Genotrope Gets Some Ink

We were pleased to see Genotrope receive some positive press in a recent Mass High Tech article.

Hiring strategies shift toward social media

We have been watching the number of positions available at start-ups creep up by about 100 every week for the past month and a half, indicating the end of job depletion and the beginning of a return normalcy.

Our timing might be right on the money for a change. We just introduced the new job posting functionality for companies and user ability to find jobs at companies within their professional graph, as hiring increases but the need to keep costs low is still high priority.

Genotrope a Featured Company for Virtual Min August 12th

Genotrope is a featured company at the upcoming Mass Innovation Night because our focus is Boston area emerging technology companies and entrepreneurs. One of our main features is a database of Communications, Computer, Software and Web companies presented in a Genealogical fashion. The other is a Directory of Boston Venture Capital companies. Both have proven very popular with our users.

Here is a bit about our concept.

The Genotropic approach to recruiting. geno- : genus : kind kin : a group united by a common interest or common characteristics or affinity tro-pism : a natural inclination Simply put, companies are comprised of individuals that share some common traits, goals and backgrounds. They have been attracted to their companies because of these affinities and will be inclined to move to the next company that offers them a similarly comfortable environment.

We hope to improve on the current offerings in the online job market, with an Affinity Job Search tool that focuses on matching you with companies rather than jobs. Matching culture and fit rather than buzzwords.

Community contributions will at some point overtake our editors valiant efforts to populate the company database. When that happens, we will have a micro-chunkable database of much value to the users. Stay Tuned.

Register Company New Feature

Now it is possible to register your company in Genotrope. Once registered, your company administrator is now the only one able to add or update information to your company page.

Registration if free and allows companies to more actively target potential candidates. We currently offer sponsorship of our home page, VC Directory and blog.

In the future we will introduce a subscription model which will include job postings.

The Talent Target page shows the list of companies connected to yours through our graphing algorithm. Users with these companies in their work history will be updated with your company’s news and jobs and receive a feed of this information.

The Hiring Target section allows your company to reach users at competitors or companies deemed to have quality potential candidates that are not in your Company’s Graph. Once added users with these companies in their work history will be updated and able to view your companies news and jobs and receive a feed of this information.

Make sure to frequently add Press or news announcements as well as jobs from your website. This will maintain a steady stream of information going out to your targeted talent pool.  Add your career or job page to these links. Use the title Careers, and the link will always appear at the top of the list. Otherwise entries are in  chronological order.

Search by Location New Feature addition

We are pleased to announce that now you can filter Companies by proximity to your location on your Find Jobs page.  The default zipcode is taken from your profile.

We have also added the ability to filter by Industry and Investment status on both the MyGraph and Browsing lists. That is the good news.

The bad news is that not all companies have address information in their records. We are working hard to populate that information. Please lend a helping hand and add company address info for your company as well as when you are browsing around the database.

Web Innovators 20 was a great event

We had a good time and met some great people at the premier networking event in Boston for web startups.

Web Innovators Group has grown from a small gathering in 2005, of a few entrepreneurs in a bar to the large event it is today. Around 700 people attended last tuesdays WebInno 20 event.

The line up of companies was stellar, and we were fortunate to be a part of the group.

Thanks to David Beisel of Venrock for including Genotrope as a sidedish presenter.

New Features for October 2008

We heard from our users that hadn’t yet worked at a funded or connected startup that the Find Jobs page was less than fulfilling. Thanks to you guys for the feedback.

Check out the Find Jobs page and you will see that in addition to the companies in your MyGraph listing showing companies connected to your work history, we have added a browsing feature. When browsing, users can filter companies by Industry as well as Funding Status. This feature lets you go beyond your professional network to slice and dice the market and view only the sectors and stages you want to see. As you view the list, the MyGraph icon lets you know when that company is in your graph.

Another cool feature we have added is the detail window to the right where a short company summary will appear, as you mouse over a company of interest.

Now it is much easier to compile a list of interesting companies and apply to each directly.

Let us know what you think.

MassTLC 2008 Innovation unConference!

Genotrope is proud to be selected as one of the sponsored startups attending the MassTLC Innovation unConference on October the 2nd held at Sun Microsystems in Burlington.

This is a great opportunity for early stage founders to get feedback and advice from some of the prominent VC’s and expert entrepreneurs in the Boston area.

We are really excited about the event since as a sponsored startup, we get the opportunity to have a couple of small table meetings with a select group of experts chosen for our specific areas of interest.

If you have a chance to come out to the unConference, I highly recommend it and please stop over and say hello.

Genotrope is sponsoring TechCocktail Boston2

For all of you who attended the previous TechCocktail Boston at Tequila Rain, you know it is a fun event attended by founders, VCs, developers and representatives from the entire start up eco-system.

Well, the next one is coming up next week, Thursday July 24th and Genotrope is a sponsor. It will be another great time and a chance to meet a lot of people. The event is filling up fast so RSVP and come out and mingle.

I would love to get the chance to meet more of our users face to face. We’ll buy you a drink.  

New Features: New Companies and News from Professional Graph

John and Ganesh have worked hard to deliver the latest round of new features for Genotrope. Now registered users can see the new companies and recent news from their professional graph. Just click on the RSS Icon at the top right of the Find Company/Job page. If you wish, you can then set up a feed so that you will know about recent news or new companies that have been connected into your graph.

Secondly, we have gotten rid of the dreaded java applet that produced the company graph. Ganesh has built a fresh and much more functional flash version that delivers a lot more information and does not randomly bork.

Hope you like these improvements. As always, let us know about any problems, questions or suggestions you have to make Genotrope more useful for you.

thanks from the team

A few announcements

We just added a new feature in the Startup Buzz section. Now there is a new page

Boston VC Directory + Investments

that takes you to the Venture Firms record and graph of investments. Check it out, cool to see the IPOs and defunct companies to get a feel for their tract record.

The RSS Icon on the Find Company page takes you to a list of all the new companies that have been added into your graph since your last visit as well as news and career listings of the companies you are connected to.

We shut the site down for a few minutes friday at 5:30 pm but are back up now. Sorry if we bumped you off for a few minutes. let us know what you think about the new stuff or any feedback at all, we appreciate it.