Jobbatical gets $2m to help you ditch your cubicle, opens regional office in Singapore

The Jobbatical team. Photo credit: Jobbatical

Jobbatical, an online platform that connects job seekers to short-term employment opportunities anywhere in the world, announced today it has raised a funding round worth US$2 million. The round was led by New York-based venture capital firm Union Square Ventures. London-based VC LocalGlobe also participated, along with existing investor Smartcap.

(Update, 4/3: This story has been updated with comments by Jobbatical co-founder and CEO, Karoli Hindriks.)

The funding is immediately available to the company and will be used to further develop Jobbatical’s product and improve user experience. The company will also staff up, aiming to triple its product and marketing teams in 2016.

Co-founder and CEO Karoli Hindriks tells Tech in Asia the startup and its investors hit it off right away. “I remember my first conversation with Union Square Ventures – when I finished the call I was actually blushing from the excitement because they really got what we wanted to do. It was kind of like a perfect date,” she says.

Both investors are very hands-on with their companies, and [LocalGlobe co-founder] Saul Klein has great marketing insights, she adds.

Jobbatical is opening a regional office in Singapore to oversee its growth in the region.

Headquartered in Talinn, Estonia, Jobbatical offers job seekers the opportunity to find positions with employers in the tech sector all over the world. Roles include engineers, marketing professionals, content writers, and more.

“Silicon Valley and the other great technology hubs have developed in large part because of the steady stream of highly skilled individuals they manage to attract,” Karoli says in a statement.

“Our goal with Jobbatical is to help build the world’s next generation of Silicon Valleys, from Lisbon to Kuala Lumpur and beyond, by removing geographical bias from hiring decisions, so that people are employed based on their skills, rather than their passports.”

See: This jobs site wants you to ditch your 9-to-5 and work on a tropical island for a year

Jobbatical’s fastest-growing destination is Southeast Asia, with many job seekers on its platform coming to the region to work mainly for startups and social enterprises. The draw of working out of co-working spaces on Indonesian and Thai beaches is no doubt part of the charm. That’s why the startup is also opening a regional office in Singapore, to oversee its growth in the region.

“Singapore is the number one searched destination on Jobbatical,” Karoli says. “We see a vast variety of opportunities in the region, as so many companies there are on rapid global expansion journeys. There’s always demands for tech talent (developers, user experience design, etc.) and also quite a bit for global marketing skills, and specific language skills for targeted localized marketing.”

The Singapore office will start off with two or three people and focus on marketing and customer support in Southeast Asia, she explains.