Startups, Investors Bet on Remote Work Future

Remotebase, a two-year-old San Mateo, Calif.- based mostly startup that connects companies with distant software program engineers, is seeing income progress this yr of as much as 30% a month, co-founder and Chief Executive Qasim Salam mentioned. Annual income final yr surged by roughly 600%, he mentioned. Mr. Salam didn’t disclose the corporate’s income.

Mr. Salam mentioned the corporate lately surpassed 60,000 engineers in its on-line remote-work platform, up from 11 when the corporate launched in 2020, many residing in India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Eastern Europe. Last week, Remotebase introduced a pre-Series A $2.1 million fundraising spherical, led by Indus Valley Capital and Hustle Fund, with participation from Soma Capital, Angel Squad and Draper Associates.  

“Investors are super-pumped on remote,” Mr. Salam mentioned. “They know it’s going to stay.”

Other, later-stage remote-work startups are fetching tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in investing rounds, drawing high-profile Silicon Valley traders.

Chicago-based startup

Atlas,

whose tech platform helps employers adjust to native employment guidelines and laws for distant staff in additional than 160 international locations, introduced $200 million in new funding from Sixth Street Growth, the expansion investing enterprise of world funding agency Sixth Street. 

“Employees realize that they have options when it comes to working,” mentioned Atlas CEO Rick Hammell. “They can now be based in the U.S. and work for a German company,” he mentioned. Atlas helps corporations onboard, handle and pay a world workforce, he mentioned.

“Companies that don’t figure out how to do remote work well will get crushed by companies who do,” mentioned Chris Herd, founder and CEO of remote-work startup Firstbase. Based in Aberdeen, Scotland, Firstbase in March raised $50 million in a Series B refunding spherical led by Kleiner Perkins and included funding by Andreessen Horowitz.

Firstbase fees corporations a month-to-month price to equip homebound staff with ergonomic chairs, desks, laptops, displays and different workplace gear, ordered over its platform. Launched in 2019, the corporate had some 600 company prospects on a ready record when Covid-19 struck in March 2020. Within months the record had ballooned to greater than 4,000, the corporate says. 

Since early 2021, Mr. Herd mentioned, income has grown 20 occasions bigger, whereas the corporate has been including extra prospects and increasing its staff. 

Remote, an aptly named San Francisco remote-work startup, in April closed a $300 million Series C spherical—at a $3 billion private-market valuation—with funding by

Sequoia

Capital, Accel, Index Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures and General Catalyst, amongst others.

“Remote work is a durable phenomenon,” mentioned Ravi Gupta, a associate at Sequoia who led the agency’s funding in Remote. “The demand for global hiring has taken off as many companies shift to a remote-first or hybrid model,” Mr. Gupta mentioned. 

Founded in 2019, Remote gives payroll and compliance providers for international staff and contractors in additional than 150 international locations, the corporate mentioned.

“Despite the call by some employers for workers to come back to offices, we just closed our biggest month on record and our biggest ever quarter,” mentioned Remote co-founder and CEO Job van der Voort.

Some 64% of greater than 650 U.S. executives surveyed in October by PricewaterhouseCoopers—together with finance and human assets leaders, in addition to chief info officers and chief know-how officers—mentioned their firm wants as many individuals again in bodily places of work as potential. That is up from 59% in August 2021, PwC mentioned.

At the identical time, company spending on remote-work know-how is predicted to succeed in $352.6 billion this yr, up from an estimated $332.9 billion in 2021, in accordance with IT consulting and analysis agency

Gartner Inc.

Spending is forecast to succeed in $381.5 billion by the top of subsequent yr, Gartner mentioned. 

“There is no future in which we will work less internationally or less digitally,” mentioned Andreas Klinger, founding father of Remote First Capital, a enterprise investing agency that has investments in additional than a dozen remote-work startups, together with Firstbase. “Any company of sufficient size is essentially a distributed team in denial,” Mr. Klinger mentioned.

Adam Riggs, founder and CEO of remote-work startup Frameable, mentioned most employers now need staff to return to bodily workspaces as a result of they imagine remote-work begins and ends with videoconferencing: “That’s only one piece of virtual interactions,” Mr. Riggs mentioned. 

Frameable, which launched in 2021 and operates completely distant, gives a platform that recreates a whole workplace house on a pc display screen, with assembly rooms, work areas and cafes the place workers can see one another work together. Mr., Riggs mentioned Frameable presently has tons of of economic prospects, who lease its software program with charges various by the variety of customers. 

“I may be a bit biased, but I absolutely believe remote work is here to stay,” mentioned Remote’s Mr. van der Voort.

Write to Angus Loten at [email protected]