Simply Hired (TechCrunch profile) has raised $13.5 million from New Corp’s Fox Interactive group and Foundation Capital. Both investors will take board seats in the company.
This is big news for Simply Hired. The Fox investment almost certainly signals that Fox’s other properties, including MySpace, could have a very close relationship with Simply Hired in the near future. And – Simply Hired’s competitor Indeed has taken money from the New York Times. These startups now both have some very heavy hitters supporting them and it will be interesting to see how things shake out.
Another angle on this deal is what didn’t happen – this was not an outright acquisition by Fox, which has been on an acquisition tear lately. My guess is that acquisition discussions have been ongoing for some time, but the valuation on Simply Hired may have been too high for an outright purchase.
All of this is speculation of course. But the jobs space just got more interesting.
Big congrats from the http://www.gojobby.com team!
This should be interesting. I am still waiting for the company to allow people to have portfolios on these job search sites as well as allow people to create personal knowledge bases (like a wiki of some sorts).
I think an employee who has a portfolio and their own knowldge base on a picicular subject like technology of design could be the big leg up someone needs to get hired.
I hope someone tries that. I would love to use something like that.