We’ve heard that Shasta Ventures put $3.5 million into LinkedIn competitor Doostang, adding to the million or so that they raised previously in an angel round.
The service, which we first covered over two years ago, is a job site and social network where new users have to be invited by someone currently on the site. That keeps growth small, but the site has been known for having very high end jobs and job candidates.
So far, Doostang has no revenue model – everything is free. But that’s changing from what we hear. No details yet, but I’d expect users to be able to generate fees from recommending friends for jobs (an activity that is already encouraged on the site).
Currently Doostang has just over 300,000 registered members and 4,633 jobs listed. Get your invitation to Doostang from InviteShare here.
those bastards deleted my account for no reason, and wouldnt answer my emails to get it back. ITs mostly jobs for people who want to waste their lives as I-bankers anyway
I can’t find Doostang in the FB App directory?!?!
Your InviteShare website is neat. But, needs work. I did not find it user friendly. IMO
Here’s the sequence I went through:
went back to InviteShare
* follow link from story……
1) Look for this invite, think it is simply input email account.
2) Created account
3) Looked around for invite?
4) looged into my gmail account looking for a link or email saying next steps
5) Went back to incite share and looked around and saw another email address and said to myself “what’s this?”
6) scanned the page for something to say click me to for invite to Doostang”
7) went back to gmai account thinking the email server may be backed up (slow)
9) Saw same page as before with someone elses email address
10) saw logo of Doostang and clicked on it
11) saw that my email address was added below to the previous one
12) went back to see if there is anything else I need to do from my email account (gmail)
Of course now I know how to use it. But, you really need to make it more user friendly. I’m sure lots of “scientists” will respond to this post saying I’m a moron…. but, take some constructive feedback for people who actually have interest in signing for this Doostang invitation and don’t have all day to fart around or mental masturbate on how the hell to sign up for an invite service.
If doostang want you to only come from someone invite who knows you, why link it to inviteshares? Makes no sense.
Plus why inviteshares get direct link when site story is about does not?
Hmm, I don’t agree with the first poster. I hired a candidate using a Doostang posting, and I subsequently used Doostang in my own job search and got interviews with VCs who I couldn’t get in touch with in any other way (other than cold-calling).
I have ~125 friends on the service, and I haven’t heard complaints from any of them. There’s really no downside to using Doostang for the job-seeker or job poster. It’s free, it’s effective and it aggregates a ton of high quality jobs while screening out low quality jobs and candidates.
I stille don’t quite understand the LinkedIn/Doostang comparison that Michael mentions. LinkedIn is great for networking; Doostang is great for job-seeking and hiring.
In response to Doostang on Facebook: I don’t believe they are on Facebook. You’ll need to be referred by someone from Doostang in order to join their network — doostang.com.
And I agree, Doostang & LinkedIn are not the same. As a user of both, different purposes drives me to both those sites.
I agree with #1, my account was also deleted, even after I added over 150 contacts to it.(most were new users too)
People who want jobs don’t have time to be “social”, get serious people!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Congrats to Pavel and Mareza. You guys built a great site and I’m glad to see you guys received the funding to take it to the next level. I’ve actually used Doostang to hire people in the past and actually received some great leads.
Congrats again guys!
doostang makes me think shit stain.
I’ve been in contact with these people after receiving massive numbers of invites at my university. It turns out that they have a “import your address book” option for inviting people and the default setting is to mail ALL addresses in your contact list including mailing lists.
After corresponding with them, they didn’t really seem to understand why this was such a bad thing or how to fix it. I tried to explain that maybe they should redesign their UI to not trick people into spamming their friends or maybe by default EXCLUDE addresses that match certain regular expressions.
I’m still not sure I got through… I hope one day I can get funding without being so clueless…
Well I think DooStang have the edge if thick sods like TechCrunch put 2 links named LinkedIn and Doostang, but only 1 url behind to doorstang haha
http://www.crun...ompany/doostang
Nice bit of balancing the sides
Shouldn’t TechCrunch do a little research before legitimizing to a potential scam by writing about it? Doostang might be one big email harvesting ponzi scheme.
The few comments defending Doostang on the following are obvious fakes, as the ones on this site might also be: http://www.succ...oined-doostang/
You’ll be doing the community a major service if you post your research into this ’service’.
Unfortunately, Doostang is more than just an email collecting Ponzi scheme. I signed up for a 3-month trial subscription with this “service,” found that it had no value, and allowed the subscription to expire.
I’ve recently found that I was charged $75 on two occasions following the expiry of my subscription. This was done with absolutely no email alert, no email receipt for the “renewal,” in fact no email contact whatsoever.
Upon contacting the “service” through email (since they provide absolutely no phone contact information), I was told that they could not reverse the charges. This was because, according to Nat Chambers in Community Relations: “We are very clear in stating that all memberships are automatically renewed unless canceled.”
This “clarity” apparently refers to the practice being buried in the TOS, and no email contact or receipt being sent out to reflect the charge.
What a crock. My credit card company is being alerted to these deceptive, fraudulent business practices.
Nice job, Shasta Ventures. It’s good that you’re associating with internet scheisters.