New Y Combinator startup Startuply launches today. It’s a free job listing service aimed squarely at small startups, which have a lot of trouble getting the attention of new engineering graduates over the noise of the brand recognition and recruiting efforts of larger companies like Google and Microsoft.
Startuply is actually a fresh relaunch of Jowba, which originally launched in 2007. Founders Luke Groesbeck, Ben Wong and Loc Ngo took Y Combinator funding, rebranded (they say users couldn’t pronounce or spell Jowba consistently) and redesigned the site from the ground up.
The focus is still the same: let any startup create a detailed profile of their company to give prospective employees an idea of what the company is like, and then let them list jobs for free.
Startuply has advanced search options that let users search by startup, job type, city, investors and other criteria. And companies can add a job widget with a search function on their websites, giving them an incentive to just list all of their jobs on the site.
The site is a good hiring tool for startups, and having lots of startups centralize hiring activities in one place is a good way to drive traffic to all company listings. It needs a jump start to get going, however, which is something the original Jowba failed to achieve. The new name, design and, most importantly Y Combinator community may give it the lift it needs. As of today there are over 600 job listings on the site from 166 different startups.
Once the community gets going there will be all kinds of ways for Startuply to make money – the obvious way is through premium listing options.