A remote work start-up founded by a former Afghanistan Special Forces major has been backed with £11 million Series A funding.
The investment round, led by an undisclosed investor with participation from existing investors Episode 1, Playfair Capital and Truesight Ventures, comes just five months after London-based Omnipresent Group announced £1.5m seed funding.
It claims its tech-enabled platform handles the complexity of international employment for clients and offers them and their remote workers a simplified, cost effective and legally compliant employment solution.
In effect, it gives businesses access to a global talent pool based in 150 countries.
Co-founder and co-CEO Dr Guenther Eisinger served for the Austrian Special Forces, rising to Major leading combat units in Afghanistan, Africa and Eastern Europe.
He then worked in international crisis management and started a company developing software to enable organisations to operate in complex environments worldwide.
He joined Entrepreneur First, a deep tech accelerator in London to start Omnipresent with co-CEO Matthew Wilson, who studied Theoretical Physics in Oxford before working as a software engineer and product manager.
Former Special Forces major bags funding for remote work start-up
“Even before the pandemic we recognised the revolutionary potential of breaking down legal and administrative barriers of international employment,” stated the co-CEOs.
“As former business owners, we had first-hand experience of what a headache it is to navigate the complexity and bureaucracy of building global teams.
“Now with the pandemic and the global shift towards remote working it’s confirmed that we are on the right track.
“With this Series A funding we’ll continue our global expansion, scale our team to become the operating system for global workforces.”
Carina Namih, general partner at Episode 1 Ventures, said: “While talent is evenly distributed around the world, for too long, opportunities have not been. I have experienced first–hand the challenge of hiring globally.
“When I was a CEO attempting to grow a team across different jurisdictions I was dismayed by the baroque complexity and lack of affordable tech-driven solutions.
“It comes as no surprise to me that this Series A round is happening hot on the heels of their seed round that we led just five months ago.
“Omnipresent has already become a crucial piece of infrastructure for global teams working across different countries. The team is passionate about delighting users and their pace of execution has been extraordinary.
“In just a matter of months they have exceeded their ambitious targets and have scaled to cover over 150 countries and rolled out a powerful product that clients are evangelical about.”
Paige Rinke, people director at Tessian, said: “Omnipresent has given us the ability to revolutionise the way that we work at Tessian.
“With the global pandemic forcing the world to work from home, we believe that giving people the choice of where to work – permanently – is critical to helping us find and retain the best talent in the world and to support our goal of creating a more diverse Tessian.
“We had a lot of hurdles to overcome in finding a great partner to support us to do this – particularly around making sure there would be a great employee experience & running our options scheme in a global context.
“Omnipresent were the only provider we spoke to that had great solutions for both.”