Datapeople announces $8M in raised capital as it works to make recruiting more equitable

This morning Datapeople, a startup that sells software designed to make recruiting more equitable, announced that it has raised $8 million across two funding events, including a $5 million round in mid-2020.

The company, which counts Uncork Capital, NextView Ventures and First Round Capital as backers, does two things. Its initial product, what Datapeople calls “Language Analytics,” scans job postings, offering suggested edits to customers to help them attract a more diverse group of applicants.

And, coming shortly, Datapeople is rolling out what it calls “Recruiting Analytics,” a service that provides a high-level view of a company’s aggregate recruiting efforts. The recruiting side of its software service will keep tabs on diversity data such as the pace at which a company’s job posting attracts women against related jobs’ own performance, among other bits of data-focused reporting.

Per a release that TechCrunch viewed ahead of publication, Datapeople’s view isn’t that there aren’t products in the market that provide charts of how a company’s recruiting process may be performing at a surface level. Instead its view is when it comes to asking more complex questions about the treatment of different groups of people, current solutions fall short. That’s the space it intends to place its new product.

TechCrunch caught up with Datapeople co-founder Phillip Reyland to chat about its recent capital raises and business performance.

According to Reyland, his startup’s language product is sold to in-house recruiting teams at mid-market through Fortune 100 companies. Related startup Textio raised more capital last spring, implying that there’s enough market demand for job-focused language tooling to support at least two venture-backed companies.

On the recruiting analytics side of the Datapeople house, Reyland told TechCrunch that the recruiting industry is today where marketing was 20 years ago. Given the rise in marketing software that we’ve seen over that time frame, Datapeople sees a long, broad market for new tooling in its target market.

It will be interesting to track how well Datapeople’s new product performs, as Reyland told TechCrunch that 2020 was the best year in its history. That, plus the capital it raised last year, means that the startup has a high bar to clear this year. Perhaps the new service will help it meet said goals.

The company intends to roughly double its mid-30s staff number to meet those expectations. It’s off to a good start, with Reyland telling TechCrunch that its Q1 2021 was “awesome.” As the company is, per its fundraising history, pretty early-stage, we’re willing to wait one more round to hammer it for more specifics.