Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Levo League Wants to Help You Find a Job — If You’re a Gen-Y Woman (Video)

There are plenty of places on the Web to network, job-hunt and look for career advice. Levo League’s pitch is that there aren’t many of those places that attract young professional women, and it wants to fix that.

The irony here is that Levo League’s co-founders are exactly the kind of women who don’t seem to need assistance from Web sites. Caroline Ghosn and Amanda Pouchot are well-educated, hyperambitious and plugged-in: They boast credentials like degrees from Berkeley and Stanford, jobs at McKinsey, and backing from the likes of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Ning’s Gina Bianchini, and Gilt Groupe’s Susan Lyne. (It doesn’t hurt that Ghosn’s father, Carlos, is the CEO of Nissan and Renault.)

Then again, it would be kind of hard to get people to visit your new career site if you couldn’t offer aspirational pixie dust. “Be a schlub, just like us” won’t cut it.

The pitch here is basic: The Web site is free for users, who have to apply for access (Ghosn and Pouchot do the vetting themselves, but that won’t last if the site grows they way they imagine). It offers a variety of forums, real-time chats with mentors, and old-fashioned job postings. Employers will pay for sponsorships and job postings.

Like all smart start-ups, Ghosn and Pouchot argue that they’re ready to take share away from an established heavyweight — LinkedIn, in this case — by offering something better. And like lots of start-ups, they have a messy backstory, which seems to involve a predecessor site and some unhappy former co-founders. (But if you can make sense of this Forbes story which attempts to explain it, good for you.)

In any case, the site should be up and running now, so you can check it out — once you make the cut. And you can see what Ghosn and Pouchot have to say for themselves in this interview:

Latest Video

View all videos »

Search »

Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work