CoFoundersLab had been working on solving the problem of cofounder matchmaking for about four years now. It's a big problem: research suggests that of all startups that fail, about 33% fail primarily due to cofounder related issues!
In this quest, they have brought onboard various experts such as former executives from Match.com, and leading researchers for the Kauffman Foundation. Furthermore, CoFoundersLab has acquired several companies over the years enhancing its IP portfolio, and execution capability.
Through CoFoundersLab, members can search a self-selected pool of cofounder candidates, while getting a much better sense for wether the cofounder candidates posses complementary skills, and have compatible personalities, goals, and values!
There is no "silver bullet" solution, but CoFoundersLab.com is an out of this world better approach to embarking on the journey of cofounder search!
Disclosure: I am the CEO at Onevest and we just announced a merger with CoFoundersLab.
We are not trying to be sneaky here. Our engineering team is actually the one that came up with the idea. We are hiring and we are definitely doing it in a fun way.
We don't automatically send anything through LinkedIn. However, we have a feature that allows an entrepreneur to send an invitation to someone else via LinkedIn's API. In order for that to function we need the permissions you are referring to. When we have more time we will probably reduce the number of requested permissions for general users.
We have over 6,000 registered startups and 3 are currently in preview mode before accepting investments in 6 days. One of them won the “Audience Choice Award” at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC.