Job search site Adzuna raises £1.5M from the Crowd to ‘Get Britain Working’

Avatar
By Editor June 25, 2015

Adzuna_logo1

  • Oversubscribed fundraising demonstrates public enthusiasm for improving the UK job market
  • The company plans to use the funds to build smarter job search technology & grow internationally
  • Adzuna is already backed by some of Europe’s top investors – Index Ventures, Passion Capital
  • The campaign has attracted a number of celebrity investors – from £billion CEOs to famous DJs

Adzuna.co.uk, the fastest-growing job search engine in Europe, which is backed by venture capital firms Index Ventures, The Accelerator Group and Passion Capital, has raised more than £1.5m through the UK’s leading equity crowdfunding platform, Crowdcube.

Launched in July 2011, Adzuna aims to become the world’s leading job search engine, by bringing together all the vacancies in one place and connecting users with them in new ways. The site already attracts six million visits a month and has helped hundreds of thousands of people find jobs. In addition to listing over 1 million UK vacancies, the sites ‘ValueMyCV’ technology helps British jobseekers understand what they are worth in today’s job market and helps match them to better, more fulfilling careers.

More than 400 ‘crowd’ investors, have backed the ‘Get Britain Working’ campaign so far ranging from CEOs and Tech Celebrities such as Sherry Coutu (CBE) and Klaus Nyengaard (former Just Eat CEO) to university students and plumbers. The largest single investment to date is more than £200,000. The average investment size is £3,765 and the smallest amount invested is £13.

Existing Adzuna investor Robin Klein, founder of The Accelerator Group and widely recognised as one of Europe’s top investors, commented: “We’re delighted to be working with Andrew and Doug, experienced entrepreneurs with great track records from Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla. The Adzuna team has achieved a great deal in a short period of time, and we believe the innovations they continue to bring to the market will change the way people search for jobs, globally.”

Luke Lang, co-founder of Crowdcube, said: “Enabling people to invest in some of Britain’s brightest young companies, alongside world-renowned venture capital firms and acclaimed angel investors, on Crowdcube is now commonplace and vividly shows how we’ve become an accepted part of venture capital landscape in the UK.

“VC-backed, high-growth businesses, like Adzuna, with seasoned management teams, demonstrable market traction and global ambition are at the vanguard of this transformation, which marks a decisive tipping point as crowdfunding gains critical mass and comes of age.”

Doug Monro, co-founder of Adzuna, commented: “We are proud of the world-class team and platform we have built at Adzuna, but we still have a long way to go in job search innovation, mobile apps and internationalisation.”

Capital raised from the campaign will be used to grow internationally and invest in Adzuna’s technology, building on a market-leading search and machine-learning platform that brings together over one million UK job ads in one place, and adds smart search options and powerful data about the job market.

You can see the Adzuna pitch here www.crowdcube.com/adzuna. Please remember that investments of this nature carry risks to your capital as well as potential rewards so you should read the full pitch and associated risk warning to ensure you #InvestAware.

About Adzuna:

Adzuna is a search engine for job ads used by over 6 million visitors per month that aims to list every job, everywhere. We search thousands of websites so our users don’t have to, bringing together millions of ads in one place. By providing smarter search options and powerful data about the job market, we give jobseekers the information they need to take control of their careers.

Adzuna’s data also powers the Number 10 Dashboard, used by the Prime Minister and senior officials to keep track of economic growth on a daily basis.

Adzuna.co.uk was founded in 2011 by Andrew Hunter and Doug Monro, formerly of eBay, Gumtree, Qype and Zoopla and is backed by leading Venture Capital firms Passion Capital, The Accelerator Group and Index Ventures.

Adzuna’s mission is to be the best place to start looking for a job. We love using the awesome power of technology to help match people to better, more fulfilling jobs and keep Britain working.

About Crowdcube:

As the world’s first and most successful investment crowdfunding platform, Crowdcube enables entrepreneurs to bypass the traditional business angel, venture capital or bank finance routes, giving them more control and access to more investors. For investors, Crowdcube provides them with a way to cherry-pick a stake in an innovative business that traditionally would have been restricted to corporate investors. In addition, they can now benefit from a fixed return per annum by lending money to more established companies offering a mini-bond on Crowdcube.

Since 2011, more than 180,000 savvy investors have registered with Crowdcube, helping to raise over £80 million of equity finance for over 250 business pitches including JustPark (raised £3.7m), easyProperty (raised £1.4 million), River Cottage (raised £1 million) and the Eden Project (raised £1.5 million in 24 hours).

Investing involves risk and should be done only as part of a diversified portfolio. Investing equity in startups and early-stage businesses involves risks, including illiquidity, lack of dividends, loss of investment and dilution. Mini-bonds can be unsecured, non-convertible and non-transferable. Crowdcube is targeted exclusively at investors who are sufficiently sophisticated to understand these risks and make their own investment decisions. Crowdcube is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (No. 572026).