Haystack Wins £1M In Funding To Revolutionise Tech Recruitment

Haystack, a Newcastle-based tech startup, today has announced that it has raised £1 million in seed funding. The funding enables Haystack to expand their territory reach and with advanced matching technology, help more companies and “techies” to hire smartly and find their ideal roles respectively. Mike Davies, Co-founder and COO said: “This is a really exciting time for Haystack. This funding will allow us to continue the incredible growth we’ve seen since we officially launched in November 2020”.

Founded in 2019, Haystack is a careers and insights marketplace focused on providing opportunities for those in data, design and engineering. The company’s algorithm matches roles with users based on a variety of touchpoints – to ensure employers aren’t provided with unsuitable candidates, and users aren’t shown unsuitable opportunities.

Haystack allows businesses to more efficiently hire for their tech teams by eliminating the need for, often expensive, tech recruiters and saving on resources internally. 

The idea behind Haystack attracted entrepreneur Dan Smyth, former Managing Director of Bede Gaming, now lead investor. Since the beginning of lockdown, Haystack has trebled its headcount and plans to continue this trajectory into the next year.

Haystack is now attracting interest from across the UK and is working in partnership with industry-leading companies including Sage, Hive and Bottlepay.

“Hiring technical rockstars is incredibly tough and often they’re not active on the job market. Haystack allows them to anonymously search, uncover and gain insight to their tech landscape.” said Dan Smyth, lead investor. “Half the users are just curious and not looking for a job and these are the techies that traditional recruitment methods will never find. This the most attractive area for me as an investor, creating a platform to help passionate techies find the most interesting work possible. It’s the foundation for any great software business.

“The founding team at Haystack is that hard-to-find mix of technical, digital and real-world expertise with a vision to disrupt a large industry, where the technologist is the star of the show.”

“Investing was a simple decision. It’s highly scalable, highly relevant and solves real-world problems for all users. Working together so far has been invigorating over lockdown, combining my passions for tech and scale-ups. They work out of my Gosforth office, along with Xbim and Aspect two businesses I’ve invested in recently.”

Part of the investment comes from the Government’s “Future Fund” scheme. The Future Fund was launched to support pre-revenue, pre-profit innovative businesses with loans of between £125,000 and £5m, following concerns that investors were reluctant to provide support due to the pandemic. The latest figures from the Government show that the North East received £25m in funding.

Co-founder and CEO, Chris Bone said: “We’ve been delighted with the success we’ve had so far. What has been absolutely clear from speaking to the tech community is the real appetite for a different and disruptive approach to tech talent attraction. 

“To have already secured 30 partnerships, including Sage, Hive and Bottlepay, gives me great confidence that our product scales across the U.K. and beyond.”