California Startup: Recmnd.Me The People Recommendation Site, Interview

Recommendation startups are hot right now. It seems that every time you turn around there is another startup or app recommending something or other. Now Jesse Gant, who has a lengthy resume in some big startups like Ancestry.com, has invented the people recommendation startup.

Now we all know that LinkedIn offers referrals and references, but those are all from your top tier contacts. I couldn’t tell you how many  times a friend of mine, or even a nodding acquaintance has asked me to write a referral or reference for them on LinkedIn. A few I’ve done, others I’ve passed on.  Most hiring people and recruiters know the value of a LinkedIn referral, which is about as valuable as your LinkedIn password was yesterday.

Recmnd.Me allows you to post a profile for yourself and once you’ve signed up people can decide on their own with just a click if they’re going to recommend you or not. Gant told TechCrunch that he had seven references on LinkedIn throughout his entire career, but on recmnd.me he already had 21.

The other piece for Recmnd.Me is that if you’re looking to fill a position or need, and you search, say, “software developer” Recmnd.Me is going to rank the software developers in the network for you to see and  choose.

Through one of our great friends in Utah we were introduced to Gant who took the time to do an interview with us. The interview is after the break.

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Boulder Startup: Mocavo Announces $4 Million Dollar Round

Boulder startup Mocavo has announced a $4 million dollar funding round to expand their business of helping people find their ancestors. Yes the site competes with Utah genealogy giant Ancestry.com but in playing with the site for just a few minutes, the search function was much easier and the results were much more precise.

Mocavo offers a great search engine for free, that will even let you access records, newspapers and other citations for free. They let you drill down if you become a premium member which is free for the first week.

Mocavo was part of the TechStars program last year, graduating out of their 2011 class.

Mocavo’s COO Ryan Hunter thanked Boulder and TechStars in the Wednesday announcement. He reconfirmed their commitment as part of Boulder’s startup scene and even announced some job openings they plan on filling with the funds from this round.

“As a Techstars 2011 team, we want to say how thankful we are for Boulder’s startup community, and that we will continue to support our town. With Foundry’s investment, we now have the resources to rapidly grow our technology with a talented team of product engineers and developers. We have immediate openings for front-end developers, back-end developers and interface designers”.  Hunter said on Mocavo’s Blog.

The $4 million dollar round came from the Foundry Group. Seth Levine, Foundry’s Managing director will get a seat on Mocavo’s board.

Our friend Sean Ludwig at VentureBeat reports that Mocavo’s previously raised $1 million dollars in an Angel round “from a long roster of angel investors (most of them named Dave) including Dave McClure, David Cohen, David Bonderman, David Calone, Dave Carlson, and others.”

source: VentureBeat