With over 875 million users in over 200 countries, LinkedIn is a household name in the world of professional networking. However, as the platform has grown, the emphasis has shifted to becoming another source of content consumption and creation. Now a young startup wants to disrupt it.
Peerlist aims to fill this gap by providing a space for professionals to find and connect with each other based on their expertise and qualifications.
We are creating a one-stop destination for professionals to showcase their work experience, education, and connect with like-minded individuals in the domain. Work attribute sites can be integrated. You can also add an extra layer of credibility with work experience and education.
The platform uses personal work emails to verify work experience. To verify educational eligibility, users upload their student badge or ID or verify their profile using their institution-assigned email ID. The startup plans to verify a user’s past work history and education by expanding its verification capabilities over time.
“Many people distribute their work to different platforms, and developers, designers, and technical experts often write articles on Substrack and share code on GitHub, so they can share all their work. I wanted to be able to create a profile that I could refer you to,” said Akash. Interview with his Bhadange, co-founder and CEO of Peerlist.
Profiles with verified details are made available to the public in the form of resumes and portfolios of work. Users must sign up if they want to message them or get their contact information.
A former product and UX designer, Bhadange founded Peerlist in August 2021 with his wife Yogini Bende. With his experience as a front-end developer, Bende oversees engineering-related tasks for startups.
Bhadange claims Peerlist has grown its user base to more than 20,000, of which 60% are verified and without any marketing costs. The startup plans to spend some of its newly raised funds on marketing. He also aims to expand the engineering team from his existing five-person product development team, along with a dedicated marketing and sales team.
Peerlist hopes to have more than 1 million users by the end of the year, Bhadange said.
Peerlist’s current user base consists of individuals with beginner to intermediate level experience. The startup said it was working to make its platform attractive to senior-level professionals.
To keep more users happy, Peerlist plans to add functionality to allow individuals to set custom domains on their profiles.
Peerlist currently does not have a revenue-generating model. However, the platform hopes to monetize its verified user base by charging companies looking to hire professionals based on their work experience and education.
As it scales, Peerlist attracts investment from many industry players. The Delaware-registered startup with offices in Pune said he raised $1.1 million in a seed funding round led by HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah.
Other participating investors include Manoj Gupta, founder and CEO of Plotch.ai; Kumar Puspesh, co-founder and CTO of Moonfrog; Suumit Shah, co-founder and CEO of Dukaan; Includes angel investor Mohan Rao.
The startup plans to add a number of features with the funding. One is to allow companies to showcase their branding and tech stacks on the platform.Bhadange said professionals using these profiles can see details of the company’s founders and other team members. or see their contributions, such as writing blogs or contributing code displayed on GitHub. This will allow professionals to better understand a company’s culture and technical capabilities, allowing them to make more informed decisions about employment opportunities, he said.
Additionally, Peerlist plans to allow angel investors to obtain a verified startup investment history on the platform, allowing professionals to easily connect with these investors and secure funding. increase. Bhadange said this particular development is currently in the conceptual stage but could add tremendous value.
HubSpot’s Shah said in a statement: “Peerlist addresses this challenge with a product built for the modern age that feels like a breath of fresh air. Because it’s perfect for chaos like this.”
Peerlist raised a small $25,000 angel fund in October 2021 from Vishwesh Jirgale, head of engineering at ModernLoop, and Akshay Deo, head of product engineering at Postman.
