How the money flows can provide us with a map of the problems people are trying to solve. Key signals in the noise. The ever-brilliant George LaRocque helps us piece it all together as Founder and Principal Analyst at WorkTech, bringing his perspective and updates on interesting TA tech investments from around the globe.

Citadel ID Raises $3.5 Million for Employment and Compensation Verification

Citadel ID announced a $3.5 million Seed round of venture capital for its automated employment and compensation validation tech.

Citadel touts its ability to integrate directly into a customers’ HCM systems. They also position their employment and pay verification service based on 30 existing HCM/payroll integrations.

Source: Employment Verification Company Citadel ID Raises $3.5 Million

TREND NOTE: UK-based Orka Raises USD $40.8 Million for Job Board Marketplace with Integrated On-demand Pay

UK-based Orka announced a $40.8 million round of venture capital for its job board marketplace with integrated on-demand pay capabilities, targeting regulated industries and shift workers.

According to Aptitude Research Partners, shift workers, or the “hourly workforce,” make up a large percentage of the global workforce, representing 58.5% of all wage and salary workers. This correlates globally as well.

While job boards have been specializing in distinct segments of the workforce for decades, we are now seeing marketplaces emerge with capabilities beyond the job to candidate match. Providing on-demand pay is one example of a capability extending the marketplace’s value beyond the match and hire. Orka reported to EU-Startups that, “This year, the company will launch its third core product, Orka Check, to improve the process for worker background checks.” This promises to be another interesting move.

The talent acquisition category of HR tech has a robust innovation pipeline with new tech emerging from incumbent legacy platforms and emerging target startups. There has been a shift in recent years, as automation, data science, and behavioral economics have matured to focus on this segment shared by the world’s biggest brands and smallest companies.

$5 billion was invested in HR technology globally during 2020, with $483 million going to job board marketplaces. Get the full report here.

Source: HR tech startup Orka raises €33.5 million to double headcount and fuel growth of its solutions for shift workers | EU-Startups

Scope Raises $2.25 Million for Its Marketplace of Tech Implementers Focused on the SMB

Scope announced a $2.25 million Seed round of venture capital for its marketplace of tech implementers for the SMB, bringing its total raised to $3.4 million.

Scope aims to solve the pains of implementation and integration that plagues small businesses as they select technology to satisfy customers and compete with larger brands locally and globally. They position themselves as a sort of on demand systems integrator for the SMB.

From their announcement:

Today, every business needs to be tech enabled or fear being left behind. Unfortunately, most businesses either don’t have the talent or the capacity to implement these technologies impacting the ability for software vendors to get them onboarded. At Scope, we believe that by connecting people we can bring every business into the 21st century and get them implemented the right way.

SMB employers not only make up the market segment with the largest number of employers, but collectively they also have the largest number of employees, and payroll spend. The key to success for work technology in this segment lies in its ability to integrate into the core HCM and payroll provider suites and leverage those ecosystems as a channel. Scope seems well suited for this.

We estimate the global market for HR technology in all categories to be $380 billion. The SMB is about 2/3 of that.

Source: Announcing our $2.25M Series Seed – Scope

HR Tech’s Newest Unicorn: Modern Health Raises $74 Million for Its Mental Health and Wellness Platform

Modern Health announced a $74 million Series D, bringing its total raised to $167.4 million. They received a valuation of $1.17 billion in this latest round, giving them “unicorn” status.

Any apps or services that help human beings with mental health is a very good thing. The impact of myriad mental health issues on personal wellbeing, individual health, happiness, or in the workplace productivity, engagement, overall culture is massive. That said, we also have too many apps that we’re pushing into the workplace – and employee wellbeing is one of the areas where apps are proliferating. Mental wellness, physical wellness, financial wellness, career wellness apps, and more are flooding the market directly to employers and through insurance broker channels. WorkTech sees the future of wellbeing in the enterprise shifting to more of a platform/marketplace that offers employers the ability to curate the wellness offerings that suit their culture, demographics, regions, and budgets. We saw this begin to emerge with Lifeworks. We now expect to see acquisitions and “roll ups” in this category along with emerging startups focused on the approach.

In the HRFederation 2020 HCM Trends Report the maturity of employee total wellbeing was called out. Learn more about the trend there.

In 2020, $485 million was invested in HR tech focused on wellness. Get the full report on global HR technology investment in 2020, here.

Source: Post Series D and a $1.17 Billion Valuation, We’re Energized by the Task Ahead

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