MIAMI — Teal, a company that empowers people to grow their careers on their own terms, has raised a $6.3 million seed round. Propelled by massive job market shifts during the pandemic, Teal is building the tools for a new era of professionals who want more control over their career growth.
A recent survey found that nearly a quarter (22%) of Americans have switched jobs during the pandemic, and 50% said they were considering looking for a new job. A Gartner analysis predicts that annual voluntary turnover will remain 20% higher than the pre-pandemic annual average.
“In the future of work, the employee is the enterprise,” said David Fano, CEO and Founder of Teal. “Companies have HR teams, recruiters, and sophisticated technology to manage their pipelines, but all that most job seekers have is a spreadsheet. We’re leveling the playing field by building the infrastructure that helps people grow their careers with confidence.”
Teal offers a free platform of web-based career tools including a Job Tracker, Resume Builder, and Chrome extension that help people accelerate their job search. In just over a year, Teal became the tool of choice for over 65,000 users and helped people land their dream jobs at companies like Google, Apple, TikTok, Spotify, and Bumble.
“Teal has brought all aspects of the job search together in one platform, which has enabled me to organize my job search and keep track of the status of each potential job,” said Catherine Daneliak, a Teal member.
The latest funding will be used to power Teal’s next phase of product development, including a recommendations engine that matches people with skills-based online courses aligned to their career goals, with affiliate partnerships currently in place with platforms like Coursera, General Assembly, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning. This effort is being led by the new Head of Growth, Yowana Wamala, who comes from NerdWallet, Credit Karma, and LendingTree.
Teal’s seed round was led by City Light Capital with participation from Rethink Education, Human Ventures, Gaingels, Pareto Ventures, Basecamp Fund, Zelkova Ventures, and angel investors like Tom Willerer (former CPO at Opendoor and Coursera). Previous investors including Flybridge, Lerer Hippeau, and Oceans also participated in the round.
“Teal is building the tools to help people navigate the future of work where career agility is more important than ever,” said Jeff Rinehart, Partner at City Light Capital and former CMO at 2U. “We need a new category of technology that champions the candidate—not the company—empowering people to take control of their careers and develop the skills they need to excel long-term. Teal’s business model positions them to both do good and do well, and we couldn’t be more excited to back them at this pivotal moment.”
