Last month, I used AngelList data to analyze the technologies that startups use. After getting positive feedback on my analysis, I decided to dig into more AngelList data -- this time looking at job postings. There is a lot of job posting data available via API, and Joshua Slayton from AngelList was kind enough to send me some additional data that is not available via API.
This series will consist of two separate blog posts:
Part 1: Basic stats about popular startup locations, job titles, vesting schedules, etc. [Full disclosure: this is the least interesting/actionable post in the series]
Part 2: Salary and equity benchmarks. By role, company size, etc.
Preliminaries
I took a snapshot of all jobs on AngelList on August 31st, 2014. There were 12610 jobs posted at the time.
Please note that this is an analysis of companies found on AngelList, which creates some expected biases. For example, the data will be biased toward earlier stage startups, and away from startups in non-English-speaking countries.
Job Locations
Top 20 cities
City
# of open jobs
San Francisco
2766
New York City
1676
Los Angeles
485
London
444
Boston
309
Palo Alto
300
Bangalore
263
Washington, DC
230
Toronto
226
Chicago
218
Mountain View
216
Seattle
201
Silicon Valley
186
New Delhi
185
Austin
161
Mumbai
153
Berlin
130
Vancouver
120
Santa Monica
117
Singapore
107
Next, I removed all cities that had 3 or fewer jobs (about 5% of all jobs) and categorized the remaining cities into geographic areas.
Jobs in each major geographic area
Geographic Area
# of open jobs
Silicon Valley
4130
US (minus Silicon Valley, NY, SoCal)
2282
New York
1723
India
839
Southern California
801
Continental Europe
649
Canada
503
UK
493
Asia
238
Central/South America
91
Australia
78
Israel
54
Russia
46
Notable observations: SF, LA, and NYC make up almost 50% of all jobs on AngelList. Within Silicon Valley, 2/3 of all jobs are in SF and 1/3 are in Mountain View/Palo Alto/etc.
Openings per company
# of openings at startup
# of startups
1 opening
3123
2 openings
1238
3 openings
689
4 openings
349
5 openings
215
6 openings
115
7 openings
78
8 openings
47
9 openings
30
10 openings
26
11 openings
10
12 openings
5
13 openings
7
14 openings
3
15 openings
1
17 openings
3
19 openings
3
23 openings
1
25 openings
1
Notable observations: About 60% of openings are at companies that list <=3 jobs, 35% are at companies that list 4-10 jobs, and the last 5% are at a handful of companies that have 11 or more open positions.
Job Opening Types
Type
# of open jobs
Full-time
9740
Cofounder
1080
Internship
997
Contract
936
Equity Vesting
Most common vesting periods
Vesting period
# of open jobs
4 years
11096
3 years
526
0 years
355
2 years
269
5 years
182
Most common vesting cliffs
Vesting cliff
# of open jobs
1.0 years
11875
0.0 years
403
0.5 years
135
Notable observations: 4 year vesting with a 1 year cliff is by far the most common equity vesting set-up.
Job Functions
Role
# of open jobs
Developer
6486
Marketing
1795
Designer
1656
Sales
1601
Mobile Developer
1434
Operations
818
Product Manager
810
Hardware Engineer
288
Finance
227
Office Manager
157
Human Resources
143
Attorney
39
(The counts in the second column add up to a little more than 12610 because some jobs were tagged with multiple roles.)
In-demand Skills
Skills mentioned in at least 500 job openings:
Skill
# of open jobs
Javascript
2372
Python
1341
Ruby on Rails
1211
HTML
1131
Sales and Marketing
1089
iOS Development
1069
jQuery
1016
CSS
1001
Java
991
HTML5 & CSS3
952
Android
852
User Experience Design
816
PHP
777
Business Development
769
MySQL
690
Node.js
644
Social Media Marketing
604
MongoDB
509
Amazon Web Services
503
Skills mentioned in 250-499 openings: Angular.JS, Objective C, Sales, UI/UX Design, HTML/CSS/PHP/MYSQL, Product Development, Ruby, Mobile Application Design, Mobile Development, User Interface Design, SQL, Backbone.js, Django, PostgreSQL, Linux, Git, APIs, Sales Strategy and Management, Product Marketing, Mobile, Data Analysis, RESTful Services, and Social Media.
Skills mentioned in 100-249 openings: Big Data, Graphic Design, Hadoop, Adobe Photoshop, Web Design, Web Development, Redis, C++, Mobile Application Development, Photoshop, Product Management, Machine Learning, Software Engineering, SEO/SEM, iOS, REST APIs, Customer Service, noSQL, Twitter Bootstrap, Front-End Development, C, Databases, SaaS, AngularJS, JSON, Business Operations, C#, Growth Hacking, Marketing, Scala, Analytics & Reporting, Adobe Illustrator, Online Marketing, AJAX, Communication Skills, Project Management, E-Commerce, Customer Relationship Management, Full-Stack Web Development, Web Analytics, Sales/Marketing and Strategic Partnerships, Coffeescript, Business Strategy, Account Management, Community Management, Content Marketing, Writing, Backend Development, Amazon EC2, Advertising, .NET, Visual Design, Agile Software Develoment, Software Development, Google Analytics, Adobe Creative Suite, Heroku, and Algorithms.