Our journey from pre-seed to Series A with Otta

Anyone close to LocalGlobe will have heard the mantra “we back surfers not waves”.

From the moment we backed Otta's founders Sam, Theo and Xav at pre-seed in 2019 we had no question this was an exceptional team.

But at the time, I don’t think they would mind me saying recruitment tech was not the “hottest” VC frontier with few true breakout companies to point to and a dominant incumbent in LinkedIn. However, their laser focus on a “candidate-first” philosophy, anchored around deep ML expertise was completely different from anything else we’d seen.

Whilst high growth UK tech companies were market one, it was also clear their mission for what Otta would become went much further.

To support their US ambitions, we worked with Sam to lead and shape his seed round in 2020, bringing the ideal co-investor in David Frankel from Founder Collective to the table.

They have not disappointed. Since January 2020, Otta has gone from 1,000 applications per month to more than 5,000 every day. Its uncompromised candidate-first philosophy has allowed Otta to source the best talent. Companies like GoCardless, Freetrade and many from our own portfolio are hooked.

Provocative billboards and a bold identity shout to companies “raise your game!”. In-depth salary benchmarks have become industry standards.

Launched in September 2021, Otta’s US growth has been explosive, fuelled by its secret weapon — the Rocket List.

Whilst metrics are stand out, perhaps even more impressive is the growth and development of the team. Our observations:

— Otta’s founders are growing from exceptional talents into exceptional leaders. Great founders who make the transition to great leaders build the truly great companies. Whilst Sam, Theo and Xav have a long road ahead, early signs are very promising.

— I guess you would expect a company that specialises in talent acquisition to do a pretty good job themselves? Now a team of 35, they’ve also passed the litmus test of hiring the best talent, strengthening their senior team with the likes of Fin (VP Commercial) and Samantha (Head of Growth)

— Gender diversity is also among the highest in the start-up sector — 45% of the Otta team are women. Its the same ratio for team leads. And at 35% female in product & engineering, this is way above peer benchmarks

— They’ve also managed to build a highly engaged team — in their recent engagement survey, the team scored 4.8/5.0 for “I’m excited for Otta’s future”.

Flush with the proceeds of their recent series A, the team will likely grow 2–3x this year. Exciting roles abound from a US GM and a People Director to Software Engineers and Product Designers.

It’s been a pleasure to work (again) alongside David and one of the most value-add angel groups I’ve seen.

And a very warm welcome to John Curtius from Tiger who is leading Otta’s new round.