- Nestor, the people intelligence platform that helps hybrid organizations engage, develop and retain talent, raises a $2M seed round led by Eleven Ventures. The round is joined by Underline Ventures and some San Francisco-based angel investors.
- The investment follows the increased B2B product adoption rate of Nestor, which reached 98%, and the joining of a new advisor – UiPath’s Chief Culture Officer, Andreea Baciu.
- With the fresh capital, Nestor plans to grow its sales and customer success teams, accelerate its expansion in the newly entered US and Latin America markets, and invest in more product development.
“Every employee is unique. We envision a world where every employee receives the right opportunity at the right time to continually learn and improve the skills that will help them succeed. We help organizations make an impact on each employee’s development and enable HR leaders to build agile people strategies that move beyond the traditional job approach by placing skills at the front and center of their talent operations,” Bogdan Apostol, CEO and co-founder of Nestor, comments on the investment.
Founded in 2018 by Raluca and Bogdan Apostol, Nestor is a Romanian-born HR software startup headquartered in San Fransisco, that strives to deliver 50% more employee performance by intertwining people with technology. The team has built a smart coaching tool that allows organizations to build leadership-driven company culture. Nestor’s People Intelligence Platform provides managers with insights into the performance of their team members. As of today, more than 10K+ employees around the world are using the product.
“Bogdan and his team are reimagining the multi-billion dollar people analytics and talent software market by offering workforce visibility over non-linear assets such as employee skills & capabilities, engagement, performance, culture, and career mobility in an effortless and codified way. We are thrilled to join Nestor’s journey to deliver an end-to-end people intelligence platform to support organizations worldwide,” Vassil Terziev, Managing Partner of Eleven Ventures, says.
Bogdan Iordache, General Partner at Underline Ventures, adds that he has been knowing the founding team of Nestor for a long time and will help them identify the best partners to scale globally with.
Organizational talent management reimagined
The co-founders of Nestor, Raluca and Bogdan Apostol came up with the idea of building HR software for organizational agility and resilience based on their previous experience in leading teams. Bogdan, who is the CEO od Nestor, has a decade of experience in Software Engineering, while Raluca, in the CPO role, brings in experience in People Coaching.
In 2018 the team participated in season 18 of Y Combinator, the US startup program known for investing in companies like Airbnb and Dropbox. Regionally, the startup was part of the Orange Fab accelerator in Romania and ended up doing an organizational-wide deployment of its solutions for team collaboration in Orange.
In essence, Nestor’s HR software combines employee engagement, performance management, and development planning with a skills-based approach. The software uses predictive analytics and nudging automation to help businesses develop and retain talent.
By creating personal talent profiles, Nestor allows employees to choose the best vertical or horizontal career development paths based on both their interests and the needs of the organization. Thus, each employee is empowered to take ownership of their own development, access new growth opportunities, and participate in cross-functional organizational initiatives.
Fueling expansion to Latin America and the US
Today, Nestor is trusted by HR managers in mid-to-large organizations across Europe, North America, and Latin America, including Fortune 500 companies. The new seed funding round will enable Nestor to grow its sales and customer success teams as well as to rev its expansion in the US and Latin America.
The startup will invest in its product innovation as it plans to launch its smart career pathing module. This module would allow employees to easily explore what are the various career paths they can take and what skills they need to acquire in order to successfully achieve their career goals.
