Meaningful Gigs has raised $6 million seed funding to connect Africans with international remote jobs.
The seed round was led by Stage 2 Capital with participation from Rethink Education, Authentic Ventures, Reach Capital, Marla Blow, Zvi Band, and Michele Perry.
Founded by Ronnie Kwesi Coleman, Stephanie Nachemja-Bunton (COO) and Max Farago (CTO) in 2018, the Washington D.C.-based startup is a tech-enabled marketplace that up-skills and connects African digital designers with enterprise companies looking for highly-skilled, diverse designers. It has worked with multinationals in the U.S. like Coca-Cola, Audi, Vans and IDEO.
“We are thinking about how we can let more dimensional traders all over the continent know that we exist, so that we can help them make five to seven times more what they are making locally. We are creating more referral programs through our platform to help scale throughout the continent,” Meaningful Gigs co-founder and CEO Ronnie Kwesi Coleman.
The company is planning an aggressive marketing campaign to get at least 100 corporates on board over the next year, from the current 40 (17 being major enterprises) currently using its platform.
“The other side of it is just letting more brands like the top-tier ones know that we exist because there’s a need for creatives in every company and every company right now is struggling to hire talent, and they just don’t even know that there’s a world full of talent waiting,” said Coleman.
Per future plans, Coleman said: “We want to become the number one remote jobs marketplace in the world. We want to create 100,000 jobs by 2028. And to achieve that, we are focusing on customer empathy and really understanding what they need. A lot of the [seed round] money is going to be spent on creating the best experience for them. We want to make working with African designers 10 times better than would be working with anybody else. We want to invest in that relationship building so that they don’t want to go anywhere else.”
Stage 2 Capital partner, Mandy Cole said, “With the shortage of highly skilled talent and the increasing need for diverse thinking, especially in creative, marketing and product, Meaningful Gigs is solving a huge problem by connecting talented African designers with companies to deliver best-in-class design.
“We’ve been impressed with the Meaningful Gigs team’s focus in providing the best design experience for their clients while providing amazing tools for their designers; we’re excited to support their journey to become the destination for diverse design talent.”
