Identified builds a gamified job-search platform centered on an "Identified Score" that rates how in-demand a user's background is to employers in real time. Users connect via Facebook to import profiles and networks; the site encourages competition among peers to boost scores and add detailed profile data (the average user provides about 10 additional data points). Launched in September 2011 and based in San Francisco, the startup reports 10 million registered users and about 3 million active users over the past eight months, with roughly 90% of users under 30 (average age 23). Identified plans to evolve into a recommendation engine and platform, building enterprise tools, a recruitment search product (scheduled for July), a mobile strategy, and third-party developer integrations. The company has hired former Zynga employees and is recruiting game designers and data scientists to improve engagement and analytics; it now has over 50 employees. Financially, Identified recently raised a $21M Series B (bringing total venture funding to $22.5M) to fund hiring and product development. Identified is a professional search engine built on Facebook data that generates an "Identified Score" to rank professionals by relevance to search queries. The product creates listings and scores for people, companies and universities and surfaced more than 50 million people and scores for over 60,000 companies and 8,000 universities. The company launched a beta in September and has moved out of public beta to offer free, open access to the 50 million scores, with privacy settings for users. Early engagement metrics include roughly 150K monthly active users, tens of thousands of daily accesses, and more than 1.8 million scores viewed to date; thousands of companies have requested access to scores. The platform skews young (average age 24; over 90% under 30), and the product uses gamification (profile additions and interactions) to drive higher rankings and user engagement. Identified positions itself as a transparency tool for the labor market and a way for companies to pre-screen candidates and for professionals to see demand for their skills.

Total raised

$27M

Funding rounds

2

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Jun 2012