Workwise, a recruiting firm based in Karlsruhe, Germany has raised €12M in a Series A fundraising round. Two seasoned investors, LEA Partners in Karlsruhe and Armira Growth in Munich, have participated in the funding round to enable the company’s next expansion steps.
The new funds will now be used largely for faster scaling, product development, and staff expansion. The team is expected to increase from 140 to 200 personnel by the end of 2022, and then to 300 the following year.
Workwise, founded in 2015 by Martin Trenkle and Jannik Keller, has been self-funded to this point and has been profitable on its own. Workwise’s revenue is derived from referral payments. Corporate customers pay nothing if they solely use the site to manage their vacancies and then post them on job boards like Stepstone and Indeed. If the start-up handles the full recruiting process, including marketing the advertisement and applicant management, it will incur expenditures – but only if someone is hired.
Martin Trenkle, CEO of Workwise, stated, “We’ve gotten to where we are now thanks to successful bootstrapping and consistent growth over the previous few years. We’ve been having a fruitful conversation with LEA Partners and Armira Growth for quite some time. Now we want to take the next step in our expansion and are thrilled to have such experienced partners on board, who will offer us new money and know-how to help us achieve a new level as a company and position Workwise as the thought leader in successful recruiting.”
Last year, the Karlsruhe company launched this service. Workwise was previously only a job board. The service will be expanded with the extra funds, and the staff of around 140 people will be enhanced.
“We have known Martin and Jannik for three years now – it is incredible what the two of them and the entire Workwise team have built up over the previous years without investors,” says Nils Seele, Principal at LEA Partners. Workwise solves the difficulties of SMEs by providing tech-enabled recruiting. We are quite enthusiastic about this concept, and the 3,000 Workwise clients speak for themselves.”
