Heroes Jobs, a San Francisco startup that developed a video-focused app aimed at Generation Z job seekers, has been acquired by Boston hiring startup JobGet.
Heroes Jobs' data and technology will become fully integrated into JobGet's platform and its co-founders will help with the transition before leaving to pursue other opportunities, CEO Tristan Petit said. Terms were not disclosed.
The company had raised $9 million in total and was previously valued at $18 million, Petit also said. Its investors included The Refiners, Adapt Ventures, Uncommon Projects, 1984 Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, SpeedInvest and Les Business Angels des Grandes Écoles, according to PitchBook.
Petit, Cyriac Lefort and Adrien Dewulf founded Heroes Jobs in 2017 after all three attended the London School of Economics. After going through the frustrating process of looking for jobs themselves post-graduation, they were hired to produce video interviews about startups and quickly realized the videos were resonating with young job seekers around the world.
They developed a TikTok-like app focused on connecting employers and job seekers, particularly Gen Zers who gravitate toward video formats.
The Heroes Jobs app was used by almost 1 million job seekers, the company said in a statement. Clients included large retail and food service chains including Panda Express, H&M, Inspire Brands, Chipotle and Wendy's.
Petit and his co-founders had actually started the process of raising a Series A round but found the terms unfavorable. One of their current investors also warned that the term sheets were low-balling them on a valuation.
Investors were offering the same terms for a Series A that they had received a couple of years earlier with 10 times less revenue, Petit said.
So they pivoted on an exit strategy and started looking for a deal to sell.
"I don't think we could have done it differently," Petit said. "You have so many scenarios. Even for us, we didn't know if people would be more interested in our tech, more interested in the data or more interested in getting the customers. So, that's very difficult because you're playing several different strategies and games at the same time."
At one point, Heroes Jobs had around 40 employees but they began winding down the team for about 18 months once they decided to pursue an acquisition, Petit said.
Ultimately, Petit and his co-founders felt like JobGet offered the best combination of terms and flexibility, allowing them to move on. JobGet has raised around $55 million and was last valued at $440 million, according to PitchBook.
Their acquisition comes during a time with exits of all sorts have slowed down.
While IPOs have been on ice since early 2022, many observers had predicted a flood of mergers and acquisitions this year — but that's not how the market appears to be playing out.
Globally, mergers and acquisitions were down by almost one-third in the first few months of the year, according to Crunchbase, and relatively flat compared to the last three months of 2022.
The number of M&A deals between venture-backed startups has also declined in the U.S., according to another recent Crunchbase report. Only 82 U.S.-based startups were acquired by other startups in the first quarter, compared to 137 during the same period in 2022.
