Israeli tech talent gauge startup Woo (formerly Highr.io) has raised $2.35 million in seed funding from angel investors and tech executives. Participating investors included Lord David Alliance and Moshe Lichtman of Israel Growth Partners, a former senior executive at Microsoft who founded and served as president of the Israel-based R&D center, and Hank Vigil and Fritz Lanman from Acequia capital.
Woo plans to use the funds to scale its platform and expand its footprint both in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as in additional regional markets.
Woo lets tech professionals, including software engineers, developers, product managers, QAs, DevOps and designers, anonymously contact top tech companies to see what jobs are available and how much they pay.
With offices in Tel Aviv and San Francisco, Woo was founded in 2015 by CEO Liran Kotzer and CTO Ami Dudu. Kotzer said, 'Most high-tech employees are satisfied employees but everyone is ambitious to get ahead and curious to know if those ambitions can be realized. Using Woo allows them to get answers to these questions with the minimum of effort and zero risk."
Why is the service not open to everyone that wants?
"Because it is important for us to maintain a high level of service for both companies and candidates and so at the moment we are bringing in both sides in a balanced way to protect the product's quality. From today we are speeding up the rate of bringing in candidates and companies and it is important that when we bring in a user to the service the experience will be successful. That's better than increasing the number of customers without any control. In the future we'll consider opening the service for those without an invitation."
The company currently has 25 employees of whom 23 are in Israel and today the company is officially launching its service in the San Francisco Bay area. Customers include more than 100 companies from early stage startups to large companies like Israeli company Wix and even Microsoft. Woo expects 200 more companies to join the service shortly.
Kotzer added, “Our aim is to redefine how highly sought-after talent can, for the first time, begin to design, plan and land their dream job. Moreover, Woo is not a ‘job mill.’ We do not push talent to switch or change jobs. On the contrary, using Woo, talent is completely in the driver’s seat and is not pressed to make a decision immediately or at all.”
Woo’s “talent-first” approach turns the recruitment process on its head, by helping passive candidates understand their worth and demand, then introducing them only to companies who are willing to meet their key terms and expectations up front.
Woo says that so far thousands of employees in Israel and the US have used the service and company's report that 70% of candidates contacted by them have responded. No figures are available for the percentage of actual hires.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on February 9, 2016
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2016