Announcing 1517 Fund Investment: JobPixel
I’m excited to announce today that we’ve backed JobPixel in their pre-seed round. JobPixel makes it astonishingly easy for companies to hire candidates with video and for candidates to submit video in lieu of or addition to the traditional resume and cover letter.
This is a space that both 1517 Fund as a firm and I myself personally have spent some time in and to which we are usually somewhat averse. Hiring managers are usually somewhat slow to adopt new technology, the incentives between recruiters and the organizations for whom they hire aren’t always clear, and we’ve seen attempts at video in the hiring stack flounder before. But the JobPixel team seems to have cracked those nuts.
Not only have they landed pilots and full contracts with impressive names like Ashley Furniture, Talbots, Boosted Boards, Good Culture, and Goodwin Recruiters, they’ve also shown that people are ready and willing to submit video applications for jobs. Part of this is timing: the cultural (e.g., Instagram stories, Snapchat, and TikTok) and technological shifts around video in the past few years have just made it much easier and more acceptable for candidates of any age to submit video of themselves. And part of it is product: JobPixel does not require candidates to download an app. All video recording for jobs can be done on any device, in-browser, and on the go.
Omar, the CEO, is an excellent salesman. As we went through customer diligence we continued to find ourselves impressed by his ability to pick up the phone and get in touch with decision makers. Anthony, the CTO, is an experienced founder with exits under his belt. The rest of the team has built a beautiful product that is much cleaner and more polished than we often see at the pre-seed stage.
Combine all of this with outstanding customer diligence and a clear need in the market to move past the resume to something better and you get a great opportunity to support this team. We’re thrilled to be working with them and look forward to seeing how they change the face of hiring and talent over the coming years.
