Jobbatical is a startup online talent marketplace that connects people looking for short term experiences combining work and travel with global employers offering short term gigs. Their tagline is:
Travel. Work. See the world. Connecting talented professionals with inspiring career adventures at startups around the globe.
In other words, they provide access to expat assignments.
In the past expat assignments mostly went to a small number of employees at large corporations. Jobbatical is creating a marketplace that democratizes access to these jobs.
The company just raised $2 million in venture funding from powerhouse early stage VC Union Square Ventures and others. Key quote from USV on how they see the opportunity:
The specific opportunity here is an interesting one: the rapid global shift towards internet-based businesses made tech startups a strategic priority for dozens of countries around the world and venture investors are putting more capital to work in increasingly diverse geographies. So the number of properly capitalized tech companies outside of gravity centers like San Francisco, New York and London is skyrocketing but the bulk of talent remains concentrated in these saturated locations (or looking to move there).
Jobbatical is redistributing that talent more evenly around the world with a proposition that’s as daring as it is reassuring: work elsewhere – anywhere – for a year. It’s a simple message that has earned the company a talent pool of over 30,000 people looking to take jobbaticals and over 1,200 companies in 40+ countries looking to hire them.
Another interesting angle comes from another of Jobbatical's investors. Key quote from a Tech Crunch article on the funding (which playfully includes "catch me if you can" in the article's URL):
“The world of work is changing fast, and Karoli’s vision of millions of people one day soon taking 7-to-10 ‘Jobbaticals’ over 10 years, instead of working a single job over the same period, is one we wholeheartedly share,” he says.
We've covered the digital nomad trend and jobbatical in prior posts and there's clearly a rapidly growing number of people who want to travel and work outside of their home country.
We often read in the press dire predictions about the future of work. And there are definitely reasons to be concerned.
But the rapidly changing world of work is also creating an array of new opportunities and Jobbatical is an exciting example.
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