Passionfruit Closes $9m Series A Funding to Scale its Platform for Independent Work

Passionfruit, a London-based start-up founded in 2022, has secured $9 million in Series-A funding from prominent investors, including Seaya, Firstminute, and Playfair Capital. The platform connects freelance workers with companies such as HSBC and PepsiCo, leveraging artificial intelligence to streamline the hiring and engagement process. With over 3,000 registered users, Passionfruit aims to empower businesses by promoting flexible and efficient working arrangements. The new funding will be used to enhance its offerings and expand into the North American market. Passionfruit’s founders, Raffi Salama and Issah Abdul-Moomin, emphasize the platform’s role in modernizing career infrastructure and driving business growth.

London, UK, July 23rd, 2024 – Passionfruit, a platform that empowers businesses to grow via collaboration with independent workers, has raised $9m in a Series A funding round to further its mission to make the full potential of the modern workforce more accessible to brands around the world.

The $9M funding round is led by Seaya, with participation from existing Seed round investors Firstminute Capital, Playfair Capital, Cornerstone and Portfolio Ventures.

Founded out of a realisation that, in the 21st century, both freelancers and companies are seeking a more efficient, direct and agile way to work with one another, Passionfruit has grown to offer a AI-powered platform that radically simplifies a company’s ability to discover, arrange and engage vetted independent talent, initially in Marketing, while also providing on-project collaboration tooling, empowering all parties to plan, implement and report on entire work-streams within a single, streamlined platform.

Historically, getting external support from a classical big agency, be it in Marketing, Consulting or Market Research, has been too expensive for the majority of businesses, and so most companies are forced to get by with stretched and non-specialised internal teams.

Growth targets are missed, employees are left burned out and market share is eroded as companies don’t have the right resources in place to compete.

With the best of the next generation’s knowledge workers increasingly striking out to become their own freelance boss, businesses of all sizes are sensing the opportunity to go outside of traditional big agency models, drive down cost and drive up results.

Yet circumventing these legacy solutions has been difficult for organisations to do at scale, due to the manual nature of talent discovery, a lack of workflow management and procedural memory getting lost. Passionfruit’s platform gives businesses a one-stop solution through which they can get the exact support they need at a price and in the place that suits their needs and means.

“We started our business because we believed that the next generation deserved a new way to operate their professional lives, and we realised that if we could reimagine career infrastructure end-to-end for the 21st century, businesses would also be enabled to operate in a more agile way, one that drives more efficient growth.” said Raffi Salama, Co-Founder and CEO of Passionfruit. “This investment is a vote of confidence in our vision of a world where everyone works in a way that works for them, while businesses are operating and growing more cost-effectively, with the right people in the right place at the right time.”

Issah Abdul Moomin, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, said: “Work doesn’t work well for too many people. Businesses often struggle to bring the right expertise to their most important challenges, and freelancers face barriers to accessing meaningful opportunities. This funding allows us to continue building the operating system that empowers independent workers and businesses to collaborate efficiently and productively.”

This round of funding will allow Passionfruit to continue developing world class products to enhance collaboration between independent workers and businesses, expand further into North America, as well as adding focus on software for businesses to track progress in real time across their entire growth planning, execution & reporting cycles.

Beatriz Gonzalez, Founder and Managing Partner of Seaya says, “As tech investors we believe in the opportunity for innovation to bring real change and disruption to the workplace.  We have been looking for a chance to participate in this revolution;  Passionfruit, led by Raffi and Issah, have created an unprecedented value proposition connecting tier I talent with leading global brands. We are looking forward to supporting this amazing team in their vision to break down barriers and contribute to a fundamental change in the way we work.”

About Passionfruit

Initially focussed on Marketing departments, Passionfruit stands as the complete command centre for accessing and collaborating with independent workers, catering to a diverse community of mid-sized and Fortune 500 businesses across North America, the UK and Europe.

Since its founding and Seed funding round in 2022, the platform’s worker base has surged to a community of over 3,000 and it supports the needs of hundreds of major brands worldwide, including PepsiCo, Mars, ABinBev, HSBC and The Match Group. Total funds raised now stand at $13.3m. Learn more at usepassionfruit.com

About Seaya Ventures

Seaya Ventures is a leading European Venture Capital fund that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building global technology companies.

Seaya raised its first funding in 2013 and currently manages over €650 million across five early-stage venture funds. Seaya accelerates the growth of startups by leveraging the founder’s strategic vision, providing them with Seaya’s global platform, its extensive network of founders, investors and multinational corporations, as well as all its experience in the global expansion of companies such as Glovo, Cabify, Wallbox (NYSE:WBX), Spotahome, Clarity AI, Clicars, Alma and RatedPower. Learn more at seaya.vc