I’m delighted to announce that we’ve raised a $20m Series A led by Tiger Global Management. The team at Otta is incredibly mission-driven, and hitting this milestone after just 2 years in operation is a testament to their fantastic work.
Tiger is seeing firsthand the war for talent, with their rapidly growing portfolio of tech companies. They’re a great fit for us to partner with over the coming years.
Our mission
Just over 2 years ago was the first time I heard someone tell me “job search is soul-crushing”.
Shortly after, Xav, Theo and I became career coaches by night to figure out whether we were set on building a business in jobs for at least the next decade. We helped friends of friends with practice interviews, CV reviews, job shortlists, etc. As soon as people said things like “This is amazing, I never would have got that job without you” we were hooked. We were all-in on this problem space.
The job you choose is so central to your fulfillment, wealth and relationships. How can the experience of moving jobs be so poor? We believe it’s because the industry has prioritised the company filling a vacancy, and has left candidates feeling like second-class citizens.
So we set out to build a different way to find a job, and we call it candidate-first job search. It’s a new category that flips the industry’s dynamics on its head. It’s centred on being fanatical about the candidate.
Our mission is to become the world's career champion. This means putting candidates first — not companies. We want to support ambitious people to find fulfillment in their jobs.
What we’ve built today
Since raising our first funding in December 2019 we’ve grown to a team of 35 and have made leaps towards achieving our mission.
So far we've accomplished a lot: stronger matching, quality curation, in-depth information and a delightful product experience.
Thousands of people have started new jobs because of our product. We’re now the #2 source of hires in the UK for the companies on Otta. We’ve surpassed Glassdoor, Indeed and we’re catching up to LinkedIn quickly!
We recently expanded to the US, and already see considerably more monthly applications there than in the UK.
We’ve onboarded jobs from 4,000 companies (and have evaluated 1000s more that didn’t make the cut!) Hundreds of companies partner with us on Otta Pro, our paid subscription to supercharge their hiring.
And we’ve donated over £50k to Beam and UpReach, two fantastic social mobility organisations (we donate on behalf of a candidate when they accept a job on Otta)
What’s next
This is the decade to build a brand that champions the best talent. 2020 and 2021 brought about changes that mean job seekers are now pickier than ever:
- The pandemic means we now scrutinise the flexibility of our roles
- The climate-emergency means we now seek missions worth spending our time on
- Movements like BLM mean we now scrutinise the values of our employers
To attract the best talent in this market, companies need to work towards making job search less-soul crushing. Candidates need to see salary ranges so they can make better choices. They don't want applications to be ghosted, or to be rejected after an interview without feedback.
We now enter Phase 2 of product development, where we’re launching programmes to incentivise companies to take action. It’s time for them to step up and put candidates first, rather than just talk about it.
In addition to product development, we’ll be pushing the accelerator on scale. We’ll be using 2022 to go deeper in the US, where we’ve already had strong traction, and next up are the tech hubs across Europe.
To achieve this scale we’re planning to grow the team 2-3x in 2022. We’ll be building an on-the-ground team in the US, doubling our Product & Engineering team in London, and making key hires like US GM, People Director and Chief of Staff.
Thank you so much to our early supporters, and to the many thousands of candidates who have used our product and given us fantastic feedback on how to make it better.
Onto an exciting few years ahead!
If our mission excites you, please do check out our careers page. Also see what TechCrunch and Sifted had to say about our fundraise.