Propel, a firm with offices in Berlin and Lagos that creates talent pipelines for communities, has received a seed investment of €2.5 million ($2.74 million).
Additionally, the business assists multinational corporations in reducing the risk associated with hiring distant workers from developing economies.
The fundraising round was led by Amsterdam-based “No Such Ventures,” with participation from APX, Golden Egg Check, and Future of Learning Fund.
Established in 2020 by Sunkanmi Ola, Seun Owolabi, and Abel Agoi, Propel plans to use the financing to roll out and adopt its community-as-a-service platform and earn €1 million in community revenue by Q4 2020.
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Over the past three years, the pandemic has been blamed for global remote work and international corporations are recruiting local workers to cut costs.
Despite a major reset since mid-2022 that has seen tech companies lay off more than 200,000 employees and a push for partial to full return-to-office requests by employers, the open talent economy will remain important, especially in Europe, where the population is aging, leaving a gaping hole that realistically needs remote talent outside the region.
Africa has the youngest population in the world, and online learning, STEM courses, and communities, which Propel focuses on, will help grow its IT talent pool. After a year of placing local tech talent in retail and automotive companies like Porsche and Mercedes, Propel noticed that these talent were connected to a community like developer groups, talent incubators, and training schools, which changed the startup’s focus (Propel claims that 8 out of 10 people in emerging markets belong to a community). Thus, community-centered.
Speaking on community building in the tech talent space, Propel CEO Ola, said: “we realised communities are the building blocks of any tech ecosystem, particularly emerging market ecosystems, but nobody has been building for communities and the distribution layer for the tech talent pipeline had been missing.”
He added that “most tech communities build their pool and upskill, but the last mile where you convert these talents to jobs is missing and communities struggle in that regard.”
Propel connects tech talent to a network of organisations with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements and open positions. Propel taps into these tech communities’ broad talent pools in software development, design, data science, no-code, and other digital transformation skills in exchange for last-mile infrastructure.
Global companies can use this “community-as-a-service” pipeline. Propel has collaborated with Orange Telecoms, Stepstone, and a variety of European businesses and scaleups on hiring, community hackathons, and DEI activities.
By working with service providers, IT talent from these communities can access healthcare, workstations, and financial services including loans and asset finance.
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Propel’s achievements
The two-year-old talent matching startup delivers this “value stack” as an all-in-one platform to over 100 tech communities in 15 African countries, varied in region, gender, and tech stack. SheCodeAfrica, Ingressive for Good, Niyo Network, Datafest, People In Product, Friends of Figma, and numerous Google Developer Groups have just under 400,000 members. Ola said the company’s objective is to develop to 500 communities with 1 million members across the board in 2024 and create millions in income for these communities through commissions from employment, rewards, and financing on the platform.
Ola said Propel gets a portion of its hiring and placement fees and rebates. “If a community member gets placed, the community gets a bit of that revenue to add to their coffers. So we’re also creating new financial revenue streams for communities that did not exist before, where they always have to depend on just grants or sponsorships. We’re supercharging communities and we’re providing rockets for them to be able to grow to the next level,” the CEO noted.
The 25-person team, distributed across Amsterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Lagos, London and Nairobi, has placed more than 550 people into job roles across multiple countries. To date, the company, backed by Google Black Founders in Europe and raised over €3 million, will look to scale its community platform, launch new client offerings and deepen its ecosystem of communities going forward.
Sophie Heijenberg, an investor at No Such Ventures, speaking on the investment, said: “Propel’s unique, community-focused approach to driving the open talent economy sets them apart and is a solid addition to the Future of Work category. We’re bullish about their roadmap and super-excited to partner with them on this growth journey.”
