London-based Oyster, a HR platform for globally distributed companies enables hiring anywhere across the world with reliable, compliant payroll and impressive local benefits.
£15M funding
Now, the London, UK and San Francisco, CA-based company just announced that it has raised $20M (nearly £15M) Series A funding in a round led by Emergence Capital. Renowned SaaS investor Jason Green was also a part of it, who has previously led investment rounds in Zoom, Salesforce, Bill.com, and others as lead investor. Further, Slack Fund and Connect Ventures also took part in the financing round. The investment will accelerate Oyster’s rapid growth and support its mission of enabling people to work from anywhere.
Sharing his thoughts on raising funding during the pandemic, Jack Mardack, co-founder at Oyster tells UKTN, “We plan to apply the funds to the expansion of the platform and to growing the team so we can pursue our mission. It is a sign of the times that we were able to fundraise during the pandemic, all on Zoom. We would want to encourage entrepreneurs to worry less about having to move to a major tech city like SF in order to fundraise or create a company in the future. The world has changed and distributed companies that have shed the office paradigm will enjoy “superpowers” vs their office-laden competitors.”
This investment comes just a year after its seed funding round worth $4.2M (nearly £3.1M). The fresh fund will be used to accelerate the rapid growth of the HR platform and support its mission to let people work from anywhere.
Now, there are massive opportunities for companies to attract and retain talent from across the world and SaaS companies that make this possible.
Oyster’s SaaS HR platform supports the changing requirements of HR in the remote working trend that exists right now. It does remove the need to deal with local payroll and employee complexity. It speeds up the traditional international hiring and onboarding and provides robust benefits for employees and contractors. All these can be done from a single SaaS platform.
“We invest in people who change the way the world works,” said Emergence Founder Jason Green. “Remote work is here now and here to stay. Oyster makes hiring and onboarding the best remote talent in the world easy, fast, and efficient. Oyster has the best team and product to dominate this emerging category in the future of work and we are thrilled to be partnering with them.”
Tony Jamous, Oyster CEO said, “The move to work from anywhere is good news to the world, despite a gloomy 2020. We have aligned our mission with our growth, and it is paying off. We were fortunate to be able to raise our Seed and Series A during the pandemic, remotely.”
Jason Spinell, Director of the Slack Fund said, “At the Slack Fund, we’re focused on investing in the next wave of software companies building the future of work. Oyster is addressing the challenges that come with employing a globally distributed team, enabling companies to expand their potential talent pool and hire based on what matters most to them. The ability to hire from anywhere is necessary to embrace a remote-first future.”
Added Conner Forrest, Senior Research Analyst at 451 Research, part of S&P Global Marketing Intelligence said, “Companies are beginning to think more strategically about global talent, but they first need fundamental enablement to hire globally. As long-term and permanent remote work policies grow, and companies consider eliminating physical office space due to COVID-19, the need for tools that support a mass-scale shift to remote work is great.”
Pandemic crisis facilitates growth
This global HR tech platform established by Jack Mardack and Tony Jamous addresses many wrongs in the modern society including lack of opportunity for career progression, lack of work-life balance, and unequal distribution of talent and wealth. Eventually, it bridges the geographic gap between talented individuals and job opportunities.
Notably, the rapid acceleration of distributed working during the COVID-19 pandemic. Oyster has grown quickly as it lets companies manage growing and geographically distributed workforces in over 100 countries. On this Mardack adds, “We’re about 30 people. We should double or triple in 2021. We are keen to broaden our own talent horizons and connect with people from diverse communities.”