Skip to main content

Filtered.ai closes $7M in funding to accelerate its technical hiring service

Boston-based Filtered.ai has raised a $7 million round to accelerate its hiring cadence, and built out the go-to-market model for its its engineering and developer-focused hiring service, it recently announced.

TechCrunch caught up with the company to discuss not only why it decided to leave bootstrapping behind, but also to dig into how its service could widen the market for some technical roles.

The startup was born back in 2016 out of a need when its founder and CEO Paul Bilodeau started to work on it as an internal project while employed at a consultancy. Filtered later split from the consulting group in 2019, signing a term sheet to raise capital in March of 2020. Then COVID-19 arrived, and things got a bit turbulent.

But before we get lost in the money side of things, let’s talk about what the company does.

Filtered’s product is interesting as it could help shake up a hiring system for technical roles for startups that is rife with bias and wasted time. If you are friends with any developers, for example, or data scientists, you are aware of how not-good their hiring process can be.

To pick two issues: Resumes are often a pretty poor indicator of talent, and on-site whiteboard sessions are super unpopular. Filtered is taking on both by providing skills-based take-home tests with AI aboard to help detect fraud. The hiring company can play back those sessions to see how candidates approached problems. Filtered also allows companies to ask candidates open-ended interview questions via video, removing the need for formulaic phone screens that are only good for providing full-employment to junior HR staff.

Filtered claims that its system can get companies to the point of making offers more quickly.

That’s all well and good, but what TechCrunch was most curious about was what the startup’s service might manage when it comes to making hiring more equitable. If it’s more skills-focused than resume-centric, does that shake up who gets hired? It does, the company thinks. Once resumes lose some of their luster, and candidates are vetted on skills over keyword optimization in their applications, “diversity just happens,” Bilodeau explained.

The round

Let’s get back to the money. The timing of Filtered’s anticipated venture capital round and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic were unfortunately timed rather close to each other.

So, Bilodeau told TechCrunch in an interview that his startup effectively raised capital on a drip basis throughout 2020, until it finally closed its round in the fourth quarter of the year. That timing was somewhat fortuitous for its investors — Silicon Valley Data Capital and the AI Fund — as Filtered’s CEO said that that was the company’s best quarter in its history.

From bootstrapping to taking on capital, what changed at Filtered that led it to decide to raise external funding? Per Bilodeau, he didn’t want to raise money. And he said that crowing about fundraising news is somewhat nonsensical, likening it to sharing on LinkedIn that he took out a mortgage on a house.

But as Filtered wanted to hire proactively instead of when it closed a new deal, picking up new funds made sense. The startup also wanted to work more on its marketing efforts, shake up its pricing and move toward a land-and-expand model from an enterprise sales focus. More money would make all of that a bit easier, so it took on capital.

Looking ahead, we’re hoping that Filtered can somehow quantify the impact it has on hiring diverse folks for technical roles. If it’s material, that could be even more exciting than rapid revenue growth.



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2TeoniI
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Max Q: Psyche(d)

In this issue: SpaceX launches NASA asteroid mission, news from Relativity Space and more. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/h6Kjrde via IFTTT

Max Q: Anomalous

Hello and welcome back to Max Q! Last week wasn’t the most successful for spaceflight missions. We’ll get into that a bit more below. In this issue: First up, a botched launch from Virgin Orbit… …followed by one from ABL Space Systems News from Rocket Lab, World View and more Virgin Orbit’s botched launch highlights shaky financial future After Virgin Orbit’s launch failure last Monday, during which the mission experienced an  “anomaly” that prevented the rocket from reaching orbit, I went back over the company’s financials — and things aren’t looking good. For Virgin Orbit, this year has likely been completely turned on its head. The company was aiming for three launches this year, but everything will remain grounded until the cause of the anomaly has been identified and resolved. It’s unclear how long that will take, but likely at least three months. Add this delay to Virgin’s dwindling cash reserves and you have a foundation that’s suddenly much shakier than before. ...

What’s Stripe’s deal?

Welcome to  The Interchange ! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up  here  so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There’s a lot of fintech news out there and it’s my job to stay on top of it — and make sense of it — so you can stay in the know. —  Mary Ann Stripe eyes exit, reportedly tried raising at a lower valuation The big news in fintech this week revolved around payments giant Stripe . On January 26, my Equity Podcast co-host and overall amazingly talented reporter Natasha Mascarenhas and I teamed up to write about how Stripe had set a 12-month deadline for itself to go public, either through a direct listing or by pursuin...