inploi

Share Your Start-Up Story – inploi By Matthew De La Hey

inploi is an on-demand jobs platform for the service economy – It uses a mobile app and web platform to connect jobseekers to employers trying to find workers for short or long term work.

The London-based tech startup, set up by Matthew De La Hey and Alex Hanson-Smith, both 25, is modelled on LinkedIn’s concept but for the service economy.

Tell Us More About Inploi

We believe it costs too much and takes too long for employers to find good quality candidates, and that it is far too difficult for people looking for work to find suitable opportunities.

Posting on a job board is expensive, offers no filtering, results in a huge number of applications – consuming management time unnecessarily – staffing agencies add huge wage markups and placing signs in windows have limited reach.

Existing solutions are desperately inefficient and the applicant experience is poor.

inploi re-imagines the entire process, building a trusted community of quality job seekers and top-notch employers – Think LinkedIn for the service economy.

Our platform intelligently matches suitable candidates to open positions, presenting employers with the people best suited for the roles they need to fill.

Detailed job-seeker profiles including introductory videos act as a virtual resume providing employers with all they need to make informed decisions.

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1st Picture: inploi founder, Matthew De La Hey with the team.

How did you discover your startup

I launched inploi with my co-founder Alex Hanson-Smith in July 2015. I came to the UK from South Africa to do an MSc in African Studies at Oxford as a Weidenfeld Scholar.

Not quite ready to leave university, I carried on to the business school where I did an MBA. 

I was trying to find something to do with my spare time to earn some money so I ended up walking the street looking for signs in shop windows and handing out a hard copy of my CV.

Applications on jobs boards yielded no response, and staffing agencies only had ‘assessment days’ week away. It struck me that this was an absurd state of affairs.

There were surely people like me all over the city looking for work, and loads of places with vacancies to fill.

Why couldn’t we find each other?  In the mobile age – where you can get a date, a pizza, or a cab from your phone, why not a job too?

A lot of thinking, external input, and a few ‘pivots’ later we got to inploi, the service economy jobs network.

What support did you receive in terms of funding for the business.

In the first few months we had no funding at all and had to ‘bootstrap’ with extremely limited resources, whilst trying to survive in London.

I did some freelance writing for a PR agency, and Alex did some consulting for an advertising agency.  That paid the rent and the experience also made us lean, and efficient as a business.

We raised a round of seed funding in February to get us off the ground which has allowed us to build the platform and build out our team. We are now looking to raise a significant seed round in order to grow across London, the UK and beyond.

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Some of inploi features (Left to Right) – receiving feedback and inChat messaging with employers.

Why the attraction to entrepreneurship

Deciding to be an entrepreneur comes from a desire to be in control of my own destiny – to play an active role in building something and in shaping the world in some meaningful way.

There is also a deep satisfaction that comes from being so close to the impact of the work you do – we can see the results of every ounce of input and that is extremely fulfilling.

Any success story, so far, to share about inploi

We have found the market incredible receptive to the concept of inploi and have signed up a number of launch partners who will be listing jobs with us including Deliveroo, Bill’s, Crussh and Daylesford.

In the run-up to our app launch in July 2016, we have been placing people into roles manually – achieving this has been very satisfying but has only served to validate how inefficient the process is currently.

What does the future hold

We are working to build a global technology company that will disrupt the way staffing industry works in the service economy globally. We want to fix a broken model, promoting labour mobility and unlocking work opportunities by building a recruitment driven network.

We are building the go-to platform for people to find work or staff, wherever they are in the world.

The inploi app can now be downloaded on Android and on iOS.

*This article has been updated

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