CodeFights Raises $10M To Democratize Tech Recruiting

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 17, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CodeFights announced today that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding, led by e.ventures. This sizeable round is a testament to CodeFights' impressive growth and will fuel the company's mission to transform the way the tech industry recruits by making it more meritocratic.  

CodeFights provides a free gamified educational tool that helps software engineers practice and improve their skills. CodeFights also works with top tier tech companies—including Uber, Dropbox, Asana and Quora—to help them find in-demand engineering talent through skill-based recruiting. CodeFights' user base has grown by 10X since the company raised its seed round in April 2015 and revenue has doubled every month over the past four months.

"Rarely do we find markets that are lacking as much transparency and are as fragmented as that of technical recruiting," said Tom Gieselmann from e.ventures, who joined CodeFights' board. "With CodeFights, we see a future in which people are provided opportunity based on their talents, rather than their educational or work backgrounds. As a global venture capital firm, CodeFights' mission helps support our goal of assisting the development of international internet-enabled businesses."
CodeFights attracts hundreds of thousands of engineers from all around the world who are eager to challenge themselves, learn new skills and understand how they compare against the rest of the industry. As engineers interact with coding challenges on CodeFights, the platform objectively assesses their programming skills. This not only helps the players improve, but also enables those who are interested to be matched with better job opportunities.

In the past 6 months, CodeFights has partnered with hundreds of companies to help them move from pedigree to skill-based recruiting. CodeFights follows a contingency recruiting model where companies use the platform for free until they make their first hire. Once they do, they pay CodeFights a referral fee equivalent to 15 percent of the hired candidate's first year salary.

"People like to believe that we live in a meritocracy, where individuals are valued based on their skills and abilities and not their titles, but the truth is, we do not," said CodeFights founder and CEO Tigran Sloyan. "The brand of your school and workplace are really the only things that determine your place in the talent market. CodeFights is on a mission to change that by improving access to world class education and focusing on competency above all else in recruiting."

This groundbreaking approach has led CodeFights to break open opportunities for talented engineers with non-standard backgrounds, who wouldn't otherwise have had access to them. For example, the company helped a transwoman named Jessica Janiuk from Des Moines, Iowa secure a job with a Datto in Boston. It also provided a leg up to James Johnston, a senior engineer from Chattanooga, Tennessee who recently joined Thumbtack in San Francisco.

This $10 million in funding will enable CodeFights to enter the next phase of its growth. Other participants in this round include SV Angel, Felicis Ventures, A Capital and Granatus Ventures. Thomas Gieselmann, general partner at e.ventures, and Charlie Songhurst, the former head of corporate strategy at Microsoft, will join the CodeFights Board of Directors.

About CodeFights:
CodeFights is a San Francisco based technology startup aiming to change the way we learn and measure professional skills. It applies core game mechanics to transform learning and honing skills like programming into a fun and addictive game while helping talented people from all backgrounds to find amazing new opportunities.

About e.ventures:
Founded in 1998 and built on a strong, shared culture of entrepreneurship, e.ventures is a leading early stage venture capital firm with global scale. The firm invests out of dedicated funds in six geographies and combines a global investment strategy and philosophy with local presence and insights. Focused exclusively at the intersection of consumer internet, media and mobile, e.ventures partners with visionary company founders to disrupt global markets and build category creating companies. Existing investments include Acorns, Farfetch, The RealReal, AppAnnie, Deposit Solutions, Segment, NGINX, When I Work, Munchery, Nativo and Azmo. Among our historical investments are innovators like Angie's List, Groupon, Delicious, Sonos, Sapato, and AppFolio.www.eventures.vc

SOURCE CodeFights