- SeekOut is a talent-acquisition startup that is powered by AI.
- In the two years of its inception, it has acquired a total of $73M in funding.
Many companies show a need to employ a diverse staff, but don’t know how to go about it. To solve this issue, a team of executives and engineers founded SeekOut. It is an AI-enabled platform that helps you hire and I was staff for your organization.
About the founders of SeekOut:
A team of former Microsoft executives and engineers founded SeekOut in 2016. The founders are Anup Gupta, Arvind Bala, John Tippett, and Vikas Manocha. They began building a messaging platform that provides in-depth information about people that others might have. The company pivoted in 2017 when it understood that the customers were after the information and not the messaging capability. Today SeekOut aims to help talent acquisition teams recruit “hard-to-find and diverse talent”.
The startup did not mention any names. But, it revealed that out of 10 “most highly valued companies” they are working with six. In January, it had around 500 customers from a range of industries that includes technology, pharmaceutical, aerospace, defense, and banking.
SeekOut built a database over a period of years. Now, hundreds of millions of profiles use its AI-powered talent search engine and “deep interactive analytics”. The startup finds new talent by searching through public data and using a natural language mechanism and machine learning technologies to understand the expert is with each candidate. This information builds a 360-degree view of a potential candidate. It combines information from public profiles, GitHub, papers and patents, employee referrals, company alumni, and candidates in the ATS system.
The inception of SeekOut:
Initially, the startup focused only on technical expertise. But, now it has widened its base to help recruiters and sources find more diverse candidates in general. It also helps companies look for “hard to find” skill sets. Moreover, the startup claims to perform the job with unprecedented speed and precision through a blind hiring technique designed to eliminate bias. And then seek out give recruiters a method to engage with candidates instantly by acquiring access to the correct candidate information with a “single-click”.
The startup has hit a sweet spot in a way that attracted the attention of tiger global management, which is a global investment firm that conducted $65 million Series B which values the startup at around $500 million. Madrona Venture Group and Mayfield also participated in the financing which brings the startups total funding of $73 million since its inception.
In a world where so many startups are working hard to make a profit, SeekOut turns out to be an exception. Since its $6 million Series A in May 2019, the SaaS company claims that it has increased its subscription revenue (ARR) by “more than tenfold”. The startup has been profitable for each of the last two years. The startup’s CEO, Gupta, says the platform helps companies find diverse talent along with improved retention by finding the correct candidate.
Effect of the pandemic:
Because of the pandemic, the startup almost caused the hiring process but understood the emergence of remote working which forced companies to think ok in a creative manner. Moreover in such situations, the candidate is not restricted with the geographical locations as he was in the past, says Gupta.
“This freedom also means their need for tools like SeekOut increased and we have seen our business take off as a result,” he said. “The focus on diversity hiring and our unique approach to finding the talent and offering blind hiring features has supercharged the adoption.”
Mario Linares, who is head of talent acquisition at Aviatrix, says that competition for talent within software companies is greater than ever.
“SeekOut’s innovative AI-powered search, global power filters, diversity filters, and talent pool insight have been critical components of Aviatrix’s global growth plan,” he said in a written statement.
According to tiger global partner John Curtius, seek out has the potential “to transform the world of HR.” “We are impressed by the customer love and traction SeekOut is experiencing,” he said in a written statement.
For future plans, the startup aims to use the new capital to quicken up the development and expansion of its platform and build customer success engineering sales and marketing teams in Seattle. It plans to use its own platform to make this possible. SeekOut also plans to increase its headcount by 50 to double over the period of next year.
