Standout Jobs Re-Launches Product, Web Site and Business Model

Standout Jobs logo

I’m very pleased to announce that Standout Jobs has launched a new version of its product, a new website and our business model. There’s a whole ton of new stuff in fact, and this is just the beginning of many changes to come.

After launching Standout Jobs in late January 2008 we’ve spent the last 9 months or so working with 220+ beta customers, collecting feedback, testing, getting testimonials and case studies and learning. Shortly after launching we began work on the next version. In this day and age a software product’s lifecycle is pretty short, especially after first launching; we knew the first version wouldn’t last. So once it stabilized and we started bringing on customers and getting feedback, we put our heads down and got to work.

Along with the new product comes a bunch of other changes as well:

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Are Strategic Investors More Important in a Downturn Economy?

First, let’s define a strategic investment. A strategic investment is one that’s made most often by a company in your industry, and in some cases a competitor. I don’t think most startups look at strategic investment opportunities – they pursue angel and VC investors first – but in a downturn economy, do strategic investors become more relevant?

A lot of venture capital money is being held onto by VCs, or being invested into their existing portfolios. Angel investors will be a bit more wary as well; they’re seeing their stock market portfolios taking a beating and will have less investment money to deploy. But strategic investors, assuming their businesses aren’t totally collapsing, may have small war chests and see opportunities to jump in and support startups.

Jason Mendelson and Mark MacLeod both provide excellent insight into the pros and cons of strategic investors. Generally Jason and Mark aren’t overly positive, and it’s easy to see why:

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New Hosting for Instigator Blog

I’ve moved hosting companies because my old one was falling apart. This is a quick test post to make sure the DNS is propagating properly.

You should not have to update your RSS feeds, but when you see this message in your RSS feed, please click through and take a look to make sure everything is working properly. I appreciate it.

There may be a few hiccups along the way as I get all the plugins re-installed and configured, so bear with me. And I do plan on blogging more in the near future, Standout Jobs has kept me swamped.

Incidentally, I’ve moved to Media Temple and purchased their Grid Service (gs) hosting. I’ve heard a lot of good things about Media Temple, although immediately after purchasing I heard some bad things (from someone I trust). So we’ll see how it goes.


About Ben Yoskovitz
I recently joined GoInstant as VP Product. GoInstant changes how we use the web, making it shareable like never before.

I'm also a Founding Partner at Year One Labs, an early stage accelerator in Montreal. Previously I founded Standout Jobs (and sold it). I'm a hands-on startup guy, helping companies grow successfully from the idea forward. You can reach me at byosko at gmail dot com.

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The opinions and commentary on this site are mine and mine alone. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of my employer, GoInstant.