Beyond Pre-Seed: Recruitment Automation, Customer Obsession, and Community-Led Growth

‍Today we announced our pre-seed funding of $2.7M led by Venture Highway, GFC, and Together Fund. Here is the full announcement if you’re looking for the press release. However, I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about what we're building at Kula and how are we defining the Recruitment Automation category.

‍I have been a recruiter all my career. I have loved every (almost) part of being a recruiter. Talking to a human about their career ambitions, facilitating someone's journey towards their dream job, and knowing that you're an unmissable part of your organization's growth - fills me with life and energy, even now.

But my obsession with recruitment technology isn't limited to the fact that I have been one myself. It also stems from the fact that across my years of experience, I haven't met one founder that hasn't put recruitment as one of the top priorities for their organization. And still, the recruitment function has always been served the short end of the stick when it came to tech-enabled solutions solving for the real day-to-day needs of a recruiter.

However, being obsessed is one thing, and being validated with an unmatched level of trust and support from some of the most accomplished Entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists is something else altogether. The trust multiplies in value when you are venturing out in completely, unchartered territory, solving the needs of the market through first principles, and consumer insights only. Eternally grateful to the team at Venture Highway, GFC, and Together Fund for their trust in our vision.

In the past decade, most business functions have successfully automated almost all of their inundating busy work. Tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, Outreach, Drift have changed the way these functions fundamentally operate.

We are working to bring something revolutionary to the recruiters. Something that changes the way the recruitment function fundamentally operates. We call it - Recruitment Automation.

Building Kula: The Next Steps

Let me come out and say this out loud - We are not here to build another piece of technology that will automate a few things, integrate with some tools, and call it a day. We're on a mission to build the most reliable and fundamentally transforming platform for recruiters all across the globe. We want to end the chaos I have personally undergone in the past decade. Here's what you can expect us to double down this year:

#1 Serving Our Early Customers

It feels weird to call my fellow recruiters, customers (Ha!). A lot of brands, who have a lot at stake have trusted us while we are still taking baby steps, and we want to build the best HR platform they have ever experienced. That can only be done when we spend time talking to them, listening to them, and understanding their needs at an unsaid level. That will need a lot of commitment from us, and we are up for it.

#2 Building a World-Class Product

It's been a busy few months, and it will get busier. We follow a culture of excellence when it comes to even the minutest, more remote corners of our product and we will adhere to it. We are  in the final stages of our Soc 2 Type 1 compliance process pre-launch which is a testament to our commitment to no-compromise, even on Day 1. We will over-invest in our product to set the standards right when it comes to recruitment and the entire HR tech space.

#3 Fostering a Community

We want to foster a community of recruiters that are cheerleaders of each other's growth stories. We believe it's high time recruiters get a seat at the table, and we will make sure to take steps in that direction. We will invest early in creating content repositories that become the beacons of actionable, inspiring knowledge for the entire recruitment fraternity.

We're Just Getting Started

I will end with a note of thanks. Thank you to our earliest believers in the journey - our investors, our customers, our team, and everyone who supported us across platforms. I am filled with gratitude and excitement and energy. Lessgoooo!

P.S. If you'd like to see Kula in action, you can request a demo here.