{"id":42126,"date":"2023-10-20T15:18:55","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/sydney-startup-employment-hero-raises-3-million-to-accelerate-global-growth-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:18:55","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:18:55","slug":"sydney-startup-employment-hero-raises-3-million-to-accelerate-global-growth-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/sydney-startup-employment-hero-raises-3-million-to-accelerate-global-growth-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney startup Employment Hero raises $3 million to accelerate global growth – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Employment<\/div>\n

Sydney HR startup Employment Hero has closed a $3 million funding round to capitalise on recent growth in Australia and launch its cloud-based employee management platform in the UK by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

The over-subscribed funding round was led by VC firm OneVentures and also includes an investment from AMP New Ventures.<\/p>\n

Employment Hero was founded in 2014 and offers an all-in-one platform of software tools for HR to cover the \u201centire employment lifecycle\u201d, including health insurance, home loans, car leasing and utilities.<\/p>\n

Instead of focusing on a subscription model, the Employment Hero platform is free for businesses, with the startup instead earning revenue from its marketplace, which provides deals for the likes of health insurance, phone plans and gym memberships.<\/p>\n

The startup is based in Sydney and has offices in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and London.<\/p>\n

Proving the hypothesis<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s the first round of external funding in the startup, and CEO Ben Thompson says the team wanted to validate the Employment Hero model before seeking a large capital injection.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to prove the model first, and we started with an experiment in July last year,\u201d Thompson tells StartupSmart<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to pass 20,000 employees on the platform and we\u2019re now at 35,000. We wanted to prove that we could make as much money through the marketplace as we would with a subscription model.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce we\u2019d proven the model we decided to scale it, and that gave us the motivation to do a capital raise.\u201d<\/p>\n

The startup\u2019s model is based around moving HR practices to the cloud, something which Thompson says hasn\u2019t previously been embraced by small businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost Australian and global SMEs still manage HR using envelopes, Manilla folders and filing cabinets \u2013 they haven\u2019t made the transition to the cloud,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cHR systems have been relatively expensive and provided very little for the employees. Our hypothesis was to make a completely employee-centric HR platform to help employees\u2019 income go further and make money by saving people money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accelerating growth<\/h3>\n

The $3 million cash injection will be used to drive Employment Hero\u2019s growth in Australia, further develop its platform and prepare for an expansion to the UK by the end of the year, where the startup will run a similar lean experiment as was conducted last year locally.<\/p>\n

OneVentures CEO Michelle Deaker says the firm chose to back Employment Hero because of the lucrative market it is operating in.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe human resources marketplace is poised for significant growth in the next 10 years,\u201d Deaker says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Australian market alone is worth in excess of $500 million with payroll $2 billion and financial services and mortgage commissions in excess of $7 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson says it\u2019s crucial for founders to find an investor that is offering much more than just funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cChoose an investor who you feel can provide great strategic value as well as money,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to be married to them for a long time and working really closely with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Employment Hero has barely existed for three years and enjoyed quick growth, he says it certainly hasn\u2019t been an overnight success.<\/p>\n

\u201cEmployment Hero brings together years of work and three companies that we\u2019ve been working on,\u201d Thompson says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is an iteration of 15 years of hard work and three other successful businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter,<\/em>LinkedIn <\/em>and <\/em>SoundCloud.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sydney HR startup Employment Hero has closed a $3 million funding round to capitalise on recent growth in Australia and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60517,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,9,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42126"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}