Money + Investments
Photo by Mathieu Stern
Blind Raises $37M to Blend Workplace Gossip, Career Advice, and Recruiting. What Could Go Wrong?
Blind, the anonymous professional network, announced a $37 million Series C round of venture capital to move its platform toward career advice and recruiting. This brings its total raised to $61.8 million.
Blind gives users an anonymous network, which presents like a message board, to communicate about their workplace. Co-founder and GM Kyum Kim told TechCrunch that usage spiked during COVID and the work from home surge, especially with employees of tech firms. Kim is hoping to harness what’s communicated by employees anonymously to offer aggregate insights to employers. Blind is also looking to offer employers hiring connections to users who express intent to leave, bringing Blind into recruiting. Today, the company has a free and extremely rudimentary job board – basically a collaborative Airtable to post jobs manually.
There’s an obvious analog to Glassdoor, where anonymous reviews and ratings feed an employer-brand perception and then a tie to a job board. While employers scramble to manage their brand on Glassdoor and most take it very seriously, there is definitely some resentment in the market toward the way they monetize the site. As you read that “Blind is building what it calls “Talent by Blind,” a platform for capturing this hiring intentionality and selling it to recruiters.” You can’t help but wonder if that play might cause resentment with Blind’s anonymous users. It’s a tightrope walk they’ll have to manage.
One thing is for sure, this one will be fun to watch.
$2.7 billion was invested globally in work tech during 2021 Q1 alone. Get WorkTech’s free report and analysis here.
Source: Blind raises $37M to double down on workplace gossip and career advice | TechCrunch
China-based Beisen Raises USD $260 Million for Low Code Core HR and Talent Management
China-based Beisen announced a USD $260 million Series F round of venture capital for its low code core HR and talent management platform. Claiming to be China’s largest HR SaaS and talent management platform, this brings its total raised to $388 million.
It is reported that this round of financing will be mainly used for integrated HR SaaS product innovation, customer success system improvement, and organization and talent building. Ji Weiguo, co-founder and CEO of Beisen, said that the history of human resource software being separated from each other will surely become the past. In the next ten years, HR SaaS will adopt “integration and low code” as the trend, and Beisen will continue to focus on this city wall and enhance product innovation. And customer service capabilities, empowering the digital transformation of human resources in China.from Beisen’s announcement
Focusing on low code no code (LCNC) is a good bet for work technology globally. The market is ripe for new low-code/no-code (LCNC) solutions emerging in work tech. The model is emerging in stand-alone B2B LCNC platforms like AirTable or BRYTER, HR-specific LCNC solutions like Sora, experience platforms like ServiceNow, digital adoption platforms like WalkMe, HR suites like Oracle’s Low-Code Journeys for HR, and even in targeted applications like Meet&Engage or Sapling.
$2.7 billion was invested globally in work tech during 2021 Q1 alone. Get WorkTech’s free report and analysis here.
George LaRocque's updates on who got how much this week
