Berlin-based Zenjob gets €27 million to take its student job site international

Today the digital staffing service, Zenjob, has successfully secured a Series C funding round of €27 million. The lead investor in this round was Forestay Capital, who is joined by Redalpine, Acton Capital, Axa Venture Partners and Atlantic Labs.

Zenjob was founded in 2015 by Fritz Trott, Cihan Aksakal and Frederik Fahning, and has since become a team of 250 people. Their main goal is to act as a digital staffing service that provides temporary work to students, as well as helping companies on the other side find employees. Using the Zenjob app, students can find and book jobs on an hourly basis and can flexibly decide when, where and for whom they work. Each month, more than 15,000 students are employed in sectors such as logistics, events, retail and catering. 

Currently, the startup’s services are deployed and used in 14 German Cities. The new funds raised will primarily be used to support their expansion across more cities in Germany, as well as subsequently expand internationally. As well as this geographic expansion, the new funding will be used to develop the technology behind the service, using algorithms to further predict staff demand in the future.

Fritz Trott, co-founder and CEO of Zenjob comments: “We continue to invest further in our technology and expansion. Soon, more companies across Germany and Europe will be able to book staff by the hour and with fewer than 24 hours’ notice. The same applies to employees, particularly students, who also benefit from the flexibility and ease-of-use that Zenjob’s technology provides. Instead of paperwork and unnecessary interviews, a student goes directly to the right job with the help of the app. The coronavirus crisis requires social distancing, which has created increased demand for staffing in, especially, logistics and retail. Our service means that we can assist in the almost effortless digital hiring of hundreds of new students every day to fill these gaps.”

Forestay Capital’s Managing Partner, Frederic Wohlwend, said: “We are delighted to have invested in Zenjob and are very much looking forward to working with Fritz and his highly talented team. Zenjob is a company that has deployed disruptive technology to shake-up the temporary employment market and which, prior to this coronavirus crisis, had already proven itself to have an exciting future. Now, during this pandemic, its flexible digital recruiting service has, in our eyes, further been confirmed as a model for keeping the working world moving.”

“It’s great to see Zenjob going from strength to strength since the early days. We strongly believe in Zenjob’s unique digital offering in the temp staffing market. The team has built a very powerful platform to match high-quality temp staff with businesses, quickly and flexibly across all industries. This financing round is an important milestone for the company to further strengthen its market position in Germany and expand internationally,” adds Harald Nieder, Partner at Redalpine.

Source. EU Startups, Charlotte Tucker, May 12, 2020

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Co-Living Keeps Growing As Tripalink Raises $10M At $100M Valuation

Tripalink, a Los Angeles-based real estate startup providing co-living space for students and  young professionals, has raised a $10 million Series B at a $100 million valuation.

Founded by University of Southern California-Los Angeles (USC) graduates in 2016, Tripalink has grown rapidly. According to CEO Donghao Li, the company has been profitable since the year it was founded and tripled its revenue in 2018.

The latest financing marks Tripalink’s third funding round in a ten-month period, Li said, bringing its total capital raised to $20 million. Existing investors Calin SJG Fund, China-based K2VC, and Tekton Ventures participated in the round, along with new investor Oriza Ventures.

Tripalink has two product lines. First, it works with small and medium-sized developers to create and manage co-living spaces. Second, it has also become a developer, building out its own co-living projects.

Tripalink helps provide furnished, all utilities-paid co-living spaces in Los Angeles, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Irvine, Austin, and Philadelphia. It claims that its properties are “fully occupied” in most of the cities where it currently operates. The new capital will mostly go toward market expansion with a goal of being in 30 cities by 2020, according to Li. By the end of this year, the company expects it will have developed itself nearly 4,000 beds via master leases or joint ventures.

“Besides building a community, our price per bedroom is much cheaper compared to most luxury apartments,” Li told Crunchbase News. “Purchasing land and then building our own co-living space is our ultimate goal in each market.”

The model is attractive to developer partners because the more bedrooms in a unit, the higher the value of their property, Li said. Tripalink purposely targets centrally located areas that are more likely to see appreciation over time.

Most apartments that the company rents have room for four people, with a total square footage of about 1,200. Each person has their own bedroom and bathroom, and each unit has a kitchen and living room. Larger units that can room up to six people are about 1500 square feet. Average rent per person varies on the market, Li said. In Los Angeles, monthly rent per person runs around $1,300-$1,500 whereas in cheaper markets, it’s less. Each unit has common indoor and outdoor space.

The trend of rising rental costs in hot job markets has brought all sorts of new ideas regarding living to the market. WeWork’s WeLive product line, hacker houses of dubious repute and more have become regular fare. And so long as jobs continue to cluster in big urban environments, the market may keep generating demand for new housing arrangements like what Tripalink and others can provide.

Source. Crunchbase News, Mary Ann Azevedo, August 6, 2019

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This post was brought to you by Woewoda Communications, your partner in the venture capital, private equity and startup markets; offering strategic communications, public relations & investor relation services to Canadian VCs, PEs, Angels, Endowments/Trusts, Family Offices, and Canadian startups involved in ICT, IoT, blockchain, life sciences, healthcare, agribusiness, clean energy, fintech, AI and robotics.

Are you a Canadian GP/LP/CI or a Canadian startup that needs to grow or scale? Give us a call! One of our representatives would love to explain how we vertically design, and then systematically layer each of our communication platforms to effectively reach niche target audiences for our clients. WC offers a unique synergistic approach to effectively communicate our client's message to their target audience.

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