Microsoft, Google execs back $5m raise of HK dev platform

US- and Hong Kong-headquartered GitStart, a software engineering service provider, has raised US$5 million in a seed round led by Neo, with Microsoft tech chief Kevin Scott and Google vice president Parisa Tabriz participating.

GitStart team / Photo credit: GitStart

The service provider plans to hire 50 employees for its headquarters, on top of targeting “thousands” of engineers across Asia with a focus on Nepal, Pakistan, India, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

Gitstart hires junior software engineers to work under clients in need of tech manpower. It has a peer-review system to help improve engineers’ work and lets them submit codes to their employers more quickly.

It also removes interpersonal friction between clients and engineers by coursing all communication through the platform. The bot processes coding assignments, eliminating cultural, accent, and discrimination issues between the two sides.

The platform was founded in 2019 by its CEO Hamza Zia, a former software engineer at Microsoft.

“When I started recruiting for my team as a staff engineer, I quickly realized there were millions of talented engineers around the world, but we couldn’t hire them because – like me – they were born in the wrong country. GitStart is changing that,” said Zia.

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Other investors in the round include:

• Andela co-founder Iyinoluwa Aboyeji
• Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi
• Former Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer
• Airbnb co-founder Nate Blecharczyk
• Instagram vice president Maria Zhang
• Circle CTO Li Fan
• Circle vice president Yongsheng Wu
• Robinhood vice president Surabhi Gupta
• Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo
• GitHub technical advisor Omoju Miller
• Gigster founder Debo Olaosebikan
• BloomTech founder Austen Allred
• Replit CEO Amjad Masad