As hiring remains a challenge in an economy where jobs are plentiful (depending on the sector), venture capitalists continue to pour money into workforce startups focused on evaluating and onboarding candidates. According to Pitchbook, companies focused on solving barriers to payroll, and people management and recruiting raised $12 billion last year. For example, Velocity Global, which offers a platform that handles onboarding and payroll, raised $400 million in a single round of funding last year, while workforce management software vendor Ripple raised $250 million.
In a sign that enthusiasm isn’t waning, Ashby, a new recruiting platform launched out of stealth, has raised $21.5 million in equity financing. F-Prime Capital led the Series B with participation from Elad Gil, Lachy Groom, Semper Virens, Base Case Capital and Gaingels, bringing Ashby’s total to $34.5 million.
Ashby was founded in 2018 by Benjamin Inkz and Abik Pramanik, who met while working together on the construction productivity software startup PlanGrid. Prior to PlanGrid, Pramanik was an R&D engineer at Industrial Light & Magic and co-launched Choir, a mobile app designed to provide therapies to people with mental health issues. Prior to Inkz building clinical software, workflows and processes for the Mayo Clinic, he was a project leader at German IT services provider Data Group.
At Plangrid, where Inkz was director of engineering and spent most of his time on recruiting and hiring-related tasks, Inkz says he ran into the limitations of existing applicant tracking systems (ATS) — and was inspired to build one from scratch. He’s not the only one. According to one study, 50% of employers don’t use ATS software, either because of implementation barriers or insufficient C-suite buy-in.
“Recruitment teams are being disproportionately impacted by the current cutbacks in technology — which creates a desire to run on lower budgets and do more with less headcount,” Inkz told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Ashby is developing recruiting tools for companies with double-digit headcounts. [The platform’s] Automating tasks like sourcing and scheduling are huge advantages for strong recruiting teams.
Tracking the Ashby Job Candidate Dashboard. Image Credits: Ashby
Inc. sees Ashby replacing solutions from vendors like Greenhouse and Lever with algorithms — specifically scheduling and profiling algorithms. The platform uses AI to find job opportunities for interviewers and interviewees and to estimate demographic information such as gender and ethnicity, which clients use for comprehensive analysis of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring metrics.
Enz was quick to point out that the demographic data is used only in the aggregate and not in a way that influences individual hiring decisions.
“The average recruiting team of a company with more than 100 employees has three to five devices, which is expensive, affects data quality and slows down the process,” said Inc. “Current recruitment data and analytics are limited and unreliable, making it difficult to finance… planning. Hiring managers cannot track the candidate pipeline or track DEI statistics. The Ashby platform is particularly strong in data collection, data quality, multi-part workflows and reporting – we have templates and custom options.
The recruiting software market could reach $3.85 billion by 2028. Unsurprisingly, several startups like Guide & Fletcher are competing for breakfast. Elsewhere, recruitment platform Gem achieved unicorn status last September.
But Inkz says it has a number of high-profile clients, including Ashby Notion, Opendoor, Full Story and Faima, and more than 500 brands. Ashby declined to share revenue metrics, saying the company plans to grow from 55 employees to 75 by the end of the year, saying the company is expected to cut back.
As mentioned earlier, one factor in Ashby’s favor is the widespread demand for HR technology. The market has shown remarkable resilience against both pandemics and economic headwinds as companies invest in digital infrastructure and macroeconomic fears put pressure on HR teams to carefully screen candidates.
“Last year it was very fast – this year it’s less,” Inkz said. “We think we have the potential to slow down, but we are well capitalized. Series B is incidentally based on strong growth and a desire to maintain a healthy cash flow. Over the next 12 months, Ashby will use the new funding injection to expand beyond what is typically available at ATS, allowing us to be more aggressive in product, design and engineering hiring.
