When one of the Ryan Schaul’s friends was searching for a new job last year, he wanted to go beyond the basic data to truly understand a company, its structure and who the decision-makers were. He was looking for more than just the PR spin written by the company, but couldn’t find that type of information online.
Inspired by his friend’s quest and his personal experiences with companies – which ranged from very good to one that “lied a lot” – the duo was inspired to visually represent an organization - showing users immediately who was a decision-maker in a company. From that, Transparentrees was born. Co-founder Ryan Schaul described the company as a “Yelp! but for LinkedIn-type information, plus a beautiful visual representation of each employee's reporting relationships.” In a sense, it’s the next step in transparency.
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The company took its site out of stealth mode last month and is looking to transform the job market search by infusing it with some real, third-party sourced information. For the co-founders, “the problem at the end of the day is [other sites are] still first-party information,” said Schaul. This site fixes that.
The site isn’t meant to be a tell-all on that old boss you didn’t like, or to get revenge on a company that fired you, although users can post things anonymously. Rather, its meant to provide people with a place to “figure out what companies do and people do,” said Schaul. For those who make unsubstantiated claims on the site, they are penalized through a point system. Egregious offenders will be blocked from the site.
Before Transparentrees, there was “no site where you can figure out where people report to each other,” said Schaul.
The website was in beta for a long time before the company felt ready to go public. Since its launch last month, the company has seen interest from users (Bred Feld called it an "interesting new approach to corporate data discovery."), although Schaul didn’t disclose numbers.
In the short-term, the company is focused on getting the word out and generating a larger user base. But talking with Schaul, its clear he has big plans. He envisions a world where users will flock to his site and can choose jobs, employees, vendors and business partners with better and more transparent information from people who know. For the holdouts, he thinks it will become as ubiquitous as other social networking sites and require that companies monitor it. Schaul knows the business model might make some nervous.
“Anyone else can come on and talk about what its like to work with you," said Schaul. "That’s kind of scary to some people."
Beyond gaining more traction, Transparentrees is working on new products, including one that will make it easier for users to contribute to the site. Right now, Schaul thinks it’s already a powerful tool for recruiters and employees, since users can find specific information on the structure of a company or decision-makers.
While the company is still in the early days, Schaul sees two primary avenues for future revenue. One is advertising, which he doesn’t like the look of and the other is a subscription-based model.
The company isn’t actively looking for funding right now, although Schaul said he’s had some big venture capitalist ask him questions. So far, the founders have raised over $1 million in seed funding from friends and family. Schaul put in $200,000 of his own money. Local developer Hashrocket helped create the site and took an equity stake in the company.
The company has four employees and plans to hire additional staff this year.
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