It didn't take two former management consultants of Bain & Co a long list of contacts and an extensive CV to get angel funding, The Canberra Times reported. Bridgett Loudon and Emily Yue were able to successfully raise $1 million from angel investors for their startup Expert360.
Expert360 works in the same manner as Freelancer.com but is catered for the upper tier employment market. Small and mid-sized firms that could not afford to hire but need the expertise of an industrial engineer, mergers and acquisitions professional or a contract lawyer can post their jobs on the site. Loudon told The Canberra Times, "That could be for a job advising for one hour or for a six-month project."
Some time ago, Loudon saw that professionals with high credentials were being released in an effort to bolster corporate bottom lines. While a lot of them formed their own consulting firms and advisories, they did not have a sufficient platform to showcase their expertise. Smaller companies on the other hand needed the kind of service that these experts could provide. This led to the birth of the Expert360 platform where customers could post their projects and experts would be able to apply for them. In essence, Expert360 functions as a recruitment agency for short-term white collar contracts, the report said.
Loudon said they obtained their seed money of $1 million in a heavily oversubscribed round from just 10 investors. When asked how they obtained the money, Loudon said, "You have to talk to investors very early and look for people who are smart and strategic. This is something we wanted to make truly global. We had to identify where to go to get the brains for the technology which will run the platform. We were able to find a backer in New York and two in Asia, investors who understood the technology and knew how to scale."
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