think there’s still too much clutter at these other sites, and that Doostang aims to be the most selective. Doostang, as we’ve reported, is invite-only, and boasts that it started at Harvard, MIT and Stanford (thus borrowing from the playbook of Facebook, the site that became popular among colleges after it launched at Harvard).
The challenge with this, in our view, is that the most selective candidates will always have an easier time finding jobs through their own networks, and LinkedIn, Facebook, or the proverbial “grapevine.”
The round includes other undisclosed investors. Techcrunch has also covered the news.
3 Comments
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Wayne Brady said:
Sounds like Douchestain
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Faisal Ghori said:
Dear Matt,
While you’re right to state that Doostang is in a very crowded industry (LinkedIn, TheLadders), it is highly differentiated and focused upon certain career fields, and as a consequence of its selectivity it attracts amongst the best and brightest of university grads. And as such, it is used across the board by investment banks, consulting firms, and similar organizations competing for very highly talented individuals that are hard to find.
Some candidates will always have robust personal networks to rely on, but for those that don’t – which is most people, and the site caters to the majority rather than a select minority – the site is tremendously helpful, especially, for employers.
Doostang over a short time has become the proverbial “grapevine” you refer to for the finance and consulting industries.
If Doostang continues to execute as it has, I’m sure the folks at Shasta will do well.
Best.
Faisal
Middle East Ventures -
peter said:
http://www.successful-blog.com/1/3-reasons-im-sorry-i-joined-doostang/
The invitation above touts the core value they offer, but the rules are that you deliver your value to them before they deliver that core value to you — if they do.Who’s serving who?
Reason 1 — Secret MeetingsI invited 20 of my friends who joined. Then I applied to four “professional” groups — two I cared about. I was rejected from all four of them. What appeared was single sentence that stated simply your application was rejected — no details were given. No sender is anonymous. The qualifications needed are stated nowhere. There was an invitation to contest it.
I went to the forum to check that out. There I found a thread which said that nearly everyone gets rejected from every group! The information came from a Doostang team member, stating that each group decides who will fit the qualifications of the jobs they offer. I visualized a secret meeting in a secret room. I would quote what I read and link to it, but I can’t (see reason three.)
Steven saidDoostang brings spam to your email!
The email address you sign up with is displayed on your profile and there is no option in the privacy settings to hide it. As I always do, I set up a unique email address to sign up for Doostang (as explained on BustSpammers.com). That email isn’t used anywhere else. I now receive spam to that address, today for example I was urged to “Stuff her with a mightier man meat, and give her all the joy and love.” Grrreat!
Obviously, they have scrapers on their “exclusive” network who have nothing else to do but harvest member emails for spam.
Kyle said
The same thing has happened to me, and funny, it was right after I accidentally invited my whole gmail contact list. I also sent along an email to the help@doostang.com address, but having read this, I don’t expect much in return.
Time to start sending apologies…
Thanks for sharing your experience with them.
