Triplebyte Raises $35M To Help Engineers Escape The Bay

Triplebyte, a startup aiming to disrupt the way that companies think about hiring technical talent, has picked up a $35 million Series B. The round was led by Y Combinator Continuity with participation by Founders Fund, Caffeinated Capital, and Initialized Capital. Ali Rowghani from YC Continuity Fund will join the board. The round brings Triplebyte’s total known funding up to $50 million, according to the company.

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Triplebyte is one of multiple startups in the recruiting space aiming to make hiring talent more efficient, particularly during a technical talent shortage. But it hasn’t just automated resume matching. Instead, the company, which emerged out of Y Combinator in 2015, has developed an adaptable assessment which tests applicants’ coding and technical skills. Applicants who have taken the test complete a Triplebyte technical interview, and qualified individuals are then forwarded directly to onsite interviews.

Not only does this broaden the pool of applicants that companies consider, but it also lessens the recruiting and interview burden for companies themselves. Further, it potentially opens up the opportunities for individuals with more diverse backgrounds who didn’t graduate from a top university or have privileged access to employment opportunities.

Triplebyte CEO and founder Harjeet Taggar told Crunchbase News that access to opportunity was a large part of the genesis of Triplebyte, which previously used a background-blind process to eliminate unconscious bias. But discussions around inclusion have changed, and more companies are looking to fully incorporate diversity into their hiring practices.

“Diversity has become a much more important issue…What we’ve seen is really strong demand for explicit signals on diversity in terms of female engineers and under-represented groups,” Taggar expressed, adding that the company now lets individuals to optionally include diversity information in their applications. This allows companies prioritizing diversity to factor that element into their decision making.

The company isn’t publicly sharing its valuation, however, according to its statement it “crossed over $1 million in monthly revenue last year,” and more than 500 companies are hiring through Triplebyte. Additionally, the company has helped companies hire over 1,000 engineers since its launch in 2015, and it expects to exceed that number in 2019.

To do that Taggar told Crunchbase News that the company is focused on two main goals in the coming months: geographical expansion and onboarding companies from traditionally non-tech sectors.

“We’re seeing a market trend: the decline of the attractiveness of working in the Bay Area,” Taggar said. That means engineers who are based in the Bay Area are looking at jobs outside of the tech hub. And those outside of Silicon Valley are less willing to locate here in the first place, said Taggar. So, naturally, the company is aiming to increase those outside-of-the-Bay options.

“We need to step up and be really active in other markets: Seattle, LA, New York, Boston, and remote as an… option are all on our on our radar,” Taggar expressed.

Furthermore, the company is moving forward on a goal that it has been vocal about since it last raised — providing traditionally non-tech companies, which may not have existing infrastructure or expertise to hire engineers, with access to engineers and vice versa.

“Our goal is to be the default infrastructure for any company hiring engineers for the first time,” Taggar said. So the company, which has up until now attracted customers through word of mouth, will be focusing its Series B funding to build out a sales and marketing team with those two goals in mind.

Triplebyte has already seen companies in the financial services like Union Bank and American Express organically join the platform, said Taggar. That’s not surprising given the host of millennial-focused fintech companies aiming to disrupt that sector. With similar movement in other areas like insurance, Triplebyte may be in a good position to help those companies out.

Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias