Australian HR Startup Set to Quadruple North American Headquarters in Atlanta

Deputy

Deputy, a workforce management platform, has closed an $81 million Series B funding round led by IVP, along with existing investor OpenView and Square Peg Capital and EVP. The funding will be used for rapid growth across all of the company’s offices, including its North American headquarters in Atlanta.

Deputy is geared toward employers that have an hourly-paid workforce. The HR platform includes shift scheduling, timesheets, task lists and employee communication, and is used by more than 90,000 workplaces worldwide.

Deputy chose Atlanta as their North American headquarters three years ago, but was originally based in Alpharetta. In 2017 they moved inside the perimeter and are currently based in Buckhead at WeWork Terminus.

The office holds about 60 right now, but that’s projected to swell to 200 over the next year, says Atlanta-based Derek Jones, Deputy’s VP of Enterprise Solutions. Though that may mean moving to a new space, he is committed to remaining inside the perimeter for access to talent, “especially the technical talent.”

When the office opened, Deputy moved a number of executives from other offices to Georgia. Now, however, they do all of their recruiting locally, much of it by word-of-mouth, according to Jones.

“This is my third startup and I’ve never seen so many internal referrals,” he tells Hypepotamus. Jones says this hiring practice helps keep their culture dynamic, as does their commitment to being a product-led company.

The growth that will be spurred by this funding round is a result of increasing demand for Deputy’s product. They serve customers from small business up to enterprise, and clients include names like Amazon, Uber and HubSpot.

The Atlanta office will focus on growing that mid-sized and enterprise business, and is hiring engineers, developers, customer success and sales and marketing employees to do it.

“One thing that we look for [in hires], we call it the crazy. The path of a startup is not straight… we look for people who have a very high tolerance for change,” says Jones.

Despite the focus on enterprise, Jones says they’re also proud of their smaller, local clients, such as Atlanta’s favorite popsicle business, King of Pops. All of King of Pops’ hourly employees use the Deputy platform.

“In every market we expand in to, we try to find a brand that we love and that people love,” Jones says.

Featured photo provided by Deputy