Mobile recruitment platform Found has closed its most recent funding round, bringing its total funding to $2.5 million. Red Bull Holden Supercars owner Roland Dane, Dimmi founder Stevan Premutico and MYOB CEO Tim Reed have come on board as investors, with the latter two joining Found’s advisory board.
Established by Andrew Joyce and Peter Marchiori in 2015, the Sydney-based start-up enables job seekers to instantly apply for jobs on their mobile phone with a single tap, without having to prepare CVs, cover letters or email.
The co-founders will use the proceeds to improve the company’s proprietary talent algorithms and support the rollout of the Found Talent employer platform, built specifically to connect larger employers and recruiters with mobile job-seekers.
Joyce spoke to Dynamic Business about Found’s success to date and its approach to engaging investors.
Dynamic Business: How did you select your investors?
Joyce: Both Tim and Stevan are true experts in the Australian tech scene. They’ve both run (and grown) material players in the Australian market, and understand what it takes to build a business that spans a large part of the Australian small-business market. I also know them both personally, and am very excited about having them on the Advisory board.
Separately, I’ve known Roland for some time – he’s an exceptionally successful guy in everything that he does, and has a track-record of again building and running high performing businesses all around the world. He also has one of the best business brains that I’ve come across, and is a great supporter of what we’re doing at Found.
Our other investors (who want to stay private at this stage) include a major family office, current and former private equity executives, senior partners at global management consulting and big-four accounting firms, and a range of people who’ve been successful entrepreneurs and business-people in the own right. It’s a great group, that I’m both exceptionally flattered and excited to have involved in Found.
Dynamic Business: What attracted these investors to the business?
Joyce: Every one of our investors has at some stage been in the position of needing to hire staff – and they can all relate to the pain that this causes businesses of all size every day around Australia. Many of them also have children, and so have first-hand understanding of the transition to mobile, and the changes in behaviour this is driving.
Dynamic Business: what support will they provide moving forward
Joyce: Given the breadth of our investor base, we have access to extensive professional networks, expertise in all aspects of scaling the business as we require it, as well as a great perspective on the pain-points and problems experienced by businesses looking to hire staff.
Dynamic Business: What does the latest capital raise say about Found?
The capital raise validates Found’s business model, demonstrates market faith in the changing behaviour of modern job seekers, and the need for employers to evolve the way that they find and hire staff.
How would you qualify the company’s success to date?
In the 12 months since launching, we’ve gone from a standing-start, to now being one of the major players in the Australian jobs market. Through the latter half of 2016 we were consistently one of the top three jobs-apps on the iOS app store (along with Seek and Indeed), and every month we’re processing over 200,000 job applications. Our apps have been downloaded over 250,000 times, and we’re consistently ranked by our candidates as the #1 most useful jobs platform in the market.
