Colombian job platform HoyTrabajas raised $5 million in a seed investment round. The investors include Newtype Ventures, Arash Ferdowsi, co-founder of Dropbox; Rebel Fund, Starling Ventures, SCM Advisors, AngelHub, New Ventures & Botnar Foundation, Flucas Ventures, Kube Ventures, Magic Fund, Share Capital, Dragon Capital, Centauri Capital, K20 Fund, Solid Ventures. The job platform also received support from some angel investors such as Alan Rutledge, James Park, founder & CEO of Fitbit; Roger Dickey, founder and CEO of Made Renovation; Alex Galvez, founder & CEO of 99 startups; Abhishek Kankaniy, co-founder and CEO of Dyte; and Daniel Bilbao, co-founder and CEO of Truora.
This brings to $5.5 million the capital raised since the platform was founded, after a pre-seed round in which angel investors and the Rockstart accelerator participated.
HoyTrabajas’ digital platform connects companies with available job openings with people seeking employment in operational positions (not professional). Their main differentiator, as they explain, is that they are committed to giving people feedback on their job application processes, so they can improve their profile and have more opportunities to find a job.
HoyTrabajas was founded in Bogota in 2018 by Ruben Cordoba, Sebastian Arce and Vladimir Guzman. They reach this new stage after participating in Y Combinator, the most relevant startup accelerator in the world and receiving backing from Owl Ventures, a venture capital firm that has previously invested in Ubits and Genially.
According to Ruben Cordoba, this capital injection represents an enormous opportunity to impact thousands of lives in Latin America, especially in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. He also points out that in 2022, they expect to help around 42,000 people, that is, the equivalent of the entire Atanasio Girardot Stadium.
Latin America is the epicenter of development work, given the market opportunity: 3 out of every 4 workers are operative, while in the United States only 1 out of every 7 is. Moreover, it is one of the regions where people take the longest time to find a job (40 days) and companies take the longest time to find employees (25 days).