Onevest Takes Over West Coast Matchmaking Service For Building Startup Teams

Entrepreneurs are all too familiar with the difficulties of finding the right cofounder to help launch a startup. Two services that assisted them in meeting that challenge are now under one roof.

Crowdfunding site Onevest, the New York-based parent company of CoFoundersLab, has agreed to buy its West Coast rival, FounderDating, for an undisclosed price.

“Finding a co-founder is really like marrying somebody,” Onevest’s executive chairman Alejandro Cremades told the New York Business Journal. “[FounderDating] were major competitors. We’ve been going head to head and now that we can combine both under the same roof and really join forces, it’s going to have a great impact on the entrepreneurial ecosystem.”

San Francisco-based FounderDating specializes in providing clients with a curated community and network for finding advisors and cofounders. By meshing with the CoFoundersLab brand, both companies will enhance their services which include discussion boards and a variety of certificate courses centered on how to create and scale businesses.

FounderDating was originally launched in 2012 by Jessica Alter. The platform uses algorithms to help entrepreneurs in those early, nascent stages of building a startup team.

With this acquisition, Onevest looks to become the largest one-stop shop for team formation as well as funding.

“We’re excited for this next chapter and building a full-service network to help the exploding entrepreneurial ecosystem,” Alter said in a prepared statement.

Onevest formed in 2014 via the merger of CoFoundersLab and New York equity crowdfunding site RockThePost.

Source: New York Business Times, Anthony Noto
Photo: Onevest formed in 2014 via the merger of CoFoundersLab and New York equity crowdfunding site RockThePost.