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Job boards for venture-backed startups agree on the pitch and disagree on the definition. VentureLoop, running since 2000, aggregates more than 60,000 roles from company sites, applicant-tracking pages, recruiters and partner data, and sells access by subscription, with company names hidden until you pay. vcbacked.co is primarily a lead database of more than 40,000 funded companies; it runs a side board of roles at startups that closed a round in the last 180 days, read daily from each company's own careers feed, with a $49-a-year tier for the first 48 hours of each listing.
talent.backed.vc is a single fund's board: Backed, a London seed investor writing $500,000 to $5 million cheques in Europe and the US, showing 269 roles across 63 portfolio companies in September 2026 on a Getro-powered site, with a talent network that promises introductions. Work at a Startup is Y Combinator's, listing only YC-funded companies, with public browsing stopping at a first page of roles and every apply link behind a YC login. Wellfound is the open marketplace of the group: more than 27,000 startups by its own count, free posting for any company, with venture funding as a filter rather than a rule.
Between them they show the five meanings of VC-backed that a job seeker meets: aggregated from anywhere, one fund's portfolio, an accelerator's portfolio, a recent round, and any company that describes itself as a startup. Their geographies differ too, from VentureLoop's US metro quick-picks and Work at a Startup's American location filter to Backed's roles in London, Barcelona, Paris and Lisbon.
The honest difference is the definition, and StartupMap's is the plainest of the six. A startup is on the map because it has raised a round or come through an accelerator, from any investor, and a person checked it; there are 4,569 of them, all European, across 55 cities. Its 16,229 live roles are read from the startups' own careers sites and re-synced nightly, every company is named, and nothing is behind an account or a fee. What it does not do is aggregate the world or rank investors.
Last reviewed: September 2026
| Compare | StartupMap | VentureLoop | talent.backed.vc | Wellfound | vcbacked.co | Work at a Startup |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What counts as VC-backed | Raised a round or came through an accelerator; hand-reviewed | Aggregated venture-backed roles; funding not shown per job | Backed's own portfolio, 63 companies on the board | Any startup that posts; funding is a filter | Closed a funding round in the last 180 days | Funded by Y Combinator |
| Live roles | 16,229 | 60,000+ on its homepage; 80,502 on its search page (Sept 2026) | 269 (Sept 2026) | No public total; 3,181 in Europe and 14,916 in the US on its location pages (Sept 2026) | 13,416 on one of its pages, 14,239 on another (Sept 2026) | Not publicly disclosed; described as thousands |
| Europe coverage | 55 European cities; every startup European | European roles in previews; no regional filter shown publicly | London, Barcelona, Paris, Lyon, Lisbon among role locations | Europe location pages down to city level | London, Munich, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Barcelona in its city filter; its jobs page says US startups | No European city in the public location filter; the Europe page showed 8 listings |
| See company names and apply for free | Yes, on the startup's own site | Previews free; names and apply links $19 to $39 a month | Yes | Browse free; a profile to apply | Free after 48 hours; $49 a year for the first 48 | Apply links require a YC login |
| Filter by funding stage | Pre-seed to Series D | Series A to D+ | No | Yes | Seed, Series A to B, C+ | Not in the public filters |
| Filter by investor or fund | Investors on each profile; accelerator filter | No | One fund by definition | No | No | YC by definition |
| Hiring-activity signal | Live hiring status from each startup's careers site | Radar score, 675 companies | Posted dates | Actively hiring badge, posted dates | Roles posted in the last 48 hours | Company last-active date |
| Freshness | Re-synced nightly | New jobs daily; no stated expiry rule | Daily refresh from company ATS boards via Getro | Relative dates; a job closed at a synced ATS does not auto-unpublish | Re-checked daily against each employer's feed | Not stated |
Three of the five, and each draws the line differently. talent.backed.vc lists Backed's portfolio and nothing else, 63 companies in September 2026. Work at a Startup lists Y Combinator's companies and nothing else. vcbacked.co lists companies that closed a funding round in the last 180 days, so a company drops off as its round ages. VentureLoop describes itself as the venture-backed job market but aggregates from company sites, recruiters and partner data without showing the funding behind each role. Wellfound lists any company that creates a profile and offers funding stage as a filter. StartupMap sits with the first group: a startup is there because it raised a round or came through an accelerator, from any investor, and a person checked it, so the whole map is the filter.
Bottom line: Backed, YC, vcbacked.co and StartupMap list only funded companies; VentureLoop and Wellfound treat funding as a signal on a wider catalogue.
By where the board gets its roles. vcbacked.co and talent.backed.vc read each company's own careers feed and re-check it daily, so a closed role disappears within a day. Wellfound's roles are posted by companies, and its help centre notes that a job unpublished at a synced applicant-tracking system does not automatically unpublish on Wellfound. VentureLoop aggregates from many sources and states no expiry rule beyond noting that listings expire. Work at a Startup shows when a company was last active rather than a listing-date rule. StartupMap reads each startup's careers site nightly and turns that into a status on the map: 1,738 of its 4,569 startups show at least one live role today, and a startup whose last role closes loses the mark the next morning.
Bottom line: Boards that read the company's own careers feed can show live hiring; boards that take posts can only show what was posted.
One fully, three with conditions, one hardly at all. talent.backed.vc is open: roles, companies and apply links, no login. Wellfound lets you browse without an account but asks for a profile to apply. vcbacked.co shows roles free once they are 48 hours old and charges $49 a year to see them in the first two days. Work at a Startup shows a first page of roles publicly, then asks you to sign up, and every apply link passes through a YC login. VentureLoop is the most gated: browsing is free but shows only a generic title and location, and the company name and apply link cost $19 a month. StartupMap is open end to end: every startup named, every role linked to the startup's own careers page, no account and no fee.
Bottom line: talent.backed.vc and StartupMap are fully open; Wellfound, vcbacked.co and Work at a Startup gate applying or the newest roles; VentureLoop gates the company name itself.
It depends on which Europe. For seed-stage companies in London, Paris, Barcelona or Lisbon with one specific investor behind them, talent.backed.vc is precise and small. Wellfound has European country and city pages and showed 3,181 European roles on its public location pages in September 2026, about a fifth of its US total. vcbacked.co's city filter includes London, Munich, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and Barcelona, though its jobs page describes its coverage as US startups. VentureLoop and Work at a Startup expose no European filter publicly. StartupMap is the only one of the six built as a map of Europe: 4,569 funded startups across 55 cities, each city a page, with the investors and the accelerator on each profile. For a candidate whose first question is which European city, that is the shape that answers it.
Bottom line: For one fund's European seed companies use talent.backed.vc; for European roles at scale on an open board use Wellfound; for funded startups by European city use StartupMap.
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