Why We Invested In Archslate
Archslate, a recruiting platform for Architecture and Civil Engineering, is our most recent investment from TampaBay.Ventures Seed Fund I. The platform represents a progressive and reversed approach to hiring in the AEC industry based upon matching the correct candidates with each opportunity and empowering single-click hiring. Founder and CEO Vaishnavi More, helped expose our team at TampaBay.Ventures to the ineffective and fractionalized nature of how Architects are currently hired. Throughout the investment process, Vaishnavi and her team at Archslate have displayed an incredible level of focus on their core mission of revolutionizing how Architects are hired.
Market Size
The AEC hiring market size is a vast labor pool. Currently, over 7 million people are employed in either Architecture, Civil Engineering, or Construction within the United States. These employees represent an estimated total payroll in excess of $34 Billion per month. Yet, the vast majority of new career opportunities in the space are posted to traditional job boards such as Ziprecruiter or Indeed.
Within the Architecture hiring market, more particularly, generalist platforms do not provide the tools hiring firms need to properly assess potential candidates’ talents. Features such as portfolios, accreditations or a record of past projects tend to accompany applications rather than be part of a native experience. Having a comprehensive measure of relevant skills allows for a drastically more straightforward candidate search.
Constant Engagement
Most recruiting or staffing marketplaces retain a constant challenge; they lose their long-term engagement after placing a candidate. Each time a candidate starts a new job found through a traditional job board, they do not engage with the platform again until they are seeking a new role. At that time, each of the traditional platforms must then “re-acquire” the candidate, competing with each of the other generalist recruiting platforms. This model forces companies such as Ziprecruiter or Indeed to constantly have the widest span of positions posted at one time to increase the likelihood of a candidate finding the perfect job.
Archslate approaches the hiring process with a unique process. By engaging both the candidate and hiring company to input more specific information, the platform can match the most qualified candidates to each position. This dynamic provides a dramatic reduction in the amount of time spent hiring new architectural talent, where 63% of firms do not have a dedicated HR team.
Team
Vaishnavi and the team at Archslate displayed an impressive level of diligence in revolutionizing the way AEC candidates are discovered and hired. From our initial conversations, it was incredibly clear to the team at TampaBay.Ventures that Vaishnavi and her team knew how to develop the platform quickly. The group shared Vaishnavi’s vision for how Archslate was going to reverse hiring and transition the “talent search” into a “talent discovery.”
Product
The Archslate platform is incredibly intuitive, easy to use, and inviting to new users. Future training models and accreditations developments promise an increase in average user activity as Archslate matures.
Being initially aimed at architecture, it is incredibly important that Archslate maintain a progressive design that satisfies the expectations of its users. Vaishnavi and her team have demonstrated a product-focused set of values with the ultimate user experience at the center of all product decisions.
Archslate is the 4th investment from TampBay.Ventures first $20M fund. The fund is entirely dedicated to Tampa Bay based companies and will seek to invest in 20–25 companies over the course of the next four years.
