Betaspring alum among BBJ’s 10 startups to watch

(Corrected, 3:23 p.m.)

PROVIDENCE – Recent Betaspring graduate DapperJobs has been featured on a Boston Business Journal list of 10 new startups to watch.

Steve McGarry founded DapperJobs earlier this year with Sebastian Fung and Michael Bernstein. The job-postings website pairs applicants and companies with an emphasis on cultural fit and shared values over traditional job-search criteria.

The three co-founders met at the Startup Institute in Boston, and later launched their company out of Dogpatch Labs in Cambridge before moving down to Providence to participate in the fall 2013 session of Betaspring’s 12-week accelerator program.

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Having completed their run at Betaspring on Nov. 14, DapperJobs is now looking to open an office back in Cambridge, but McGarry said they will also maintain a Providence office in the Founders League space one floor above Betaspring headquarters at 95 Chestnut St., to leverage the network of fellow entrepreneurs, industry experts and investors they developed during their stay.

DapperJobs expects to raise $250,000 in its current seed round, on top of the $20,000 in funding the startup received from Betaspring. McGarry said they plan to begin expanding their company soon by hiring on content marketing interns and possibly adding a full-time marketing position.

“The biggest point to stress is getting the word out about cultural fit in the workplace and the fact that millennials are coming into the workplace, and we’re helping them find workplace happiness,” McGarry said.

The DapperJobs job-search website launched out of beta six weeks ago, and in its first month directed more than 500 applicants to 50 job postings from companies like Eventbrite, SendGrid, Medium and Zappos.

Currently, DapperJobs charges companies $99 for a 30-day job posting, but McGarry said the company will experiment with different business models over the next year. Job applicants can access the postings free of charge, after answering an eight-question compatibility survey.

“It takes about 10 or 15 seconds to run through the eight questions,” McGarry said. “The user experience is very fast, and that’s one of the things we wanted to get across.”

Other startups featured on the Boston Business Journal list included:

  • Attendware: Easy-to-use event management and name-tag printing software.

  • Circle: Payment-acceptance tools for merchants who want to accept Bitcoin and other digital currencies, as well as easy-to-use services for consumers to use digital currency.

  • Cognii: “Siri for education;” natural language-processing technology that automates the grading of essays that are roughly 100 words in length.
  • dunwello: Enterprise software.

  • HourlyNerd: Online marketplace to connect small and mid-sized businesses with MBA students and graduates who can provide part-time and freelance work.

  • Launch Angels: Early-stage venture capital firm; plans to raise a series of $1 million funds from high net-worth investors and invest in startup deals sourced from equity crowdfunding sites.

  • Listen Edition: Website that allows teachers to use science- and social studies-related public radio stories in the classroom and create lesson plans around them.

  • Sonation: App which aims to revolutionize how classical musicians rehearse on their own; offers orchestra recordings that adapt to the musician as they play along with them.

  • Vaska: The Libra System, a hardware and software based inventory management system that replenishes consumable products by measuring their usage and automatically reordering them through online retailers.

The original version of this story incorrectly stated that DapperJobs had received $200,000 in funding from Betaspring. The company received $20,000.

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