Drafted, a mobile app focused on hiring via referrals, just launched out of stealth last month. Now, the startup—which is housed and invested in by Paul English’s consumer technology foundry Blade—is announcing it’s raised $2.5 million in seed financing from Accel Partners, General Catalyst Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Boston Syndicates, Blade and Launch, as well as several unnamed angel investors.
That funding will be used to fuel growth and continue building out the team, which currently consists of six full-time employees, all working out of Blade’s Fort Point office. Co-founder and CEO Vinayak Ranade told BostInno that Drafted will likely be adding a couple team members to work specifically on product.
When Drafted launched mid-May, it was still in beta and offered exclusively to the Boston tech community. In less than two months, more than 50 Boston employers joined the platform, including HubSpot, M.Gemi, TripAdvisor, PillPack, Drizly. Wanderu and Codeship. Almost $500,000 in rewards are up for grabs, and some individual rewards—which go to referrers involved in the hiring for roles ranging from a stellar engineer to a star marketer—run as high as $15,000. Drafted plans to expand to other cities later this year.
In a news release about the funding, English called Drafted “the easiest fun way in the world to make a few grand.”
“I brought Drafted to Blade for two reasons,” he told BostInno. “One: Vinayak is the strongest product leader I've ever hired at Kayak, and two: Recruiting is a massive industry with terrible solutions.”
"Drafted serves as a great plug-and-play option. Some employers have gotten qualified leads within just 1-2 days of posting the job.”
While working at Kayak, the travel search site founded by English, Ranade served as director of mobile engineering and was also in charge of technical recruiting—a role that allowed him to identify the pain points of hiring firsthand. With Drafted, hiring managers can enter the key details of the job they’re aiming to fill in minutes, set a reward for referrals and share it with colleagues and other connections through social networks, text and email.
Those who receive a job notification on Drafted can either apply themselves, or forward it along to a qualified friend. A job can be forwarded many times, creating chains of referrers that link the hiring manager to prospective hires. Meanwhile, hiring managers receive updates as referrers pass the job posting along to their contacts, in addition to alerts when candidates submit application materials for the position. When someone is hired, everyone in that chain of referrers splits the reward, including the new hire. Overall, Ranade says the Boston community has been incredibly supportive, and users are embracing the concept.
“Employers so far love the simplicity and beauty of the app, even though it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of more conventional recruiting tools and job boards," he explained in an email interview. "They like that it lets them supercharge their existing referral programs. If they don't have an existing referral program, Drafted serves as a great plug-and-play option. Some employers have gotten qualified leads within just 1-2 days of posting the job.”
Photo courtesy of Drafted.
