CROWDED/VALILLY INvestment Thesis

Crowded was is a company that has gone through multiple pivots, originally beginning as a marketplace for gig-economy workers. This business model was made successful by companies such as Fiverr and Upwork. However, it is a difficult one to execute with the cost of user acquisition being high on both sides of the marketplace. The company eventually pivoted to an enterprise HR solution with talent acquisition as the focus. Crowded was originally founded by three people that had experience in the ad-tech and consumer segments.

The recruiting process for finding, acquiring and onboarding talent is cumbersome and expensive. The traditional methods and tools for navigating this process are recruiters and applicant tracking systems (ATS). Crowded empowers HR professionals within organizations to make better and faster decisions about candidates, mitigating the need for external recruiters. For small high-growth organizations that don’t yet have an ATS or a structured onboarding process, the Crowded Recruit platform provides a solution for them. Through the various iterations of product development, the underlying strength of the company emerged as an AI-based talent acquisition matching and ranking process.

The Elevate team working in conjunction with the Board, took on a leadership and management position in the company. Over the past two years, Elevate has helped shape product, strategy, platform and marketing initiatives. At the end of 2019, the company rebranded to “Valilly Talent Intelligence.”

Through its various evolutions, Crowded has evolved to become a talent management platform. The company works with hiring managers and senior officers of small to midsized companies. The problem they have, is they can’t secure the talent they need to advance their business. The reason is… they are stuck with hiring methods that simply don’t work. This leaves them feeling anxious and overwhelmed. The Crowded Approach to solving this, has three elements: 1) Identify the best candidates; 2) Rank – by assigning confidence scores; and 3) curate  candidate data for ongoing use.

Crowded has the largest sources of candidates. The company provides the fastest responses to both hiring managers and fastest responses to candidates. Crowded offers significant savings vs the cost of using recruiters. By using Crowded, clients can save up to 80% in both cost and time to recruit a candidate. It is these factors that made Crowded a compelling opportunity for Elevate to invest and participate.