VCs in Stockholm have recently been rhapsodising about one early-stage startup. The startup in question is recruitment tech startup Talentium. The Stockholm-based startup is looking to shake up the recruitment industry with its proprietary search engine, which scours the web to identify potential candidates.
While the tech might appear humdrum and even its founder admits its tech is “not reinventing the wheel”, the startup has a stellar supporting cast.
High profile backers
EQT Ventures recently led its €3.5m pre-seed round, with A-list angel investors including Klarna’s Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Sana’s Joel Hellermark and VOI Technology’s Fredrik Hjelm. Siemiatkowski said: “When I saw the demo the first time, it was one of the coolest things I've seen. That is why I had to invest.ˮ When Talentium’s youthful-looking founder Sebastian Hjärne presents himself on video conference, one can’t help but ask him how old he is?
“I am 22," he says.
Experienced founder
What’s more, Hjärne is no ingénue, but has two other startups under his belt: the first a data analytics startup (which he founded at 19 and sold) and the second a tennis ball recycling startup. And what is his advice to aspiring young founders, who have a germ of an idea, but don’t have a clue how to launch a startup?
He says:
"I think it’s like just start. Once you start something, what I am seeing, even if you have an amazing idea, the idea rarely ends up where it started from at the beginning. Maybe start the company first, and just like to have that as a shell, and build upon it. If you are thinking about doing something, just do it, otherwise you won’t get out there."
Precocious
Like many precocious youngsters, he is an autodidact, and knew what he wanted to do at an early age.
He said:
"I wanted to be creative, I wanted to solve a problem that I saw and that is how I started with it. When I was younger, I was always thinking I wanted to develop stuff, like apps. When I got a bit older, I really thought I could do something by myself."
Daunting VC meetings
One of the biggest challenges he has faced, he says, is presenting to VCs, calling it a “super new” challenge.
He says:
"You have to share the vision with everyone, make them understand what you are doing. And also, convince them we have the right team in place. For me this was super-new learnings working with a VC, it’s so different than just having these angels."
That said, an exit under his belt (Hjärne equivocates on this, saying only that the tech was sold to an unnamed buyer, and that the sale allowed him the freedom to travel) is likely to have been a big pull for potential Talentium investors.
On getting Siemiatkowski onboard, he met the Klarna founder- who he describes as a person he looks up to- for the first time at Klarna's office.
He says: “I think his journey has been amazing and, of course, I wanted the learnings.”
Startup derives from pain points
The name Talentium, he says, derives from the word “talent” and IUM, which he says is Talentium's “first agentic robot”. Like many startups, Hjärne says the idea behind Talentium came from historic “pain points” its founder encountered, namely struggling to recruit staff in his previous startups.
How Talentium works
Talentium says its search engine helps businesses and recruiters identify the right talent for their specific needs within seconds. The platform analyses millions of profiles through a simple prompt to identify a company's ideal matches, and its suite of products streamlines processes that can take up to weeks for recruiters to complete.
So, a recruiter types, for example, they want to find a software engineer in San Francisco with Python skills who has worked at Google. Talentium will present the recruiter with the most relevant candidates and their contact details.
Along with identifying candidates, Talentium can schedule interviews, appraise interviews, and advise the next steps through its AI agent. The only thing it doesn’t do is the interview itself.
Open sources
The search engine’s data comes from open sources, such as social media, technical information and other public information. Talentium, whose target market is recruiters, startups and large enterprises, is soon to launch a more comprehensive, seamless iteration of its product.
While the startup has been widely badged up as an AI startup, AI is not central to its proposition, albeit it has its own AI agents in the recruitment process and uses generative AI for writing purposes.
Future of the recruitment industry
Talentium could prove a headache for existing recruitment players, which Hjärne calls “very inefficient”. But Hjärne says Talentium is not out to kill the recruitment industry. Hjärne says: “No, it’s to make the recruiters work much more efficient, so that they can focus on connecting the talent.”
Next steps
The startup still has a small team, just 13 people, recruited from around the world and through Talantium’s search engine (“drinking your own champagne”, “not eating your own dog food”). The funding will be used to scale up, as it looks to drive up client numbers and expand to new markets (it already has a Japanese client).
Hjärne is not getting over his skis and is not one for intemperate ambitions.
He says:
"I am very humble for the future. I am very grateful for everything that is happening, but, in the same sense, we are super-focused on what we are doing. We want to become this tool stack this is a must-have when it comes to recruitment."
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