Techies.Com Inks AOL Deal, Obtains New Venture Capital

The unofficial start of the summer season brought sunshine and good vibrations to Techies.com, a network of career resource sites for technology professionals. The company announced Tuesday that it signed a two-year agreement with AOL’s Digital City network to provide its services to the network’s 4.3 million users.

In addition, techies.com said it received a $13.6 (US$) million venture commitment from several investors, bringing the total of venture capital invested in the company to $21 million in the last six months.

“This financing will allow us to further expand our technology infrastructure, marketing programs, and bring techies.com’s technology career information to additional markets,” said Dan Frawley, the company’s CEO.

The lead investor in the second round of venture capital for the company was Omega Venture Partners. Also chipping in were Norwest Venture Partners, Dain Rauscher Wessels Investors and Winton Partners.

Expansion On The Horizon

Both the AOL agreement and the venture capital injection are pivotal in techies.com stated goal of expanding into markets across the United States. The Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company, a subsidiary of Relevant Information and Technology Systems, Inc., currently has online technology career service sites for Austin, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix, Chicago, Boston, Portland, Seattle and Minneapolis/St. Paul.

By the end of the year, it plans to expand to 23 cities, including San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Raleigh/Durham, New York, Houston, Los Angeles and San Diego.

It’s sites are not just job search centers for technology professionals, techies, says, but full-service career resource centers that provide a host of relevant information crucial to job seekers and the corporations looking for them.

It was originally founded in 1996 as JobKeys by business and technology recruiters and has since gone on to do business with 350 corporations and maintain a database of nearly 80,000 technology professionals. That number will shoot up to 350,000 by year’s end, the company says.

The demand for technology professionals is at an all-time high and is expected to exponentially increase as e-commerce and other applications increase. In fact, it is expected to double to nearly three million by 2003, the company says.

Techies.com is spending almost $9 million in advertising on radio, TV, billboards and print in an effort to establish itself as the premier site for technology professionals on the job carousel.