Jibe knows something about attracting some of the best talent on the planet. A leading recruitment technology platform, the company just announced that it has raised $20 million in a Series C financing round led by new investor, SAP Ventures. Jibe’s existing investors, Polaris Partners, DFJ, Gotham Ventures, Longworth Venture Partners and Thrive Capital, also participated and SAP Ventures’ Doug Higgins will be joining Jibe’s Board of Directors.
Jibe has raised a total of $37 million in venture funding to date.
A pioneer in mobile recruiting, Jibe introduced the first complete mobile job application experience for job seekers in 2012. Today, Jibe offers a comprehensive recruitment marketing platform developed to empower organizations to improve the candidate experience through the entire hiring funnel.
The company will use the new investment to strengthen its position as a leading provider of innovative enterprise Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions to the global human capital management (HCM) market, specifically by growing its software engineering, customer success and global sales teams. More than 70 companies worldwide currently use Jibe to overcome complicated recruiting challenges. Through the first quarter of 2014, annual recurring revenue for the company grew 289% and contract bookings increased by 219%.
Founder and CEO, Joe Essenfeld tells us more about the company, the plan moving forward, and his least favorite descriptives on resumes.
Tell us about your product.
Jibe develops HR and recruiting SaaS software for large, global enterprise companies to help modernize and streamline their hiring practices. We were the first company to provide a complete job application solution for mobile devices with our Mobile Apply offering. Our complete suite of Recruiting Intelligence™ recruitment marketing solutions features Recruiting Analytics™ at its core, the first real-time business intelligence solution developed specifically for corporate recruiters and hiring managers.
How is it different?
Most companies today are stuck with extremely inflexible, heavy, legacy applications in their recruiting and HR operations. Our offerings differ primarily by the fact that we place a strong emphasis and priority on the user experience in our software development, which enterprise solutions traditionally don’t offer. By creating mobile-first, lightweight and open products, we offer a superior UX for our clients and the job seekers they look to attract.
Founder and CEO
JIBE
We target companies within the global Fortune 1000, across all industries. Gartner sizes the current human capital management (HCM) software market at $8.2 billion.
What are the top three most popular positions that companies are presently trying to fill?
It varies from company to company of course, and because we have clients across a number of different industries, it’s tough to pin down. That said, just about every company is looking for tech talent of some kind, so software engineers is high on everyone’s list.
What’s your business model?
We are an enterprise SaaS company offering solutions on an annual subscription basis.
What was the funding process like?
This round was the most pleasant fundraising process we’ve had to date, in large part because we were able to come to market with a compelling story backed by financial results and success. We received significant inbound interest prior to going out, so we were able to select a strategic financial partner in SAP Ventures and get through the process quickly to minimize any distractions from the business.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Picking the right partner was probably the biggest challenge. This being such a crucial time for our company, it was more important than ever to have the right partner in place for us to grow to the next level. Once we got to know SAP Ventures, they made that decision easy for us.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
With a mobile-first approach and strong focus on user experience, we have developed innovative products that differentiate us from other HCM software providers, which caught the attention of the investor community. In addition, our lead investor, SAP Ventures, was impressed and encouraged by the significant traction and growth Jibe has achieved among the Fortune 1000. SAP Ventures spoke with many of our customers and were convinced about the superior experience Jibe delivers to our direct customers, as well as the candidates they serve.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We’ve managed to grow fast and scale the business accordingly, and we plan to continue at that pace. We have an extremely strong sales pipeline, so we’ll keep mining that and bringing on new customers while continuing to provide the high-touch level of support for our existing clients. From a product standpoint, we are currently developing new features for our existing solutions to make them even more powerful and have plans to introduce a few new offerings by year’s end.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Stay focused and don’t try to do too much. Once you figure out what your best at and what offerings will bring the most value to your target customers, concentrate on building those out and get the right people in place to support those efforts. Don’t focus on fundraising. If you create great products and make your customers happy, the funding will come.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Again, we’re going to continue to aggressively but intelligently grow by adding value to our current offerings and introducing new ones, all with the goal of enabling our existing and future clients to realize greater efficiencies and success in their talent acquisition practices.
Besides ‘guru’ and ‘ninja,’ which other descriptive would you like to see banned from resumes?
Rock star.
