Announcing our Investment in Knockri!

We are excited to announce our investment in Knockri, an AI-driven soft skills assessment API that reduces bias in hiring and shortlists top performers.

I first met Jahanzaib, Knockri’s CEO, in February at a conference in Toronto. I was struck by his personal story about facing discrimination from hiring managers, his ability to leverage limited resources to land a significant contract with a Fortune 50 company, and his big vision around video-based predictive analytics.

Grand Ventures participated in the round along-side Differential Ventures, Bertelsmann Investments, MaRS IAF, Amplify Capital, Stout Street Capital, and Green Egg.

Here’s why we are bullish on Knockri:

• Fits into the post-pandemic work-from-home world: COVID has spurred a new wave of support for remote work. Post-pandemic, this trend is likely to persist as evidenced by tech giants like Twitter, Square, and Shopify announcing permanent work from home policies. With today’s workforce spending more time on Zoom and other conferencing apps than ever before, the ability to collect, analyze, and learn from video data will become a significant asset for employers.
• Solves a significant pain-point for employers: Employers currently identify soft skill development as their top learning priority according to a recent LinkedIn study. They will likely need to expend significant resources towards re-skilling employees in the coming years; we know most jobs of the future don’t exist yet. Assessing soft skills in a scalable, objective manner during the hiring process is challenging, with 80% of employers reporting that they struggle in this area.
• Deep technology platform that incorporates learnings from thousands of video assessments: Knockri’s neural engine ingests and analyzes data from job candidates during virtual interviews. It then scores and shortlists the candidates who demonstrate strong soft skills, like growth mindset and collaboration. The neural engine was trained by a wide array of diverse and talented hiring managers and calibrated through 150K+ live video assessments. Knockri is integrated into existing application tracking systems and is currently developing integrations with popular video conferencing platforms like Zoom and Google Meet. The proof is in the numbers that this technology really works — so far, key results indicate that Knockri leads to a 24% increase in diversity of shortlisted candidates and a 23% increase in post-hire performance.
• Strong, coachable team: Through many meetings and reference calls, it became clear that Knockri’s co-founders are incredibly humble, coachable, and intelligent. Most impressively, despite lacking a background in the HR technology industry, they were able to land a massive contract with a Fortune 50 company and convince HR technology leaders across the country to become Knockri evangelizers. We love teams that are able to effectively leverage the resources they have to accomplish big goals.

We’re excited to work with and learn alongside the Knockri team as they tackle major pain points in the hiring industry and beyond!