Former ‘LinkedIn killer’ CEO Scouts out new tech role
THE founder of ‘LinkedIn Killer’ Cohort has landed himself a new role heading up the European operations of app development company Scout.
Serial entrepreneur Eamon Leonard had previously sourced €600,000 in funding for Cohort from the likes of Hostelworld founder Ray Nolan, and Harper Reed, the former technology officer of Barack Obama’s presidential re-election campaign.
Cohort announced that it was shutting its doors in May last year after it found it difficult to complete a €1.5m funding round that would have kept it in business for another year to 18 months.
The startup helped professionals and employees find one another by pulling in data from social media, emails and other contact information. It also automated the process of searching for certain skill sets. In its early days it was viewed as a potentially serious competitor to LinkedIn, the tech giant that has dominated professional networking for years.
Around the time of its launch almost two years ago at the Collision conference in New Orleans, the Web Summit’s sister event, Cohort received a ringing endorsement from Werner Vogels, Amazon’s chief technology officer.
In a blog post Leonard stated that he was “going back to move forward”.
“I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed talking to people who are building things, and understanding how I could help them. So, I’m thrilled to be joining Scout, a company that specialises in APM for developers.
“I’m leading their European team, and so far that’s a team of one ... just me!”