CHICAGO — Classet, a recruiting and training software startup for skilled trades companies, today announced that it has raised a $3 million seed round. This initial funding round will be used to scale out their platform and enable more trades businesses to leverage Classet to fill open roles. The round was led by Starting Line with participation from Weekend Fund, Wayfinder, SV Angel, and Liquid 2, amongst other angels and venture funds.
Launched in 2022, Classet is building a network specifically for the skilled trades community that employers utilize to promote their opportunities, find people to hire, and accelerate the training process for entry level talent. The company’s mission is to improve the massive skills gap and the challenge to find true upward mobility in the blue collar space. Classet is led by co-founders Nick Jones, Cooper Newby and Gino Rooney, who previously co-founded Bluecrew, one of the largest on-demand staffing platforms for hourly work, and have deep expertise in building hiring products for the blue collar world.
Commenting on the raise, Rooney said: “We’ve seen the difficulty of hiring firsthand and the need for a better solution to enable students and job seekers stuck in low-ceiling careers to pursue opportunities in the skilled trades. We believe everyone should have access to a quality, economically sustainable, and dignified career that the skilled trades have to offer. We want to help make that a reality and are excited by the support of our investors who share that mission.”
”We’re excited to partner with the Classet team as they address the large and accelerating problem of hiring, retaining, and up-skilling skilled trade professionals across the country. The founders bring unusually deep domain expertise, unique technology, and an obsession with the customer experience which make them the perfect people to solve this problem.” Scott Holloway, General Partner at Starting Line
Classet’s initial focus has been on the construction trades, helping companies connect with and hire Carpenters, Plumbers, Electricians, and HVAC Techs – an industry with nearly 700,000 current job openings. With an aging workforce, the expectation is for the number of openings to grow to 3 Million by 2030 as more existing skilled trades employees reach retirement age.
“Great people in the trades have always been hard to find.” says Eddy Wittry, Chief Marketing Officer at Ace Handyman Services. “We run a 4.84 rated business on Google Reviews. It’s driven by hiring great people and that’s what Classet allows us to do. It helps separate us from good to great. When you work with most startups, what they do is they view the world from the inside-out. Building a technology and pushing it onto customers. The Classet team really uniquely starts from trying to solve customer problems first and working backwards to build the best product to help.”
For job seekers and students, Classet offers tools to improve career search in the trades via career quizzes, short-form videos, career path comparison and a streamlined application process. This funding round will enable them to continue building out products to help inform and connect the next generation of the skilled trades workforce to meaningful career paths.
