NVCA Today

Offers Robust Recruiting Tool For Venture-Backed Companies At NO Cost

Despite widespread turmoil in the US economy, the venture capital industry continues to create new jobs. Monitoring and measuring this job creation at venture backed companies has long been a goal for the industry. The NVCA is pleased to announce a partnership with StartUpHire which will deliver this aggregate insight while providing NVCA members and their portfolio companies with robust recruiting tools at no cost. StartUpHire is the new employment site dedicated to venture capital backed companies.

Steve Fredrick of Grotech Ventures has been instrumental in launching the StartUpHire initiative along with input and assistance from dozens of fellow investors, company executives, recent hires, service providers, and the NVCA. The StartUpHire mission is to connect talented individuals to exciting career opportunities at venture backed companies and to accelerate the team building process for these companies and their investors. The platform is sponsor-supported and will eventually leverage a freemium model to offset costs and support incremental functionality. The exciting news is that venture capital job creation is alive and well, with more than 10,000 current job openings across all industry sectors and in all areas of the country.

StartUpHire is designed to do four things well:

To benefit venture firms - by providing a simple, zero-admin, and no-cost means to list portfolio company jobs on investor websites. This enriches your website and provides a natural funnel to opportunities within your portfolio while serving as a destination for the stream of inbound employment inquiries. It also delivers a comprehensive view of portfolio hiring needs beyond the executive level, enabling referrals and providing valuable insight on each business.

To benefit portfolio companies - by extending the recruiting reach of your companies and leveraging your brand for their benefit. There is no cost to post jobs which then automatically appear on the websites of all company investors and on a series of affiliate sites specific to each industry or region. StartUpHire is fast becoming the defacto resource for employment opportunities in venture-backed companies and self selects to a community of passive and active job seekers with startup experience.

To benefit the NVCA and the industry - by funneling high level statistics to the NVCA to use in its education efforts on Capitol Hill regarding job creation and the impact of the venture capital industry on the US economy. In these times of economic turbulence and increased scrutiny, it is critical that we provide visibility to both lawmakers and the public on the importance of venture capital and there is no better metric than job creation in today's climate.

To make it easy to find these jobs - which are some of the most rewarding careers on the planet, but they historically have been difficult to identify. Those who relish a startup career can leverage StartUpHire to quickly identify opportunities by industry, geography, functional area, investor, and much more.

The initial Q1 compilation of jobs data will serve as a benchmark for future quarterly reports. This effort very much exhibits a network effect where the broader the participation, the more meaningful the benefits for all involved. We encourage your participation and ask that you inform your portfolio companies of this terrific new resource. To get started:

1. Sign up to review your portfolio. (www.startuphire.com/signup/vc)

2. Inform your CEOs and CFOs of this free industry resource.

3. To include portfolio careers on your firm website, visit http://www.startuphire.com/nvca

What the Q1 Numbers Show

Despite tough economic times, it's clear that venture-backed companies continue to be a vibrant hiring engine which is critical to our nation's economic health. These initial statistics provide a snapshot of hiring activity across more than 2000 companies. The geographic distribution is weighted towards regions receiving the largest share of venture capital dollars; however, jobs exist in 42 states. It's important to note that this initiative is just getting started and the data is not yet comprehensive. We believe there are significantly more job opportunities which are not yet represented in the system. With broad platform participation by venture firms and portfolio companies, the specificity of the hard numbers will become more comprehensive over time. In future quarters, we will report on job creation trends by industry and region - e.g. which industries and regions are experiencing the greatest percentage and aggregate increases in job creation, which are experiencing steeper than average declines amidst economic headwinds, etc.

The underlying job descriptions indicate that the skill levels for these new jobs span the entire spectrum from janitorial to machinist to nursing to sales to engineering to cancer research, etc. It is really quite impressive. While not published, data from the prior two quarters (while the StartUpHire platform was under development) indicate that the steepest reduction in hiring on a percentage basis since September occurred in the electronics/instrumentation, semiconductor, and telecommunications sectors. The steepest hiring declines on an aggregate jobs basis occurred in the software, IT services, networking & equipment, and semiconductor sectors.

The response to the StartUpHire initiative has been tremendously positive. We need your help to ensure the broadest possible participation which ultimately benefits each and every one of us. Encourage your companies to post their open positions on StartUpHire and consider adding a portfolio careers page to your firm website. There is no cost. This benefits you and your companies, and it allows the NVCA to far better quantify industry job creation statistics and favorably impact the industry's visibility, public policy and advocacy efforts.

www.startuphire.com

Special thanks to a group of strategic partners who have helped to make this initiative possible - Cooley Godward Kronish, Comerica Bank, New Venture Communications, DLA Piper, Calysto, GlobalLogic, Sonnenschein, SIIA, and Morrison & Foerster. Sponsorship inquiries can be directed to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Venture Capital Job Creation Data - courtesy of StartUpHire

Open positions as of March 31, 2009 - By Industry

Venture Capital Job Creation Data - courtesy of StartUpHire

Open positions as of March 31, 2009 - By Region

Venture Capital Job Creation Data - courtesy of StartUpHire

Open positions as of March 31, 2009 - By State