Lessons This Startup Learned: They Raised $2M [After 150 VCs Turned Them Down]

by Hollie Slade | shared from Forbes

The Muse is a job search website that wants to inject some oomph into a lengthy and often dispiriting process. Using video interviews and photos to give users an insiders’ view of the companies they’re applying to, The Muse offers an alternative to the generic black and white listings on LinkedIn LNKD -0.4% or Monster.

Led by Kathryn Minshew, an ex-McKinsey consultant turned entrepreneur, The Muse recently raised $1 million in venture and angel funding, taking their total capital raised to $2.2 million since inception. It was tough, especially in the beginning to get financing, says Minshew who found herself using her living room as an office space, eating ramen and draining her bank account to buy a web domain.

Here, she takes us through rollercoaster VC merry-go-round and tells us why she wanted angel entrepreneurs like Tyra Banks and Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit invested alongside traditional VCs.

“Imagine if a dating site was text-only,” says Minshew. She wants to breathe life into a talent acquisition market that’s growing at 59x the rate of online dating.

“Job search today is death by 1,000 rectangles,” says Minshew. “It’s unbelievable how little the industry has evolved.  Our goal at The Muse is to upgrade the text job ad and provide contextual information for a generation that’s becoming more and more comfortable with non-linear career paths, and more interested in company culture and values.”

A growing group of diverse companies list on The Muse, including Gucci , Mashable, Spotify and Walgreens.

[embedplusvideo height=”400″ width=”600″ editlink=”http://bit.ly/1efPV5z” standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/9x5Xnc6hsAk?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=9x5Xnc6hsAk&width=600&height=400&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep7853″ /]