PLANTED Investment Thesis

Planted aims to simplify and improve the hiring process for non-technical roles at startups and large established organizations. The company focuses on roles in customer service, marketing, social media and operations where quality, junior talent needs to be quickly added. The business model incentivizes the right people being found for the job by implementing a trial period and a success fee only if employee stays for longer than one year.

The target market for Planted is high growth startups and it has gained traction from big brand companies such as Casper and Hearst. They are focused in a market segment which reflects the future of contract working in the non-technical sector, both for new entrants and temporary workers. The business model of contractual pricing / and converted annual pricing for permanent employees is good and simplifies the onboarding process for clients. As the company has further progressed, it has found a niche within the Staffing and temp-to-perm segments.

Planted uniquely positioned itself to focus on the contingent W2 market, where the direct competitors are tech-laggard staffing agencies. Hiring for temps is a costly and time-consuming process. Recruiters receive 250 applicants per posting, and the agency fee is 20-40% of salary. Planted help solve those problems through its matching algorithm which delivers pre-vetted candidates to companies faster. Its machine learning feedback loop is based on 200+ real hiring outcomes and proprietary on-the-job performance data, which makes the process smarter overtime. Planted have partnered with over 2000+ companies and have an 80% repeat usage rate, which again, proves the strong demand for its product.

The founders – Susan Zheng and Connie Wong both come from the recruiting world and have had experience dealing with the challenges of hiring. It is expensive, difficult to source talent and even harder to retain good quality talent. These are some of the areas where Planted aims to reduce the friction for clients.