The mantra in the startup world is that you are only as good as your team. However, companies that are scaling fast invest extraordinary amounts in any SaaS tool that will optimize their company’s and team’s performance but often overlook the actual hiring process. BrightHire is an HR tech startup that’s launching its intelligent interview management platform that serves as a real-time assistant during interviews that ensures interviews are being conducted with a company’s goals, values, and needs in mind. BrightHire’s interview assistant can be integrated directly into software that companies are already using for candidate interviews like Zoom and the platform records, transcribes, and analyzes all interviews, providing a robust data set that provides transparency around a company’s hiring process and allows for collaboration in hiring through HR stakeholders.
AlleyWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Ben Sesser to learn more about how BrightHire is thriving in the age of remote work, the company’s future plans, and recent funding round.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised a $3M seed round led by Flybridge Capital along with participation from Ground Up Ventures, RTP Ventures, J Ventures, and Haystack, Silas Capital, Rabil Ventures, and a number of angels, entrepreneurs, and operators.
Tell us about the product or service that BrightHire offers.
BrightHire is an intelligent interview platform that addresses the most common shortcomings in hiring: inconsistent interviews, misaligned hiring teams, and biased hiring decisions.
By bringing modern technology into the heart of the hiring process, BrightHire helps teams make sound, fair, and fast hiring decisions, every time.
Our platform integrates an Interview Assistant into common video platforms, like Zoom, to help recruiters and interviewers run more structured, consistent, and focused interviews in real-time. It also records and transcribes hiring conversations so interviewers and teams can revisit key moments, align faster, and make hiring decisions based on real evidence. And BrightHire analyzes interviews across an organization’s entire hiring process, illuminating trends and patterns so hiring teams can replicate what works and spot and address blind spots.
What inspired the start of BrightHire?
We founded BrightHire because we saw a massive gap between how important hiring is and how poorly it’s often done.
Hiring drives the future of every business and has an enormous impact on society, but it’s stuck in the stone age: pen and paper, frustrating games of telephone, gut and recollections, and a total black box. I saw this firsthand while scaling up my last company, and Teddy saw it working with talent acquisition leaders from some of the world’s largest companies at LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, nearly all the new HR tech was being built to automate or dehumanize hiring, not actually support the people in the heart of the process. It seemed obvious that technology could empower people to be so much better at this incredibly important job, which would have a massive impact on companies and candidates.
How is BrightHire different?
BrightHire is the first platform built to power the human side of hiring.
Whereas an applicant tracking system (ATS) is a data source of truth for reporting and process management, BrightHire is designed to transform the actual moments that matter in the hiring process.
We bring structure directly into hiring conversations, concrete evidence into every hiring decision, and produce new and invaluable insight into what is actually going on in the heart of the process: interviews.
And unlike most recruiting platforms, it’s designed with entire hiring teams in mind: it enables seamless collaboration across recruiters, hiring managers, interviewers, and talent leaders, helping them work together to make better, less biased decisions.
What market does BrightHire target and how big is it?
Every company in the world can use BrightHire, and there are applications for BrightHire in every kind of recruiting process, from high-volume to executive hiring.
We’re building a context layer for every hiring process that integrates with the system of record, illuminating the “what” and transforming the process in profound ways. By transforming every hiring process we’re playing in a market that easily supports businesses doing hundreds of millions, if not billions, in annual revenue.
What’s your business model?
BrightHire is an enterprise SaaS platform. Companies that adopt BrightHire can immediately roll it out to every recruiter and interviewer across the organization.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
COVID-19 has been a roller coaster for the entire recruiting industry, but ultimately it’s been a big tailwind for us.
In the course of several months recruiting teams have been pushed through several years worth of change and innovation – particularly with respect to remote hiring. Today, “onsites” are held over Zoom and candidate debriefs are happening on Teams and Slack. Talent leaders are quickly recognizing that their hiring teams don’t have the same kind of modern collaboration tools used in every other part of business, and that gap is more important to fill now than ever before.
As a company, we shifted from being a solely New York-based company to remote optional. We’ve used BrightHire to run our own remote hiring process, and it allows us to make fast, aligned, and confident hiring decisions even without meeting someone face-to-face. Every new role we’ve opened is now remote-optional.
What was the funding process like?
Hiring is something that nearly everyone has experience with and most would agree is broken in many ways. So when we started to share what we were building with friends and investors, a lot of people “got” the problem right away. So the big remaining questions are always around willingness-to-pay and whether the team can execute.
Jeff Bussgang, General Partner and Cofounder at Flybridge Capital, has known my cofounder Teddy for many years. So when Teddy shared with Jeff what we were working on, he leaned in. Jeff ended up having us speak with a number of Talent Acquisition leaders in his network to vet the concept, and they immediately saw huge potential for how it could transform hiring. After pitching the Flybridge partnership, they showed tremendous conviction and stepped in to lead the round.
We were also fortunate to be introduced to many other great investors and angels who participated in the round, and who have subsequently been extremely helpful. A lot of people gave us invaluable guidance, support, and intros during the process.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Despite the growing number of “future of work” investors, a lot of folks are hesitant to invest HR tech because, from the outside, it can seem like a crowded market. Thankfully, we were able to connect with several investors who understand the HR tech landscape and how BrightHire can fill a gaping hole – and others who simply had conviction that transforming how every company in the world hires is a massive opportunity.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Investors at the seed stage are making a big bet on the team because at the end of the day businesses are built by people, not spreadsheets – which is why fixing hiring is such an important problem. Teddy and I have spent 20+ years delivering HR technology and insights to some of the world’s preeminent organizations and scaling high-growth tech companies. We’re both deeply passionate about the problem. In many ways, our backgrounds were a series of experiences that naturally led to founding BrightHire.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
In the next 6 months, we’re going to be doubling the size of our team and investing to accelerate our product roadmap. We already integrate with tools like Gsuite, MSFT 365, Greenhouse, and Zoom, but we’ll be investing to further integrate into the modern tools of work, unlocking a new level of hiring collaboration and efficiency.
We’ll also be investing to deliver powerful insights based on the unique data we collect at the heart of the hiring process that reveal how companies can improve hiring practices – specifically around ensuring a fair and inclusive process.
On the commercial side, we’re continuing to scale quickly. We’ll be investing to build out our client-facing organization so we can partner deeply with our clients to fundamentally change the way they build talented and diverse teams.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
If you have early customers, over-invest in them. Understand their pain points, go above and beyond, and find opportunities to be helpful. There are always a few key early customer relationships that get every successful business off the ground.
If you have early customers, over-invest in them. Understand their pain points, go above and beyond, and find opportunities to be helpful. There are always a few key early customer relationships that get every successful business off the ground.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
There is tremendous momentum in the business right now. What we’re building is really resonating in a time of remote hiring and a focus on ensuring a fair and inclusive hiring process. We’re doubling down so we can run faster and deliver value to the fantastic new clients we’re bringing on.
What’s your favorite outdoor dining restaurant in NYC
I haven’t been back in New York consistently in a few months, but a restaurant I miss is Hudson Clearwater by our office in the West Village. They have a beautiful backyard.
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