Qwick, a Phoenix-based on-demand staffing company that connects service industry professionals with hospitality shifts in real-time closed a recent fundraising round oversubscribed at $1.3M.
The fundraise includes investment from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, (Revolution is the DC-based investment firm founded by former CEO of AOL, Steve Case), UA Venture Capital, Moving Capital, Desert Angels, and XG Ventures.
Qwick connects hospitality professionals with food and beverage shifts in real time. Workers provide their work experience and availability, businesses post shifts that need to be filled, and Qwick texts workers available shifts that fit their skills and schedule. On this easy-to-use platform, shifts are filled in minutes versus days.
Jamie Baxter, co-founder, and CEO of Qwick closed this fundraise alongside team members Blaine Light (co-founder and COO of Qwick), and Chris Loeffler (co-founder and advisor of Qwick).
Now that the fundraise is complete, the company has plans to hire five additional people in the next month . Additionally, Qwick is expanding to four additional cities in 2019, including San Diego in January. The founders plan to focus their growth efforts in engineering, operations, and business development teams.
Qwick went from company formation to completing this fundraise in just over nine months as part of the Coplex venture builder program, which partners with industry experts to start high-growth tech companies.
“Qwick is changing the way people work by connecting food and beverage professionals with businesses to fill shifts in real-time. We are helping the professionals on our platform earn the money they need with the freedom and flexibility of managing their own schedules. Businesses are now able to fill shifts with pre-vetted and highly rated professionals at a moments notice without the exorbitant fees charged by traditional staffing agencies,” said Jamie Baxter, CEO of Qwick.
This is the first on-demand staffing platform to pay users in real-time. This feature, alongside many others, have generated 4,600 workers on the platform to date. Additionally, Qwick has partnerships with over 140 companies such as hotels, catering companies, event venues, restaurants, and bars.
“Jamie has deep industry expertise in the human capital management space, which has made him the best person to innovate from within. We’ve loved working with the Qwick team through the program and can’t wait to see what they’ll do with the new financing,” said Zach Ferres, CEO of Coplex.