Welcome, @Josh_Goldstein! Maybe it's just me but I'm seeing more creative products for recruiting and talent sourcing lately. Here are a few that have been posted on Product Hunt (cc'ing the founders/team members): - Sourcing.io cc @maccaw - Developer Agents cc @andreasklinger - Hire My Friend cc @jongold - Hired cc @lexilewtan - YesGraph cc @ikirigin And I'm exploring ways to connect talent in the Product Hunt community with the thousands of companies that use the site each day (/jobs is a first step). I like your email-first approach, Josh. You mention it's a side project but what are you long term plans with Underdog.io?

This is interesting, but not sure how scalable. I've been thinking a lot about the same problem as well. I think there's something doable on the social side, including experimenting with social filters etc. Top Prospect tried that, as well as Branchout obviously. I don't know, but it seems to me like the best way to go at it is boutique, like undergod is doing. Will be really hard to provide the same value at scale.

Nice post. My comments are the same :) Great idea, but the really hard and challenging problem is to do it at scale.

Hey Josh, how are you getting New York City's top startups on board? How does a candidate know who they are applying to?

Just an update here-- I filled in the info for Hire My Friend and for Hired. Hired was *exhausting* to fill out and submit for approval. I basically had to re-edit my LinkedIn page. (~20 min.) Hire My Friend was okay, but I don't especially love begging friends to endorse me. It's awkward. I understand their business model, but it's still a bit off-putting. (~10 min. sign up, ~10 min. to ask friends for endorsements and whatever) So far UnderDog.io was the best! Props to you guys! Super simple, no nonsense. (~30 seconds!!!)

I signed up although I wish there was a bit more detail involved...I'd love to find something in America, but I don't currently live in America. I have American citizenship, so there's no work-visa issues with me. I wish I could have listed remote AND NYC, for example. Also, I work in UX, but many people who aren't in the know think that I'm a graphic designer and ask me for a portfolio. I have a portfolio, but showing a portfolio of wireframes is silly in my opinion. Anyway, I signed up, but I feel like without some place to make a personal statement or something, startups will get the wrong idea about me because I'm not living or working in America.

How many startups are on board now?

Well, let's see if it helps me :)

Thanks, @rrhoover! The three of us all have experience hiring at startups in NYC, but the truth is we were planning to release a few separate products...not just underdog.io. The traction this week has been surprising, but awesome, and we’re digging in on a longer-term product roadmap: new cities, algorithmically reviewing and ranking candidates, and workflow-related products that will make hiring easier at startups and bigger companies alike.

@rrhoover @uxandrew @stefanobernardi @alphacolin We just published our first blog post: http://blog.underdog.io/post/834... We'd love to hear your thoughts. cc: @maccaw @andreasklinger @jongold @lexilewtan @ikirigin :D

I agree @stefanobernardi. We're working on the backend to help us scale efficiently.

New Medium post covering the first sixteen months of building Underdog.io: https://medium.com/@cmuir/lesson...

Josh here. I'm part of a 3-person team that built underdog.io. It's a side project at the moment. We launched on Tuesday (4/15) - with a little HN and Reddit love, we've had some unexpectedly awesome traffic (and candidates/startups). We also had a random TechCrunch article posted about us yesterday. :D The premise is simple: We work at startups in NYC. We were tired of dealing with recruiters. Receiving resumes of interesting candidates sent directly to our inbox sounded like something we would want. So, we built it. We'd love feedback! And, obviously if you want a new startup job in NYC (or work at an awesome company and want candidates), sign up!

@stefanobernardi Scalability was not our primary concern when we launched this. Now that we're seeing traction, we've come up with a few ways to improve it. Btw, undergod = the name we should have chosen. :D

Just shared a new blog post (can't get the link to work correctly) about our first four months building underdog.io: https://medium.com/@joshuagoldst... Thanks to @rrhoover and the Product Hunt community for getting us off the ground!

I'd rather not say, but it's been a good 72hrs for both sides of the marketplace. :-)

@alphacolin We've been in the community, so we know a lot of startups/investors/etc. But, we've also had a number of very awesome startups apply on our site. Turns out the best guys are always looking to improve their hiring capabilities. We plan to show some of the partner startups on our site in the coming weeks.

That's a really good point @UXAndrew. We'll look into improving the form for people like you. We already made a few iterations from the first version based on feedback like that.

Pretty simple signup process, and quickly got a lot of inquiries from really interesting NYC startups. Thanks guys!