Hunt Club Secures $40 Million in Funding
December 8, 2022 – Chicago-headquartered referral recruiting service Hunt Club has raised $40 million Series B round co-led by WestCap and Sator Grove. The investment round follows Hunt Club’s $10 million Series A financing in October 2021, and will fuel the company’s national expansion, technology platform enhancements, and broaden its community of over 20,000 business leaders who help connect the most innovative companies to the world’s top candidates.
“We’re reimagining the entire talent process. Top talent leaders are not only hard to find, but they are hard to reach – and traditional recruiting firms aren’t equipped to innovate for their customers,” said Nick Cromydas, co-founder and CEO of Hunt Club. “Our technology is bridging that gap, introducing a personalized approach to helping companies change the way they approach talent acquisition. Hunt Club is proud to partner with WestCap, a premier growth equity firm led by a team that has founded, invested in, and operated tech-enabled marketplaces such as Airbnb for over 20 years.”
According to executive recruiters, cold outreach emails don’t work with top tier talent. “The leaders who drive high-growth companies forward aren’t waiting for a recruiter to reach out to them,” Hunt Club said. “They have a job and they have their pick of roles and opportunities, but a referral from a well-respected peer can make all the difference. By leveraging strategic talent advisory, a curated community of qualified candidates, and technology.”
When a company is looking to hire a new leader, Hunt Club’s sourcing and matching technology scans and filters 20,000 business leaders’ networks to source the most desirable talent from a pool of over 7 million candidates available for referral. From there, Hunt Club’s technology initiates warm introduction requests for the curated list of candidates. Hunt Club’s community driven model also ensures that every search is infused with diverse candidates, helping companies build teams with diversity in mind.
Hunt Club has achieved several milestones in the past year including:
● Growing their revenue by 156 percent year-over-year from 2021 to 2022 profitably.
● Placing over 1,000 leaders in top tech jobs across multiple sectors.
● Scaling national footprint to over +200 teammates, with talent teams in every major metro.
● Growing Hunt Club’s network of business leaders to over 7 million + potential introductions, allowing clients access to nearly 10 percent of the entire white-collar workforce through trusted referrals.
Hunt Club has also announced Brian Reinken, partner at WestCap, has joined the company’s board. As one of the founders of Egon Zehnder in the United States, Mr. Reinken has vast experience partnering with founders CEOs and boards. “In recruiting, relationships are everything,” said Mr. Reinken. “Hunt Club is reimagining the recruiting industry by leveraging technology to tap into the power of trusted personal relationships at a time when the search for candidates is more competitive than ever. Hunt Club’s approach seamlessly blends people, technology and networks to redefine how companies find hard to reach talent.”
WestCap is a strategic operating and investing firm that partners with visionary leaders to build generational businesses. Our team is comprised of seasoned industry leaders and entrepreneurs who guide companies through the most pivotal stages of growth. Some of our notable investments include Airbnb, StubHub, Ipreo, Addepar, Hopper, iCapital, SIMON, GoodLeap and NYDIG. The firm has offices in New York, San Francisco and London.
Related: Hunt Club Appoints Chief Operating Officer
Last year, Hunt Club raised $10 million in Series A funding from Teamworthy Ventures to further the development of the firm’s Talent Expert Network candidate referral technology, and its growing high-performance recruiting team. This round of funding complemented the company’s seed round of $4.5 million with key investors, including Brian Spaly (chairman of Tecovas, founder of Bonobos and Trunk Club), Woodie Levin (CEO and founder of Extend), FJ Labs, Starting Line Ventures, Network Ventures and others.
An Influencer Network
Hunt Club is a referral recruiting service that leverages technology and a front-end automation process to help land passive candidates. The firm leverages a network of connected influencers, which include executives, entrepreneurs, subject matter experts and connectors, to refer for roles. Hunt Club has completed over 200 searches across functions, industries, and experience levels in the past 12 months. Notable clients include Dollar Shave Club, Bellhops, Proctor & Gamble, Wilson Sporting Goods, and Trunk Club, among others. Hunt Club also works with high-growth start-ups, unicorns, and companies looking to build teams including gopuff, Typeform, G2, Nerdy, Dollar Shave Club, Terminus and Oak Street Health.
Hunt Club is looking to grow aggressively in the coming months. “We have ambitious growth plans, scaling to over 100-plus people by the end of 2021 and are scaling nationally,” said Nick Cromydas, co-founder and CEO. “We’ll make deep investments across product management, engineering, data science to continue to pave the way in leading innovation in our space.”
“At the end of the day, we believe the one thing that will always turn a passive candidate into an active one is a trusted introduction,” Mr. Cromydas said. “By 2024, our goal is to have the entire management workforce available via a trusted introduction. Our technology powers that at scale, and when you’re an LA-based company, for example, trying to hire the best marketing leader anywhere, you need trust to bridge the relationship gap. Hunt Club powers trust.”
Related: Hunt Club Raises $10 Million to Grow Candidate Referrals and Talent Networks
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief; Dale M. Zupsansky, Managing Editor; and Stephen Sawicki, Managing Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
