NEW YORK, June 28, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — Crowded.com, the network for Verified Candidates in the hourly and on-demand workforce, today announced it successfully closed a $3.3 Million seed funding round led by Tokalon Ventures, an early- and mid-stage boutique venture capital firm. Additional investors include ARC Angel Fund, EarlyStage.nyc Fund, Gambit Ventures, and an angel investor. Crowded.com is led by serial entrepreneurs who successfully exited Offermobi and Human Demand. The angel investors who participated in the founders’ previous exits, also participated in this round of financing for Crowded.com.
Crowded.com is a mobile-first candidate network where hourly and on-demand workers can maintain their employment profile, get verified, engage in training and assessments, explore potential career paths, and get matched to hourly jobs and on-demand gigs. Crowded.com enables hourly workers to “Get verified and Get hired.”
This investment by the partners in Tokalon Ventures follows on their earlier participation in Quidsi (Diapers.com, et al), Jet.com, as well as other noteworthy transactions. Crowded.com will use the funding to further accelerate the expansion of its network of workers and increase staff headcount. In order to shape the direction of its product, currently with 50,000 workers in private beta, Crowded.com hosted hundreds of workers at meetups at its Company headquarters. The discussions were informative for both the workers and Crowded.com, who incorporated the worker feedback directly into the development of its technology and product.
“Crowded.com has clearly grasped the nature of how the workforce of tomorrow will be increasingly an on-demand population of highly mobile employees. Simplifying the process of pairing successful candidates with employers becomes a growing challenge in this ever-widening environment, and we at Tokalon Ventures believe that the mobile-based platform being developed by Crowded.com will quickly become the tool of choice to speed the interaction between the hourly and on-demand workforce and those companies searching for them,” said Ken Salamone, one of Tokalon’s founding partners.
“We are always searching for truly differentiated businesses in high-growth markets with outstanding leadership, and Crowded connects on all fronts,” said Mike Kelley, Managing Partner, ARC Angel Fund. “Crowded is an innovative company with a proven management team with highly relevant experience. Given our past successes investing with this management team, the investment decision was about as easy as it gets.”
“EarlyStage.nyc Fund is happy to be investing in the team at Crowded.com,” said Nick Jekogian, Lead investor, EarlyStage.nyc Fund. “They have made money for our investors in the past and this idea is a much larger opportunity. The on-demand workforce is growing substantially and Crowded.com is our first investment in the market.”
“Gambit Ventures seeks out founders who are agile in their discovery of product/market fit – which Howie and the rest of the Crowded management team have shown consistently,” said Lev Ekster, GP of Gambit Ventures. “Their focus on an under-served and outdated market ripe for disruption presents enormous opportunity. We are excited to see how the trajectory of the on-demand economy aligns with the modernization the Crowded platform brings it.”
“The Crowded Team has continued to execute and we are pleased to be working with Tokalon on making Crowded a huge success,” said Joseph Saviano, Crowded.com Board Member and angel investor in Crowded. “As an investor and member of the Board for both of the management team’s previous ventures, Offermobi and Human Demand, I am confident they can produce another successful outcome for investors and I look forward to helping them achieve it.”
“We are honored to have such strong investors around our table who believe in our team and vision,” said Howard Schwartz, CEO & Co-Founder, Crowded.com. “This funding will allow us to accelerate our roadmap, further develop our technology and help match our workers to the most relevant hourly and on-demand jobs.”
About Crowded.com
Crowded.com is a mobile-first candidate network where hourly and on-demand workers “Get Verified and Get Hired.” Workers maintain their Crowded.com profile, get verified, engage in training and assessments, explore potential career paths, and get hired by the hourly and on-demand companies that best fit the candidate.