Enterprise

Remote Closes $150M Series B To Help Companies Manage Changing Workforce

New York-based Remote raised a $150 million Series B at a valuation of more than $1 billion as it looks to make hiring anywhere easier for companies.

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The round was led by Accel with participation from existing investors including Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, General Catalyst, 9Yards Capital and Day One Ventures. Founded in 2019, the human resource tech company has now raised just less than $200 million.

Remote’s platform helps companies hire anywhere in the world by handling payroll, benefits, compliance issues and more in 45 countries. Co-founder and CEO Job van der Voort got the idea to start Remote when he was working as vice president of product for GitLab and noticed the pain point of hiring abroad; being saddled with employment term issues and legalities. Remote actually serves as the hiring agent in the different countries and takes care of all human resource-related issues for the new employee.

“We take away the hassle of international hiring,” he said.

Acceleration of remote work

Although the company just closed its $35 million Series A in November, it saw tremendous growth as remote work has become the new normal, so it didn’t shy away from a Series B. Remote now works with thousands of customers and has grown its revenue by more than 65x through the past year, van der Voort said. Its employee headcount has gone from 50 to 220 since November.

The company now plans to be in 80 countries by the end of the year, he added.

“This whole thing has just accelerated over the last year,” he said. “Work is just completely upside down now. There is no script for this.”

Miles Clements, partner at Accel, said he has been watching Remote closely since it was founded, as his firm eyed the HR sector.

“We’d been pursuing a thesis in the HR market and looking for companies building full-stack product experiences, in contrast to the historical model of aggregating local payroll providers,” he said. “COVID-19 undoubtedly accelerated the shift to remote work, and we saw Remote emerging as the company underpinning many of our companies’ global HR strategies.”

Although there are large companies in the human resource space like ADP, as well as startups like New York-based Papaya Global and San Francisco-based Lattice, van der Voort said the HR sector is growing rapidly as work changes and has set a goal for Remote to be its own public company.

Masha Drokova, founder and general partner at Day One Ventures, said she sees Remote as a serious disruptor in the $200 billion professional employer organization market that is made up of older firms.

“Remote built the infrastructure for people from everywhere to work on what they love, from the place they want to live, with high income and access to the best opportunities,” she said.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias.

 

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