AdeptID, a Boston startup working to fill gaps in the labor market using AI, has raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by Zeal Capital Partners. The money will be used to accelerate software development and scale the distribution of its API, which is tackling one of the biggest pandemic-related challenges today — labor shortages.
While the startup was launched just a few months ago, the problem it aims to solve certainly isn’t new. In fact, co-founder and CEO Fernando Rodriguez-Villa says poor talent matching costs the workforce ecosystem more than $1.3 trillion annually. And the solutions so far just haven’t been cutting it.
“While skills-based matching and technology isn’t a new idea, it has historically been hard to use, siloed and way too expensive,” Rodriguez-Villa said in a statement. “We see a massive opportunity to improve outcomes for both those in the workforce looking to improve their economic mobility as well as employers struggling to fill roles in growth areas like allied health, IT and renewable energy.”
In a nutshell, AdeptID uses machine learning to identify good candidates for roles in high-growth industries, focusing mainly on the millions of working Americans who don’t have college degrees. Unlike other similar platforms, this algorithm isn’t used to reject candidates, but rather to identify the best ones. Plus, since it’s an API and not a full-stack software product, companies don’t have to learn an entirely new system. Instead, they can simply plug AdeptID into their existing infrastructure.
Rodriguez-Villa likens it to Stripe’s role in e-commerce — with a few easy steps Stripe can take on an online retailer’s payments and customer relations efforts. Similarly, with a few lines of code, AdeptID can take on a company’s recruitment efforts.
“We don’t think job matching should be done in a localized fashion, nor should it require a new full-stack tech solution, hiring a team of PhDs or one-off consulting engagements,” he added.
Of course, AdeptID isn’t the only startup out there trying to solve the labor shortage problem with tech. Just this week, Quinyx, a workforce management platform for hourly workers, raised $50 million. Today, Shiftsmart, a marketplace that matches shift workers to employers, pulled in a $95 million Series B. Meanwhile, Nasir Qadree, a managing partner at Zeal Capital, is confident that AdeptID is poised for more success of its own going forward.
“There is a growing emergence of transformative talent companies being built today and it’s exciting to forecast how AdeptID will assist the advancement of their work,” Qadree, who is joining the startup’s board of directors, said in a statement. “Their API-first approach makes their matching capabilities available to any future-of-work offering, and reflects the inclusiveness of both of our missions.”
