Placed App, a London-based startup that is used by major brands to recruit Gen Z talent, recently announced that it has raised £4 million in an investment round.
The funding round was led by Praetura Ventures, and Blackfinch Ventures. As part of the round, two new non-executive directors will join Placed App’s board, including Dominic McGregor, co-founder of Social Chain and operational partner at Praetura Ventures, and Blackfinch Venture Partner Bill Boorman, who has been a thought leader in the industry for decades.
With the new fundraising, the firm plans to develop its proprietary software and launch new features, and expand its team.
Co-founded by CEO Jennifer Johansson, a former hospitality industry expert, COO Roderick McKeown, and technology expert Miro Bazitov, Placed App bridges the gap for employers by replacing outdated recruitment methods with features that appeal more to a new generation of talent, such as swapping CVs for quizzes to assess job suitability and hosting engaging content from employers. The platform, which counts PizzaExpress, O2, Sky, Lidl and Greene King among its clients, uses a matchmaking algorithm and machine learning to connect candidates to their perfect role.
Placed App is on a mission to put people into jobs. The company has helped thousands of candidates find the role for them.
Talking about the company, Founder & CEO of Placed App, Jennifer Johannson, said:
The staffing crisis in the service sector is a real issue for the growth of the UK economy. At Placed, we are incredibly proud to be at the forefront of driving innovation to support these industries, and we have seen immense demand for our business in the last 18 months.
Johannson further added:
We are very excited to welcome Praetura Ventures and Blackfinch Ventures to the next phase of our journey. Their support will help us to fuel further growth, including our plans to double our head count in the next year, and to develop our product features.
Since launching in 2017, the Placed App has become a go-to solution for over 300,000 candidates and over 8000 businesses across the UK.
Commenting on the latest development, Head of ventures, Blackfinch, Reuben Wilcock, said:
Placed is run by a highly tenacious founder, who successfully navigated the dire impacts of the pandemic on the retail and hospitality sectors to achieve strong growth and several enterprise customer sign-ups in 2021.The company’s product is slickly designed and is highly valued by its customers and we are confident that the business has the potential to become the leading recruitment platform in the UK’s retail and hospitality sectors.
David Foreman, Managing Director of Praetura Ventures, added:
Hiring in the aftermath of the pandemic has been incredibly challenging for all industries, but clearly sectors like hospitality have been hit a lot harder, with around 180,000 unfilled vacancies in the sector. Add to this the difficulty that employers find when attracting from wider talent pools, and you realise how valuable Placed’s platform is as a means of solving the current staffing crisis. From its pricing model to its use of quizzes over CVs, Placed is challenging traditional recruitment and that’s incredibly exciting to us.
In 2020, Placed App had received £1.2 million in a funding round led by two members of Henley Business Angels.
