• The funding round was led by Nauta Capital with participation from Act VC and existing investors Playfair and Entrepreneur First.


• The global skills crisis costs organisations trillions of dollars in lost growth, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF).


• Spotted Zebra’s unique, award-winning platform enables enterprises to identify and resolve skills gaps, while simultaneously improving job performance and satisfaction.

LONDON, October 31 2023 - Spotted Zebra, an award-winning HR tech company, has raised £7.7m in Series A funding led by the pan–European venture capital firm Nauta Capital with participation from Act VC, as well as existing investors Playfair Capital and Entrepreneur First.

Spotted Zebra provides a workforce management platform that allows large enterprises to identify skills gaps within their workforces and fill these gaps through hiring, succession planning or reskilling existing employees.

The skills crisis is one of the great challenges of our time, according to the World Economic Forum. The workplace is changing rapidly, with many skills and roles becoming obsolete while critical new ones are emerging at a rate too fast to fill. 77% of businesses report skills shortages and the WEF estimates that failing to address skills gaps could cost businesses in G20 countries alone USD11.5 trillion in lost growth in the next decade.

But whilst businesses struggle to fill skills shortages, there are millions of talented individuals whose skills are being overlooked as they lack the credentials or experience traditionally used by recruiters to determine hiring success.

Spotted Zebra’s platform enables businesses to reduce their reliance on traditional job requirements and instead match individuals with opportunities based on the best indicator of role success - skills.

Spotted Zebra’s unique blend of AI, assessment science and human expertise allows organisations to determine the precise blend of skills required for individual roles and then identify people with those skills. This widens the available talent pool while ensuring that successful candidates deliver higher job performance than via traditional recruitment channels.

Spotted Zebra also helps organisations improve their reskilling programmes by matching vacant roles with employees whose jobs are being downsized. This improves talent retention, employee engagement, and dramatically cuts costs.

“Our core belief is that employees are happier and more productive when their unique skills - their superpowers - are aligned with roles that use and develop these talents,” says Ian Monk, CEO and Co-Founder of Spotted Zebra.

“Our platform is solving the skills crisis by aligning people with opportunities. We help our clients to quickly find the right candidates when looking externally, and by identifying those individuals most suitable for reskilling or succession when looking internally. And more than that, we’re ensuring that employees go home feeling motivated and energised because their superpowers are being put to good use.”

Conor Mills, Principal at Act VC, adds: “Spotted Zebra allows large organisations to highlight and validate skill sets and proficiency levels of both their workforce and candidate pools in a way not previously possible. This innovation allows executives and HR teams to make critical talent decisions with speed and confidence across various talent related work streams, delivering exceptional value for their organisations.“

The funding will support Spotted Zebra’s plan of scaling its platform to different fields and markets, hiring new talent and expanding its product suite to hit its goal of aligning 10 million people with opportunities at the world’s leading employers by 2030.

“Spotted Zebra has spent the last three years proving that it has a compelling solution to one of the world’s biggest challenges,” says Carles Ferrer Roqueta, a London-based General Partner at Nauta Capital. “A skills-based approach not only ensures more positive hiring and reskilling outcomes, but it also improves fairness, diversity and social equity. Spotted Zebra is passionate about helping organisations make fairer and more effective decisions and enable them to solve their skills gaps and create a happier, more productive workforce.”

Founded in 2020, Spotted Zebra counts a number of FTSE100 companies amongst its growing list of clients, and has also already gained industry recognition, with its hiring solution winning the Gold Award in Candidate Assessment at the In-House Recruitment Awards 2022 for its work with AWE.

‍About Spotted Zebra

Spotted Zebra empowers organisations to make skills-based decisions throughout the entire talent lifecycle - from hiring to reskilling to succession planning. Its skills-based workforce management platform features three applications - the award-winning Hiring application for skills-based recruitment; the Mobility application for reskilling; and the Development application for succession planning. Spotted Zebra was founded in 2020 by repeat founder and Internet entrepreneur Ian Monk and qualified occupational psychologist and former MD of SHL Nick Shaw.

Find out more at www.spottedzebra.co.uk.

About Nauta Capital 

Nauta is a pan-European venture capital firm investing in early-stage technology companies, with offices in London and Barcelona. With over half a billion assets under management and a team of 20 people, Nauta Capital is one of Europe’s largest B2B focused VCs. As a sector-agnostic investor, Nauta’s main areas of interest include B2B SaaS solutions with strong network effects, vertically focused enterprise tech transforming large industries as well as those leveraging deep-tech applications to solve challenges faced by large enterprises. Nauta has led investments in more than 60 companies including Brandwatch, Nextail, Mercaux, Holded, Onna, MishiPay, LoyalGuru, AppFollow, ifeel and Cledara.

Find out more at www.nautacapital.com.

For media enquiries contact: Claudia Urquiola (claudia.urquiola@nautacapital.com)

‍About Act VC 

Act VC is an early-stage venture capital firm that partners with founders from seed to expansion stages and has raised over €600m to support this goal. Act VC are sector agnostic investors looking for innovative, category-defining tech companies in large markets. The firm helps founders build and scale these companies by leveraging the experience of backing over 200 founders to date.