By Anthony Lippa-Hardy
Through customer traction and a strong vision, Talin, a Digital Media Zone (DMZ) startup, secured $775,000 in pre-seed funding amid a steep decline in seed fundraising across Canada.
Julian D’Angelo, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and co-founder of Talin as well as a graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University’s (TMU) business and technology management program, announced the company’s successful fundraising efforts at the 2024 Elevate Festival. He revealed that the funds will be used to enhance Talin’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered application.
According to a recent press release from the company, “Talin is an AI-powered automation platform designed to help staffing agencies scale customer acquisition and candidate engagement.”
Talin’s main purpose is to help recruitment firms save time importing candidates, validating contact info and deploying multi-channel campaigns by automating day-to-day tasks. The idea is to allow clients “to click a button and have what would have taken [them] six hours a week on average done in minutes,” said D’Angelo.
He explained that while consulting for tech companies, he was asked to help with hiring staff to manage and expand the systems he built. Realizing the apparent issues within recruiting firms after starting his own, he explained his original discovery of a business opportunity within the field as “automation equals money.” After trial and error experimenting with different parts of the process to automate, Talin emerged—a niche product-market fit to which a scalable sales process could be applied.
“The Canadian funding environment itself is, in many ways, kind of sad”
“A light bulb [went] off. This might be lucrative, and we’re very niche, so we would know who to hire, right? We basically started a recruiting firm out of that,” he said.
D’Angelo stressed that, although there is a relatively large market with over 200,000 recruiting companies globally, Talin is able to corner a very niche part of the market as being one of the few “full-on platforms for staffing and recruiting agencies.” He said although there are lots of recruiting tools available, Talin exclusively serves recruiting agencies, allowing them to beat competitors through hyper-specific functionality that others don’t offer.
Although the successful round was led by venture capital fund Cascade Seed Fund—with participation from DMZ Ventures—sourcing funds wasn’t an easy task. D’Angelo also said that being a Canadian-based startup, Talin was already at a disadvantage.
“The Canadian funding environment itself is, in many ways, kind of sad,” he said.
According to a report from the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association, Canada has seen a 31 per cent decline in total seed funding deals and a 48 per cent decrease in deal value for the first half of this year.
D’Angelo said not having access to a network of American investors and not coming from a background in pitching was a significant setback. He mentioned how they struggled during the first four months of pitching and though the team managed to get in front of investors, they received over 150 rejections.
“The first four months was like bashing our head against a brick wall,” he said.
Despite the sharp decline in Canada’s seed funding sector, Trevor Witjes, Talin’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and co-founder, said the company’s success is largely due to their traction with early customer usage and presenting investors with a strong vision and clear execution plan.
“Come with the recipe book already, and don’t ask for time,” he said. “I think there’s a lot to be said for persistence and just being confident in the vision you have.”
Witjes mentioned that although their ICP is on “the lower end,” building an early base of customers “is the best proof you can get” when it comes to showcasing the demand for your product—especially in a niche market.
“The first four months was like bashing our head against a brick wall”
Investors have responded positively to D’Angelo and Witjes’ approach, along with Talin’s innovative platform. According to Claudia Krywiak, president and CEO of the Ontario Centre of Innovation (OCI), the significant pre-seed funding will allow Talin to further develop its AI platform and aid agencies with streamlining operations.
“OCI is proud to invest in innovative startups like Talin as they drive technological advancements and create new opportunities in our economy,” she said.
Krywiak also emphasized the positive impact Talin will have on Ontario’s economy.
“By fostering the growth of homegrown companies like Talin, we continue to position Ontario as a leader in innovation and entrepreneurship,” she said.
With the new funding, Witjes said Talin is ready to begin scaling its customers and “start becoming a more robust solution for larger teams” while maintaining its current customer base.
In addition to scaling their clientele, D’Angelo said they allocated the first portion of the funding towards Talin’s developer team for the next two years as they are currently very “developer heavy.”
While using the funding to continue product development, the team plans to allocate more money towards advertisements and building out the beginnings of a sales team, according to D’Angelo.
“We’ve got three [developers], our CTO and two full-time, very senior developers. And then, on the other hand, we’re now investing in ad budget and then building out the beginnings of our sales team,” said D’Angelo.
“The newly raised capital will enable Talin to expand into its next growth phase, focusing on hiring salespeople to drive market reach across North America,” stated Talin’s press release.
The growth won’t stop with the current funding. D’Angelo’s long-term plan for Talin involves deciding whether the company will pursue another seed round or fully commit to sustainable growth. He emphasized the need to reach a self-sustaining business model within the next 16 to 17 months to achieve long-term growth.
“We are basically racing to get the newest kind of iteration of our team, to the point we can fund that team forever on our own revenue,” said D’Angelo.
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