Wichita startup QuickHire is poised for continued growth following a funding round that raked in $1.4 million for founders Deborah Gladney and Angela Muhwezi-Hall.
It was the hiring technology company’s first institutional raise, with Gladney telling the WBJ that the company raised more than it expected.
‘It was oversubscribed,” Gladney says. “Initially, it will go toward technology and continued expansion.”
After launching last year, QuickHire has racked up more than 60 company customers and connected with more than 11,000 job seekers on its technology platform that helps match businesses and potential workers, with a focus on skilled labor and the service industry.
“Given the service worker shortages across the county, we are helping workers and companies connect not just for a job, but for a career,” Muhwezi-Hall says in a press release.
The fast-growing company is currently targeting Wichita and Kansas City, but expects to expand throughout the Midwest next year.
The funding round was led by Chicago-based MATH Venture Partners.
"We see the QuickHire team approaching the market differently — putting skilled-trade and service workers first in geographies that have been traditionally overlooked,” says Dana Wright, managing partner at MATH. “The timing is right for this approach. We are excited to be part of this funding round, providing fuel for product innovation and market expansion.”
The funding round also included local dollars, with Wichita-based Tenzing Capital Ventures and Accelerate Venture Partners joining in the investment.
Chicago-based Sandalphon Capital, New Orleans-based Ruthless for Good, Boston-based ETF@JFFLabs, Indianapolis-based Sixty8 Capital, Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund, and KCRise the October Minority Impact Fund, both of Kansas City, also provided funding.
Gladney and Mhwezi-Hall say QuickHire is itself doing internal hiring and will look locally as much as possible for the technology talent it needs.
The founders, who are sisters, have concurrently rolled out a new scheduling feature for customers, with more information on that and all of QuickHire’s offerings available online.
“QuickHire is bigger than just an HR tech company,” Gladney says. “We are underserved founders helping underserved workers in an underserved market.”
She and Muhwezi-Hall discussed with the WBJ last fall the need for representation in venture capital, making the funding round also bigger than just an HR technology company.
According to ProjectDiane, a demographic study of the state of Black and Latinx women founders, Gladney and Muhwezi-Hall are two of only around 100 Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture funding as of December 2020.
While the funding was based on the unique service that QuickHire provides, Muhwezi-Hall tells the WBJ that the distinction is still another in a growing list of wins for the startup.
“It’s nice to be taken seriously in a lane where they haven’t seen a lot of Black women before,” she says,
