When I founded SmartRecruiters, the vision was simple: connect people to jobs at scale by making hiring easier. Hiring is a fragmented, opaque process undermined by outdated technology that turns off candidates and hiring managers. But it doesn’t have to be.

I imagined a world where finding great candidates is easy, it’s easy for people to show interest in jobs, it’s easy for hiring teams to collaborate, and vendors are just a click away. And then we developed SmartRecruiters.

And in the process, we built more than just recruiting software. We built a completely new function, and created a new category based not on what recruiting had always done, but instead by rethinking what recruiting could be.

11 million or so hires later, we’ve proven that Hiring Success works, and that we’ve helped redefine the talent acquisition function from a cost center into a profit driver for thousands of employers all around the world. 

Their success, of course, is our success. Which is why today, we announced the results of our Series E funding round, raising $110 million dollars led by Silver Lake Waterman, with existing investors Insight Partners and the Mayfield Fund participating. 

With the support of these partners, we are able to continue, and greatly accelerate, our growth in North America, Europe, APAC and beyond. We are accelerating our disruption of the talent technology market that Deloitte forecasts as representing $140 billion in global spending, a number that’s only expected to continue to grow in the months and years ahead.

When we started, I never imagined this company would be worth $1.5 billion and that it would reach unicorn status. It’s something I’m extremely proud of, but I’m even more proud of the work we’ve done in helping our customers, and our candidates, achieve Hiring Success. I’m thrilled to see true market validation of the product so many of us worked so hard to build.

But I’m even more excited that, after many months of uncertainty during a global pandemic, we were able to continue growing our business, extending our value to both customers and candidates alike. Not only did we refuse to lay off any employees, our results last year were the best we’ve seen yet, with our revenues and customer base nearly doubling during the COVID crisis. 

The pandemic changed how talent acquisition works forever – employers and workers across the globe dramatically shifted their expectations around what work means, and what makes work meaningful.

As a result, over 800 of the world’s best known brands and biggest employers have turned to SmartRecruiters to equip them with the right tools to adapt to the new normal, and today, Hiring Success is more important than ever.

And with today’s announcement, SmartRecruiters has the capital, along with our existing technology and proven expertise, to help companies achieve Hiring Success on a scale that’s never been done before. 

Most importantly, we’re staying true to our mission and helping the world get back to work. Hiring Success starts with engaging people at every stage through an efficient process focused on connecting candidates with jobs they want while giving employers the talent they need.

What is blocking a company from getting there? Hiring Success demands change. And if there’s one thing we’ve all learned over the past year, it’s that change is the only constant.

With this latest funding round, we are uniquely positioned to help drive that change. And this, to me, is the realization of the vision we had when we first launched SmartRecruiters – to give every company the tools they need to attract and hire the highest quality candidates as efficiently and effectively as possible, and to give every candidate a job they love.

We believe in Hiring Success because we know how much is riding on getting this right. When you connect people to jobs at scale and make hiring easier, good things happen for everyone involved. That’s why we’re committed to helping companies achieve Hiring Success outcomes – because ultimately, you are who you hire, and who you hire is how you win.

Over the past year, we, like nearly every company, were challenged to navigate a world of unprecedented change and uncertainty. Though it wasn’t always easy, we were also given the opportunity to redefine how we wanted to grow SmartRecruiters, the value we could unlock for our customers, what we envisioned for the future of talent acquisition technology, and what we needed to bring to our business to accomplish these goals.

In the face of adversity, we not only survived, but thrived – and achieved today’s milestone by staying true to the vision and values on which SmartRecruiters was built. Thank you to my fellow Smartians, our customers, partners, investors, candidates and everyone else who’s helped support and collaborate with us on our journey.

Every one of us are stakeholders in helping get the world back to work, and while we’ve come a long way in transforming our mission and vision into a reality, today’s announcement is really just the beginning.

Now, the real work begins. And I couldn’t be more excited.