A star of BusinessCloud’s Founder 250 list will discuss the rapid success of his HR tech startup at FUEL Manchester next week.
CEO Tom Keighley (pictured right) co-founded urfuture in Preston in 2024 with COO Jayel Williams (left) and CCO Holly Hobbs (centre). It moved to Manchester at the start of the year before raising £1.7 million in seed investment.
The firm is looking to replace CVs and job boards with tech solutions for the AI era. In August, urfuture became the fifth most downloaded business app, ahead of Zoom and just behind Indeed, Teams, LinkedIn and WhatsApp.
Keighley, whose work in the talent space dates back to 2011, said the moment meant he “literally had to pause to take it in”.
“These are some of the biggest brands in the world with enormous teams, budgets, reach and resources but we have something money can’t buy,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
“Grit. Innovation. Authenticity and three incredible individuals who don’t just understand the audience we’re trying to reach, they are that audience.”
On Wednesday 28th October, he will speak on the breakfast panel at FUEL Manchester. You can sign up for free at the link below.
Register for breakfast panel & networking
River Capital led the £1.7m investment, with participation from SyndicateRoom’s Access fund, Manchester Angels, Fhunded, Solid Bond, Host Capital and a number of sector specialist angels.
The investment comes as the number of young people aged 16 to 24 not in education, employment or training approaches one million.
The problem is being compounded as 45% of job seekers now use AI to help write or edit their CVs, meaning employers are increasingly overwhelmed with high volumes of low-quality, irrelevant applications.
The startup is building a new hiring platform that combines a social-first Gen Z distribution engine with a proprietary behavioural science job matching algorithm. This enables employers to identify higher-intent, more diverse candidates and reduce hiring bias, making fairer hiring decisions.
Employers including West Midlands Police, Tesco, British Airways and Electricity North West are already using the platform to attract and assess early-career talent.
Keighley said: “The UK is rightly focused on how to get more young people earning or learning, but the infrastructure between education and employment is still broken.
“CVs don’t work for entry-level talent, job boards don’t reach this generation, and AI has made application volume harder to manage while reducing quality.
“We’re rebuilding that system from first principles, combining social distribution, behavioural science and AI to create a fairer, more effective way to connect young people to work.
“Our ambition is to become the front door to employment for the next generation.”
FUEL Manchester is sponsored by GM Business Growth Hub, S&W and Nybble, with support from Bruntwood SciTech.