Velocity Career Labs, a startup that built a blockchain network to fix the broken data layer underlying the global labor market, announced that it has raised $6.5 million in a funding round led by Counterpart Ventures, with participation from Pearson Ventures.
Founded in 2018 by Dror Gurevich, Velocity Career Labs is the instigator and developer of Velocity Network™, a game-changing, blockchain-based, decentralized utility layer that replaces the outdated, fragmented way talent represents their career reputation across the labor market: resumes and other self-reported online profiles. It empowers individuals, businesses, and educational institutions with tools used to manage and share career credentials. The company is powered by blockchain, making it trusted, private and effortless for people to take ownership on their career credentials, choose whether to share them, decide how that data is used by others, and in the future even sell it and earn income on that sale, creating an economy around the ownership and transfer of valuable career-related data.
Velocity Career Labs is on a mission to build the Internet of Careers®, a globally accessible utility layer, allowing individuals to claim and own their verifiable career credentials, and share it with whom they decide to, allowing them to access better career opportunities.
Speaking about the company, Founder and CEO of Velocity of Career Labs, Dror Gurevich, said:
“The data layer underlying the labor market is broken. 4 billion people are connected online, cars drive themselves, yet we still rely on self-reported resumes and online profiles to exchange one’s career data with prospective employers and other labor market stakeholders. As a matter of fact, today’s labor market’s data exchange infrastructure has more in common with the outdated postal service than with this generation’s digital world. We set out to reinvent how career and education records are shared across the global market, empowering individuals to have real agency over their career reputation and solve some of the most critical problems for businesses and educational institutions through transformational blockchain technology. We call it the Internet of Careers®.”
The watchword for the company’s effort is “self-sovereign career identity”, which means that individuals will own and manage their academic and employment credentials, maintaining their privacy and security. The Network, which is already live, makes it simple for people to claim and own signed and verifiable digital career credentials issued to them and anchored to the blockchain by respective authorities (e.g., work, school, certification providers, or license issuers). These can include verified education, work history, work permits, licenses, certifications, skills, etc. Individuals can store and manage their credentials privately on designated mobile wallets and share them when needed. Once shared with a relying party (e.g., employers, recruiters, educational institutions), credentials are instantly verifiable and trusted. This seamlessly achieves significant reductions in the time and costs associated with talent processes, while supporting compliance by reducing data reliability concerns and risks.
Commenting on the latest development, Co-founder and Head of Ecosystem of Velocity Career Labs, Etan Bernstein, said:
“With dozens of leading workforce-tech vendors and solution providers preparing to launch their solutions on top of Velocity Network™, we are excited to see the inevitable ripple effect it will have on the global labor market. We see continued enthusiasm and adoption by major global leaders across the workforce and education markets with new pivotal vendors joining every month.”
The startup is governed by the nonprofit member organization, Velocity Network Foundation®, enabling inclusive, decentralized governance of the Network. Dozens of the largest workforce-tech vendors and solution providers are already engaged in deploying solutions on top of Velocity Network™. When combined, these organizations process career-related data for more than 1 billion individuals.
Co-founder and Partner of Counterpart Ventures, Joe Saijo, added:
“Velocity Career Labs drives a once-in-a-generation disruption to the labor market. Fixing the broken data layer underlying the global labor market will unleash the true digital transformation of this space and open a new spectrum of innovative use cases and services for the global labor market.”
