Venture Capital
Job Site Hired Raises $40 Million and Forecasts Profit by 2017
The startup goes up against larger rivals such as LinkedIn and Monster Worldwide.
Startups Focus on Profit to Raise Funds
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When Mehul Patel, Hired Inc.'s chief executive officer, began talking to venture capitalists last year for the company's latest fundraising round, they were no longer interested in hearing about market potential or user growth. Investors wanted to know when the job recruitment website would become profitable.
Patel tailored his pitch to highlight the ways he'd made his startup run more efficiently while showing that Hired would roughly triple annual revenue in 2016. He forecast a profit by early 2017. "The conversation had really changed from a year ago," he said.