Silicon Valley based job listing search engine Simply Hired is announcing profitability and a new round of financing – $4.6 million from new investor IDG Ventures and existing investor Foundation Capital. The company is also announcing four quarters of positive cash flow.
Phil Sanderson, managing director at IDG Ventures, joins the company’s Board of Directors. Simply Hired has now raised a total of $22.3 million.
cool … recession is anyway a boom period of these companies.
Not quite. Companies don’t hire new stuff so HR budgets got cut off. There is less money on jobboard market. Look at monster, careerbuilder etc. they got hit bad byt 30-40%.
what does a job aggregator need 4.6 million for ? its not like they need the funds for design killer technology or buy huge amounts of hardware.
amazing how some companies can raise money so easy with little proprietary ownership
for expansion. many choices once you dig into this business.
I agree. There is too much money in people connecting what two other companies forgot to connect. Your entire business is risking on their success and, if they don’t eventually just cut you out.
‘Funded’ Mashups are still just Mashups.
Good to see they are doing well.
If they’re profitable why do they need to raise money? Isn’t better to just earn it and keep more of the company?
I was under this impression too. I thought job sites were the only internet companies that actually bring in profit?
it’s true
they do make money, but pure e-commerce does not work in this industry so you need money to pay sales people. Compare headcount in sals dep in careerbuilder, monster or hotjobs (by the way yahoo wants to sell it). Simly hire just found out that with pure ecom reavenues will not grow much faster.
just a word on yahoo selling hotjobs – is it Microsoft recomendation? MS as far as I know is a shareholder in Careerbuilder. Mey be we will see somre more action between MS and yahoo soon
We don’t know how profitable they are, so we may assume that they are just past break-even (currently). So they probably need the money for growing the service (or just for ongoing operations) until the profits are sufficient to sustain/grow the business.
I’ve been a longtime fan of SimplyHired. I also use their jobamatic software to monetize my site. They are a cool company with smart leadership. Forget the investment, glad to know they are making profitable!
I think this is a great deal too. Simplyhired just blows careerbuilder and monster out of the water.
I agree – they are cool and innovative and they changed this businees as we knew it before, but somehow indeed is kicking their ass in traffic for last few months. Is Simplyhire “passe”?
It’s really good to know every details of what is happening about the job nowadays. This is really important,the knowledge about having the right perspective on jobs.
Thanks for the post!
At least they are doing well in this economy!
they make money, but do people actually gain employment through their service?
Simplicity and ease of browsing – great news to see new venture capital commitment to a very efficient site
Great management to promote the company to the venture capital during these times
Can someone educate me what the difference is between “profitability” and “positive cash flow”?
Thanks!
Quote after http://www.investopedia.com
To have a positive cash flow, the company’s long-term cash inflows need to exceed its long-term cash outflows.
An outflow of cash occurs when a company transfers funds to another party. (salaries, suppliers and creditors, purchase assets or/and investments, Important – purchase made on credit – is not recorded as a cash outflow until the money actually leaves the company’s hands – loan payback.
A cash inflow is of course the exact opposite. Majority of a company’s cash inflows are from customers, lenders (such as banks or bondholders) and investors who purchase company equity from the company.
BUT
Say a manufacturing company is experiencing low product demand and decides to sell off half its factory equipment at liquidation prices. It will receive cash from the buyer for the used equipment, but the manufacturing company is definitely losing money on the sale: it would prefer to use the equipment to manufacture products and earn an operating profit. But since it cannot, the next best option is to sell off the equipment at prices much lower than the company paid for it. In the year that it sold the equipment, the company would end up with a strong positive cash flow, but its current and future earnings potential would be fairly bleak. Because cash flow can be positive while profitability is negative, investors should analyze income statements as well as cash flow statements, not just one or the other.
More at: http://www.inve...s/01/110701.asp
See Wikipedia: http://en.wikip.../wiki/Cash_flow
http://en.wikip...wiki/Net_profit
Companies, especially small companies, can be profitable on a GAAP basis (e.g. accrual accounting) but go out of business because they do not have enough cash on hand to meet their current obligations.
FYI I work for a small private software company that is significantly consistently cash flow positive and we never had to seek VC funding.
Are they really selling that many sponsored job postings? I love the model, just wondering how many paying clients they actually have.
I have been trying to make money off my website http://www.workdig.com for years and it is pretty tough in the careers/job indutry. There just is so much compeition, but you always have a few top dogs make money in every industry. One day I pull through.
It’s good to see that websites are being developed to help job seekers get ahead of the game… I actually just wrote a post about how crucial it is to tackle the online world to be a shining star amongst all the job seekers: http://jobsbybl...n-so-important/