Recruitment & HR Investment
Gen Z freelance platform Passionfruit has closed a £3.6million seed round from big names in venture capital and angels from major tech companies.
Based in London with a base in Portugal, it claims to be the first platform to give young adults a real choice between corporate employment and self-employment by recreating and improving the range of end-to-end services that offers full-time work.
The round, co-led by firstminute Capital and Playfair, saw participation from FJ Labs, Portfolio Ventures, Atomico, Accel and Notion.
Angels such as Mandeep Singh (Trouva), Xav Collins (Turo) and executives from Stripe, Airbnb and Workday also joined.
It follows a December pre-seed round of $700,000 led by Playfair.
Currently, a career as a freelancer is mostly limited to those with pre-existing networks and support structures, which means the overall pool of high-quality talent available to companies is unnecessarily limited.
Today, freelancers spend at least 45% of their time trying to find new clients, managing administrative burdens and improving their skills. Having to manage everything on their own means that many simply cannot afford to leave the full-time corporate cushion, where work, learning and compensation are centrally managed, even if they have enough of their work.
Passionfruit aims to radically transform the everyday experience of being a freelancer. Rather than scrambling for work, managing finances in an Excel spreadsheet, and feeling isolated, Passionfruit specialists receive information tailored to their skills and interests, monitor their annual income, and become part of a close-knit community through a quasi-peer mentorship program.
In Crypto: Minecraft bans NFTs, says they’re “against its values”
Although the initial bridgehead was marketers, over time they would expand into adjacent disciplines to meet customer demand.
“Instead of yet another freelancing platform that simply digitizes transactions that could and would happen without it, Passionfruit brings a whole new workforce to the market,” said Raffi Salama, co-founder.
“Gen Z will make up 27% of the global workforce by 2025 and it has been so inspiring to watch our specialists say goodbye to the Victorian 9-5 structure and start a new life working their own way. terms.
“Best of all, companies love working with them this way. Smart companies are realizing that there is a more flexible and efficient way to manage their relationship with talent. »
Fellow co-founder Issah Abdul-Moomin added: “To date, freelancing has been the preserve of a select group of people who access work through private offline networks. We are here to make it viable for the masses.
“Of course, we’re not saying that no one will ever work full time again, just that there are tens of millions of young people who would prefer to lead their working lives differently. We exist to give them that choice.
The CEO of “Rare” Tapoly plans to increase its workforce fivefold
The duo met through Sir Martin Sorrell’s WPP Fellowship scheme. Since then, Salama has been part of the launch team for David Beckham and Softbank’s new MLS franchise, Inter Miami, while Abdul-Moomin has become director of corporate development at Group M, the largest company in media buying in the world.
The startup has already gained hundreds of specialists and customers across the EU, UK and US.
Passionfruit will use the new funding to expand its product offering and extend its market reach deeper into increasingly larger businesses in Europe and North America.
Henrik Wetter Sanchez, Director of Playfair Capital, commented: “Raffi and Issah have an incredible ability to look like they’re working in the future. Being two steps ahead in your thinking and execution is the hallmark of founders who can’t just keep up, but lead the category-defining changes in industries.
“I couldn’t be more convinced by their vision for an independent Gen Z workforce that urgently needs a demand-driven digital home to work, learn and earn.
“I’m thrilled to see Playfair triple in this round and continue to build Passionfruit with this team.”
Comments are closed.