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We are delighted to share some news we’ve been keeping to ourselves since the start of the year. We are investors in Jack & Jill - the voice first marketplace. Jack & Jill (or J&J as the Ada team affectionately call it) has scaled rapidly - with nearly 50,000 candidates speaking to Jack since they launched six months ago.
Today Jack and Jill announce that Creandum have led a $20m seed round with participation from Dig Ventures as well as an impressive list of angels from Eleven Labs, Lovable and Anthropic.
Being witness to the pace and trajectory of Jack and Jill over the last 6 months has been nothing short of mindblowing. Matt and Saaras are a formidable duo and they have assembled a team of high agency people around them, many of whom have, until recently, been founders themselves.
Matt’s pace and relentlessness sets him apart. And he raises the ambition levels of everyone he comes into contact with.
Recruitment is a process which is fraught with bias - from the companies that only meet candidates with ‘warm introductions’, to the ones that don’t advertise at all - or that screen out CVs based on a narrow set of criteria - there is a massive opportunity to do it so much better.
The experience of talking to Jack is remarkable and uncanny. He asks searching questions about what motivates and drives you, which workplaces have lit you up, your preferred culture and management style, as well as probing into your background and experience. Talking to Jack is seamless - far easier than completing a job application or intake form.
Jack is able to assess candidates more far objectively than a LinkedIn screen, flicking through a CV or talking to mutual contacts. And on the other side of the marketplace, Jill is able to screen thousands of jobs to find the perfect match.
Jack & Jill is an investment within our economic empowerment theme. Within this theme we back companies that inclusively transform money, work, and skills to reverse rising inequality and ensure everyone can benefit from a changing economy. Jack & Jill is a great example of an investment in the ‘new economy’. By widening the aperture of who is assessed for jobs and assessing candidates based on what they’ve actually done rather than where they have worked and where they went to college or school, our bet is that people will be able to access higher paid jobs who don’t have a ‘shiny’ CV. We are also excited by the future potential for Jack & Jill to do much more than place people into jobs - but identify skills gaps, suggest training and development opportunities and even do coaching on salary negotiation.
I was first connected to Matt in Feb 2020 when he was building his previous company, Omnipresent.
From the time I first knew Matt I knew we had a shared philosophy on the opportunity to change the world by finding the most exceptional talent and removing barriers that they faced to be successful.
This was his first email to me:
Matt scaled Omnispresent to one of the fastest growing companies in Europe and raised $150m from leading investors globally and saw that business face challenging times too.
When I found out that Matt was working on building something new I got in touch. When I heard about the scope and scale of the idea - to build conversational AI agents for talent - which can screen 10,000 candidates and 10,000 jobs a day to find the perfect match - I was excited. Recruitment is expensive so the opportunity for value capture is big. This is a great use case for voice. And when I tried the first version of the product that Matt and Saaras had built - I was blown away.
Matt and Saaras are moving at warp speed - they have unreasonable expectations and huge ambition. They are hiring and are keen to meet top talent. If you're hiring, test drive their self-service hiring agent Jill. You can list your roles without the need for a meeting. They also offer a referral bonus for referring companies their way: https://jackandjill.ai/referral.
If the mission and the product excites you - please get in touch (https://jackandjill.ai/)