VentureFizz is over 15 years old! So crazy.
A huge thank you to our community and customers for all of your support through the years! I’m always amazed when I meet people and they say… “I get your email” – it’s really awesome.
It’s time for a new chapter for VentureFizz and I’m excited to announce that we are “getting back to our roots!”
When I started VentureFizz, it was a couple of years after the iPhone was launched, so it was in the early innings of the platform shift to mobile.
Here we are in 2025 and it’s the early innings of the next platform shift to AI. In many ways, it feels similar to when I started VentureFizz in 2009. The economy was in a lot of pain due to the financial crisis. The tech industry was in a lull and it was challenging to raise capital. There was also a missing sense of community across the tech scene.
At that time, companies like HubSpot, Acquia, and CSN Stores (later rebranded to Wayfair in 2011) were still in their early stages. New companies like DraftKings and Klaviyo didn’t even exist yet.
Last year, the process of getting back to our roots started as we stepped back up to play our role as a community champion of the tech scene. We launched a Product Management community to help people learn and connect with other top PMs through events and our online platform. We also got back to hosting events with two half day conferences focused on AI and startup fundraising.
Looking ahead for the tech industry, I’m really excited about what’s ahead with this platform shift as there are so many first time and repeat founders who are building AI companies and are uniquely qualified to build what will hopefully be the next anchor tech companies.
Thus, I’m excited to get back to our roots and the new design is reflective of this initiative.
Our Fresh New Design – VentureFizz 2025
The last major update to VentureFizz was back in 2021, so we were due for a fresh and cleaner look. In many ways, the new design has a lot of similarities to some of the earlier versions of VentureFizz.
New Design Highlights:
- Homepage – the updated homepage allows you to search for jobs immediately and browse our content & the companies hiring on VentureFizz.
- Jobs – we have 1,500+ jobs on VentureFizz. The new design makes filtering our jobs super easy, so you can find the jobs that match your interests in a snap.
- Insights – we publish a lot of content, so we have made it easier to explore our insights by structuring the content under three options:
- Company Research – videos and other relevant content to help you explore companies, their people, & culture.
- Career Advice & Profiles – useful information to help with your professional journey, plus lots of individual profiles across lots of different job functions.
- Startup Advice – in the past, VentureFizz provided a lot of startup advice, so this is part of our “getting back to our roots” mantra. I’m excited to watch this section grow.
- Companies – the interface to explore the companies hiring on VentureFizz is simpler and we added a nice feature where you can see how many jobs are open at the company.
- Podcast – we have over 350 episodes of The VentureFizz Podcast with founders & investors. Our podcast has a much more prominent placement on VentureFizz.
- The best thing… the main podcast page is FILTERABLE! It’s a tech MBA!
- You can filter the podcast based on guest, stage, or topic!
- Community – our Product Management community grows every week. This is a big part of our effort to connect people so they can expand their network and knowledge.
- Events – YES – our events calendar is BACK! This was a staple of our original site and once again, it is another example of VentureFizz “getting back to our roots!” Anyone can submit events to the calendar.
VentureFizz History
Since we are now 15 years old, I thought it would be fun to reflect on our history.
I’m not sure if many people know or remember this, but VentureFizz actually started out as a VC funding and M&A tracker on Blogger. The site is actually still live here. People used to subscribe to the feed to receive daily updates.
For a long time, I ran a search firm called Dissero and while talking to job seekers, I would provide information about the market… like who’s hiring, who raised capital, and what events people should go to.
I thought… this information that I’m sharing is not proprietary, I was just the aggregator… so wouldn’t it be useful if this information was available for everyone on a website. On July 3, 2007, a beautiful summer night, my wife and I brainstormed different names. The name “VentureFizz” just stuck. It reflected the focus on tech and startups, and the “Fizz” part added some fun.
At the time, I was busy with recruiting, so I didn’t put the idea into motion yet… but then the financial crisis and the famous RIP Good Times slide deck from Sequoia Capital hit in 2008… thus, my search work dried up in 2009 and I had lots of time on my hands. So, I took advantage and pulled together my idea.
I launched VentureFizz in July of 2009. Scott Kirsner, who recently wrapped up at The Boston Globe, was kind enough to write a blog post for his Innovation Economy blog which was very helpful.
Here is what the site looked like in 2009 – Version 1:
Companies could pay to post a job for $50. On launch day, the first person to post a job on VentureFizz was Joe Goss who was at Novell at the time. It was AMAZING!!! Thank you Joe!
A year later, we started to syndicate blog posts from entrepreneurs & investors who were blogging at the time and thus, we updated the design to reflect this change towards the end of 2010. I had 4 original sponsors of the site – General Catalyst, uTest (now Applause), Foley Hoag, and Akamai (Dissero was my recruiting firm). Classic – check out Rob Go’s post about LinkedIn’s S-1 filing to go public in the image.
In 2012 & 2013, we updated the design to put more of an emphasis on our content and we launched our company pages which were called BIZZpages originally. Side note – one of the hard lessons that I’ve learned through the years of running VentureFizz is resisting the temptation to brand everything. Keep it simple and obvious!
Before today’s launch, our previous design went live in 2021. It was a swing to go national based on the pandemic and the rise of the remote anywhere workforce.
Fast forward to today… yes, there are companies that are fully remote, but from what I’ve seen… the majority of companies are hybrid local and our community is really focused on local information. Thus, this is why we are getting back to our roots of local jobs, companies, content, events and more!
We hope you like the new design! We are not done! Get ready for continuous improvements to VentureFizz, as we have lots of plans ahead and ideas to tackle! Time to get after it.
Thanks again for all of your support!
Cheers!
Keith Cline, Founder – VentureFizz
