Smarterer gets richerer, pulls in $1.75M from True Ventures, Google Ventures
Tuesday Jun 5, 2012 by Brendan Lynch - Contributor, VentureFizz
Smarterer, the Boston startup building a platform to help job-seekers validate their job skills, has landed $1.75 million in funding, bringing its investment tally to $3 million to date.
Using Smarterer, job seekers can take tests to prove their proficiency with software, like Microsoft Excel -- its most popular test, taken 42,000 times -- or Adobe Photoshop, or more abstract knowledge like marketing concepts. The site just hit its 500th test subject.
CEO Jennifer Fremont-Smith said the South End startup has been growing in leaps and bounds, based on its metric of questions answered -- Smarterer just racked up its 10 millionth question -- a big jump from the 750,000 that had been answered in January.
That jump is the result of partnerships with applicant tracking systems companies, like Bullhorn Reach and The Resumator, that help big companies hire. Along with the funding, Smarterer has announced partnerships with BranchOut, a professional network built on Facebook, and About.me, which can now incorporate Smarterer scores into its user profiles.
“We need our scores to be everywhere where people are representing themselves, like About.me and BranchOut, and anywhere they’re evaluated professionally,” Fremont-Smith said.
Smarterer’s not in any hurry to generate revenue, Fremont-Smith said, and won’t this year. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t eyeing potential customers like recruiters, hiring officers and online education companies.
“We think there’s a big opportunity for skill assessment and alternative credentialing for the new self-guided learning websites,” Fremont-Smith said. “That’s a huge, critically important trend revolutionizing higher education, and we could help legitimize some of these learning sources.”
In the meantime, the 11-employee Smarterer, co-founded by Fremont-Smith, BzzAgent CEO Dave Balter and Michael Kowalchik, is looking for a full time user experience designer, and it’s eating its own dog food.
“We would ask any candidate to take tests on Smarterer,” Fremont-Smith said.
You can check out our video interview with Jennifer last Oct by clicking here: Hanging out with Jennifer Fremont-Smith of Smarterer.
Brendan Lynch is a journalist and contributor to VentureFizz. You can follow him on Twitter (@bmolynch) by clicking here.
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