Our Investment in startup oi

We are excited to lead the US$1 million pre-seed financing of startup oi, a tech talent and social media platform built for engineers, developers, and recruiters. We look forward to partnering founders Sakshi Jawa and Rob Creekmore in their vision to build a global hub for tech talent.

Market Opportunity & Thesis

The regional war for tech talent

Hiring tech talent has been an enduring challenge for organizations ranging from startups to large enterprises. With digital transformation and technology innovation taking center stage since the last decade, having the access and ability to attract high quality developers has become mission critical for companies.

Today, the search for tech talent is intensifying in Southeast Asia. This is driven by two factors. Firstly, many global companies are realizing they can tap into great quality talent in this region at a more reasonable rate. Secondly, the pandemic has mainstreamed the notion of remote and hybrid work, resulting in the growing acceptance of distributed engineering team hiring.

Gartner estimated that by the end of 2021, 51% of all knowledge workers (like writers, accountants, or engineers) would be working remotely, representing 32% of all employees worldwide.

This has led to global companies, including those in the US and Europe, expanding their search for engineering talent in Southeast Asia.

For startup founders, this is an even bigger challenge. Many have described this as a ‘hair on fire’ problem and early-stage founders are spending up to 40% of their time on tech recruitment. There is overwhelming pressure to hire the right talent before the next competitor does but the current process of screening candidates continues to be time-consuming and outdated.

Improving inefficiencies in the search process

Where would a startup founder or recruiter start their search for developers? While there is no lack of options from their own network and Stack Overflow to LinkedIn, many lack curation and ignore the dynamism of tech careers. Young and ambitious tech professionals around the world want to try new things, learn adjacent skills, find a mentor and bond with others over similar interests.

What is missing is an all-encompassing platform that captures these interactions and engagements in a meaningful manner. There are deeper nuances in every candidate profile that go beyond conventional CVs — such as the nature of their talent, and their true interests and ambitions. These additional data points go a long way in matching talent with more suitable job opportunities, saving employers and recruiters time and money — and yet many legacy talent networks are not programmed to collect this data.

Product and Team

startup oi is re-engineering a new talent network and platform

This is where startup oi comes in. With a unique perspective to the problem, we recognize the potential of their engineer-first approach.

startup oi is a tech talent and social media platform, striving to be the one-stop platform for engineers to network, learn, play, and get hired. They can search for jobs, build their social profiles, network as well as join events and interest groups. In addition, they can filter their job searches in a granular manner, such as preferred remote working windows, skillsets and language, removing some of the pain points experienced in their search for remote work.

The dynamic data collected on their platform gives employers and recruiters access to deep candidate profiles that lead to better quality employer-employee matches. The platform is also highly scalable. Over time, it will grow with individuals throughout their career path, collecting more data and becoming more precise in defining their skillsets, interests, and experiences. This is a “win-win” for the employee and employer.

startup oi is headquartered in Singapore and building its talent base from Vietnam, which is one of the stronger markets in Southeast Asia for tech talent. For that reason, the company will focus first on Vietnam before officially launching in other markets. Currently, 70% of their customers are focusing on tech hires in Vietnam or remote roles, while the rest are targeting other countries — a mix it plans to maintain.

startup oi may be starting local, but its mindset is global from day one. The company is targeting global companies which are looking to access developer talent in the region.

Led by founders with deep expertise and network

startup oi’s co-founders Sakshi Jawa and Rob Creekmore have decades of experience spanning human resources to social networking and product.

As CEO, Sakshi brings the HR experience, with 16+ years in six different countries across Asia. She was most recently the Chief People Officer of Tiki and has also held positions at Coupang and Amazon.

Rob is the Chief Product Officer, with two decades of experience in social networking, customer loyalty and paid advertising. He founded Advertising Analytics at Amazon and Advertising Research at Facebook. He was previously Vice President of Tiki in Vietnam, launching its TikiMedia ad tech platform. Prior to that, he launched paid loyalty programs at Coupang and Amazon Prime for Students.

Progress so far and journey ahead

With a capital efficient structure, startup oi has demonstrated its progress in building out most of its engineer app in a short period of time. It has also garnered over 20,000 signups from developers through word-of-mouth, in just four weeks. Over the next 12 months, startup oi plans to hire 30 engineers as it focuses on customer acquisition and scaling its business.

We are pleased to lead this pre-seed round with startup oi and support Sakshi, Rob, and their team in building a social and community platform for engineering talent.

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For more information about startup oi, please visit their website.

DISCLAIMER

January Capital is a licensed fund manager in both Singapore (through Jan Cap Pte. Ltd.) and Australia (through January Capital Pty Ltd) (together, the “Managers”) licensed under the purview of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission respectively.

The information contained in this article is being provided to you for informational purposes only and does not constitute in any circumstance an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy any interest in the funds managed by the Managers or any other companies mentioned herein. Additionally, the information in this article and any and all forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions that may not prove to be correct or accurate and the actual financial results/performance and opportunities (amongst others) may differ materially from these statements. As such, nothing contained in this article should be construed as or relied upon as financial, legal or taxation advice, or an encouragement to invest in our funds or any companies mentioned in this article. Past performance is not indicative of future results.