BranchOut has come out of nowhere in the past 2 years and is trying to beat LinkedIn at its own game. LinkedIn the famous corporate social networking site works exactly as it says it does, it is an absolutely perfect replacement for Facebook in the corporate world. BranchOut on the other hand is an app of Facebook but it seems that their similar modus operandi of enabling people to use their social network to find a job has been working. Today, the company announced a $25 million Series C round from Mayfield and other investors which bring its total funding to $49 million after being in operation for just over two years.
Unlike LinkedIn, BranchOut does not depend on its own social network but it piggy backs on the largest one available, Facebook which consequentially allows 800 million users to tap into their own network of friends to look for a job along with other corporate endeavors. The number of average users monthly spiked from 400,000 to a whopping 13 million after the startup launched a mobile version of the application. CEO of BranchOut, Rick Marini thinks that the app will be able to give LinkedIn a run for their money despite the latter already having 150 million registered users because he believes that with the massive amount of people on Facebook, it would include more kinds of employees looking for more types of jobs.
He iterates that he thinks LinkedIn is a great company which does a great job on 10% of the workforce but says that the rest of them are on Facebook. Marini adds that he believes his company’s formula is a winning one because connections on Facebook are allegedly more authentic than those formed on LinkedIn. He says, “LinkedIn is somebody I meet at a conference for 5 minutes. Facebook are (sic) my real friends and family, my supply network. These are people who will go out of their way to help me get a job.” Now with the latest round of investors coming in for the cause, he will have the money to prove his theory on the matter and we will just have to wait and see.