SEATTLE, May 15, 2019 — Karat, the leader in conducting technical interviews on behalf of companies, today announced that it has raised $28 million in funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners and 8VC. Karat will deploy the Series “B” financing to globally to scale its category-defining solution and its community of Interview Engineers. The company will also invest in R&D to leverage its robust body of structured-interview intelligence to continuously improve its highly predictive and fair technical interviews for hiring software engineers.
“Tiger’s investment in Karat is a watershed moment for the profession and science of Interview Engineering,” said Mohit Bhende, co-founder of Karat. “Just like Back-End engineers do Back-End work and Front-End engineers do Front-End work, companies need Interview Engineers who focus on interviewing with consistency, rigor, and empathy. As every company becomes software-driven, we are seeing the demand for Interview Engineering grow exponentially. Karat is uniquely positioned to address this universal trend and set the gold standard for technical interviewing. In 2019 alone, Karat’s clients will gain over one million engineering hours by accelerating hiring and unlocking developer productivity.”
Karat’s Series “B” is a milestone for the creation of the Interview Engineering job category. Interview Engineers are experienced software developers who conduct live first-round technical interviews on behalf of companies. They are equipped with Karat’s interviewing infrastructure and data-informed best practices from the company’s structured-interview dataset that ensure consistency and quality. Beyond interviewing, clients are able to access Karat’s global dataset of structured-interview intelligence, which delivers never-before-seen hiring analytics and talent-market intelligence to executives.
“We tripled the number of interviews Karat conducted last year and will triple again this year,” said Jeffrey Spector, co-founder of Karat. “With each interview we conduct, Karat is redefining the expectations of what an interview should be. Candidates are now able to interview 24/7, with a professional Interview Engineer, and have an opportunity to redo their interview with us if they felt like they could have performed better. Companies can now pinpoint the candidates who will excel in their environment and finally have the reliable hiring data and benchmarking needed to make strategic C-suite level decisions. With Tiger’s investment, we will double-down on delivering exceptional candidate experiences and providing deep strategic insights to organizations worldwide.”
Karat has emerged as a mission-critical strategic partner for its clients, including Roblox, InVision, and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Organizations working with Karat see an average 60 percent reduction in time spent on interviewing and increase hiring goal attainment by 20 percent. Moreover, 95 percent of candidates report a positive interviewing experience.
Trish Lincoln, principal program manager at Citrix said, “We introduced Karat into our hiring process and saw our year-over-year hiring numbers nearly double. Karat Interview Engineers provide a fantastic first-round technical interview experience that is consistent and makes candidates feel at ease. By the time they come in for their onsite interview with our engineers they are comfortable and able to perform their best.”
“We learned about Karat from several portfolio companies who really like their solution. We believe the Company helps their customers identify great engineering candidates more efficiently. We are excited to partner with Mo, Jeff, and the entire Karat team,” said Scott Shleifer, partner at Tiger Global Management.
Started in 2014, Karat is led by Mohit Bhende, who was formerly an executive at Microsoft, and Jeffrey Spector, who was most recently Chief of Staff to Melinda Gates at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They recognized that interviewing software engineering job candidates is an essential capability in a software-driven economy. However, interviewing represents a costly tax on developer productivity, and most candidates dislike the process of interviewing. Bhende and Spector founded Karat to tackle this problem head-on by establishing the profession and science of Interview Engineering and bringing highly predictive and fair interviewing to software-driven companies worldwide.
About Karat
Karat has established the category of Interview Engineering. The company conducts technical interviews on behalf of organizations hiring software engineers. Karat does this through a community of Interview Engineers who are equipped with Karat’s interviewing infrastructure, battle-tested questions, and data-informed best practices. The result is highly predictive and fair interviews at scale. Karat has amassed the largest, most robust dataset of structured-interview intelligence to produce never-before-seen hiring analytics. Founded in 2014, Karat is a privately held and venture-funded company based in Seattle. The company has raised over $41 million from Tiger Global Management, Norwest Venture Partners, 8VC, and from CXOs at Glassdoor, Activision, MuleSoft, General Assembly, YearUp, and Creative Artists Agency.
About Tiger Global Management
Tiger Global Management, is an investment firm that deploys capital globally. The firm’s fundamentally oriented investments focus primarily on the global internet, software, financial technology, consumer and industrial sectors. The private equity strategy has a ten-year investment horizon and targets growth-oriented private companies. Such investments have included Spotify, Harry’s, Warby Parker, Peloton, JD.com, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yandex, Mail.ru Group, Despegar, Ola and Flipkart. The public equity efforts emphasize deep due diligence on individual companies and long-term secular themes. Tiger Global Management, LLC, was founded in 2001 and is based in New York with affiliate offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangalore and Melbourne.