London-based startup Personably has raised £500,000 to help employees settle into a new company quicker in hope of helping employers retain them for longer.
Founded in 2016 by Katerina Pascoulis and Lewis Blackwood, Personably intends to support scaleups which are rapidly increasing their headcount and need to make employee onboarding more efficient.
Onboarding refers to the process of integrating a new employee into the organisation and its culture by letting them acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviours to become effective.
Personably’s software aims to simplify the process. It automates manual tasks like setting up accounts, scheduling training and induction meetings, intended to allow managers to focus on creating the context the new starter needs to succeed at their job.
After bootstrapping the product for the first 12 months, Personably closed its Seed round with investment from Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital and angel investments from Matt Robinson (founder of GoCardless, and Nested) and Caroline Sage (Founder at Kea Consultants).
The funding will be used to grow the team, build out new features on the platform and look into how the service can work for larger corporates who are hiring at scale.
The founders met at the University of Cambridge before Pascoulis joined Crowdcube and Blackwood joined the GoCardless API support team.
Pascoulis said: “We knew it wasn’t just startups either – traditional banks, the government, national retailers. Everyone we spoke to had their own story about something that went wrong in their first week that had stuck with them.”
Current users of Personably include GoCardless, Nested and Monzo, with having ‘onboarded’ 204 people through the platform since they signed up in April 2017.
Maria Campbell, head of people at Monzo, praised the company: “We’ve been able to dramatically improve the new starter experience with Personably. We can intelligently schedule a full suite of induction sessions, from a first-day breakfast with your manager through to meeting the founders, getting introductions to teams, ensuring all training is complete and that regular feedback sessions happen right through the probation period.
“It’s a vastly better experience for our new joiner – the feedback has been overwhelming positive, and our retention rates remain really high,” she added.
To monitise, Personably charge customers a monthly subscription. The pricing varies on the volume of hires that company is making.
Check out our UK tech investment tracker for the latest industry deals.