# Athyna

Incredible talent, matched with AI-precision, at lightning speed.

## Elevator pitch
The world is going remote, hiring & retaining global talent is extremely difficult and compliantly messy. Athyna is a Global Talent Platform, whose mission is to help democratise opportunities across the globe. A one-stop-shop to recruit and employ talent while keeping them happy. We created an ecosystem of talent, and tools to bridge the gap between organizations and job seekers, aiming to inspire and equip the next generation of founders to build great, meaningful companies.

- Canonical URL: https://wefunder.com/athyna
- Entity ID: wefunder:company:116529
- Last updated: 2026-06-15T05:00:52Z
- Generated at: 2026-06-15T09:54:49Z

## Quick facts
- Grown from $50k of ARR to $6M in four years
- Building the future of recruitment on OpenAI's LLM
- 73% growth in remote job listings
- $627B TAM market opportunity
- 150k+ global talent pool, growing 22%+ MoM
- Built global team from ex-Amazon, Meta, WeWork, Uber, DiDi and more

## Active fundraises
- wefunder:fundraise:115336: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:115335: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:64096: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)
- wefunder:fundraise:64869: 4(a)(6) successful (USD)

## Story
Hey! I'm Bill Kerr, founder and CEO of Athyna. We recently completed our Pre-Series A round with investors and creators, raising $2.5M to build Athyna AI. But we are all about community. That's why we're opening this opportunity to anyone who wants to join us in building the future of talent acquisition.Athyna is transforming recruitment by leveraging AI to find the best global hires for companies worldwide. Incredible talent, matched with AI-precision, at lightning speed.So, you might be wondering what this is all about, Let's dive in:As with most of the world, recruitment is changing. And it’s all because of AI. I am excited to introduce you to our contribution to innovation in the space— Athyna AI. Gone are the days of talent acquisition taking weeks or god-forbid months to find a less-than-ideal candidate. And long gone are the days in which you needed to hunt locally for talent.The world is smaller than ever. Talent lives in every corner of the globe. And we are dedicated to making sure that talent ends up where it should be. Talent meet opportunity.For talent around the world that means a better life. And a career that may not have been possible in the past. For companies it’s also very simple: Incredible talent, matched with AI-precision, at lightning speed.What’s the opportunityJeff Bezos has a philosophy around strategy—that is to focus on the constants. Spend time thinking about the things that do not change.We know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher.- Jeff BezosFor us it’s the same. We know that people want incredible talent, matched with precision to their requirements, and they want it fast, or better yet—at lightning speed. Wanting something is fine. But it’s not always been easy. Sparse talent pools, unintelligent recruitment practices and slow. Sometimes taking months to fill a role. AI will change that. We at Athyna plan to spearhead this change.15 minutes into my first meeting with our new investor & advisor, Bryce—CEO is TaskUS (TASK)— he looked at me and said; “I love it, this is the future of our industry, I’m in.” What did I tell Bryce to elicit a ‘s**t-yes’ response from a guy who has grown his company to $1B in revenue? I told him about the future.The Future of RecruitmentToday, in most instances, a company lands a job; it’s managed by sales, and then handed off to a recruiter who works with a sourcer. A typical recruitment process looks like this.Pre AI recruitment cycleDAY 1: Recruiter aligns with hiring manager.DAY 2 → 5: Sourcer begins building pipeline. A job is put out on the jobs board.Scouring through the internal talent pool begins.Then there is headhunting.And only after a few days do the applicants begin getting sifted through.DAY 7 → 10: Recruiter—finally—interviews shortlisted candidates.Data is added into CRM in haphazard way.No consistency around candidate grading is applied.DAY 12 → 15: After all that the client meets the talent, a week or two in.And this is in the best case scenario. Internal process are usually much clunkier and more drawn out. Often taking weeks (plural) or months.Now compare this to what an AI-driven recruitment process will look like.Borinnngggg.Athyna AI recruitment cycleDAY 0: Company receives job description in preparation.AI-smart matching begins immediately. Tens of thousands of candidates are vetted via machine learning and placed into a short list.Candidates are assessed on English proficiency and scored from 0/100 for matching fit.Shortlist of 25-30 is sent to the recruiter for approval. The recruiter sends invites for async AI-screening to the top 15-20.DAY 1: Recruiter aligns with the hiring manager.A job is put out on the jobs board. As candidates that are 80% match and above apply they are invited to an async AI-screening.Recruiter looks through short list, schedules calls where necessary for extra level of vetting. Still day one.DAY 2: Recruiter interviews top candidatesAI transcribes the call and adjusts candidate scores based on interview quality.The recruiter endorses the top candidates. Still Day 2!I’ve got the need for speed.AI-powered talent acquisition will be orders of magnitude faster and more accurate than anything that has come before it.We plan to embed talent across the entire recruitment cycle. The future of hiring.How we got hereBut it wasn’t all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows. Like most startups, we have been through a rollercoaster of ups and downs, pivots and backflips. But mainly, we seem to trend in the right direction—that direction being up and to the right.Here is the quick dot point history of the highs and lows so far in our journey.The Athyna story in terms of growth.‘Founded’ August 2018, with first $1 coming in Jan 2019.Grew kinda fast for six-months before stagnating for six, co-founders left Dec 2019.COVID hits, we lose 70% of our revenue, we fire most everyone.Two months later we show signs of life, then inexplicably grow 22% MoM for 2 years.Shiny object syndrome sees us raise money to build EOR.Round launches the day Netflix makes 1st tech layoffs—market crash.Coronavibes.Nearly raise $5M at $25M valuation but gets reneged due to conflict.Kill off all new products including EOR, close off VC round and raise a $500k bridge.Two years of growth and breaking enterprise.AI wave hits—a way to scale our business model appears.That brings us to today. And the huge opportunity we have in front of us with the rise of remote work and global teams.The remote hiring market todayIn today's global job market, remote work isn't just an option—it's a defining trend that’s reshaping how, where, and when we work. Let’s dive into the numbers that highlight the transformation.Growth in Remote Work: Remote work has steadily increased globally since 2015, growing 1-3% annually. Post-COVID-19, 27% of workers were remote in 2022 (Statista).Strategic Benefits for Companies: In 2023, 41% of companies adopted remote work primarily to expand their talent pool, with an additional 28% citing it as a secondary reason (Statista).Remote Job Popularity: Software development is one of the top remote jobs, expected to grow 24% by 2026 (Tecla).Remote Workplace Market Growth: The remote workplace services market is projected to grow at a 23.8% CAGR, reaching $58.5 billion by 2027 (Notta).Use of Outsourced Talent: 71% of hiring managers plan to maintain or increase their use of freelancers over the next six months (Upwork).Remote Job Listings: It’s estimated that by 2028, 73% of all departments will have remote workers (Upwork).Anyway, I think you get the point. Global hiring is here to stay. And remote work is eating the world.Behind-the-scenes of building Athyna AIThe idea for Athyna AI actually came in the first days of the company. The dream was always to be able to beat the market with speed. The reason for that is, there are two types of candidates—active and passive. Active candidates, are well, by definition, active in many other processes. And passive candidates are only passive until the moment they take your call. Then you are on the clock. Looking back into our Slack it seems the conversation around AI began to really heat up mid-2022.Fast forward a handful of months and boatload of hard work from our product team and we have the foundation to build the future of talent. Or rather, the future of how talent acquisition is done. Meet the Legends: 70 Talented Minds Powering AthynaNow, let’s take a look at what Athyna AI does today, what it will do tomorrow and where it is heading in the longer term.Exploring Athyna AISo what does Athyna AI do today? Well—firstly, it’s a tool for our team to outperform the competition. Because of the strength of our brand we have had hundreds of thousands of applicants for our roles, tens of thousands of which have been vetted. Now thanks to Sam Altman and his nifty LLMs we can source talent with the click of a button.Think about how powerful it is to have a sourcing tool that will search thousands of profiles, rate and rank them and then push them across to your recruiter. Not only does remove-bias, it does it in the blink of an eye. Quality of match, tick. Lightning speed, tick.On the talent side of the equation, we have built an AI powered, job search tool, we’re calling Ava, to help candidates land their dream gig. Optimise your LinkedIn profile, generate tailored, job-specific resumes and run our AI Matching Index across jobs you think you’re a fit for.Ava, will do two things at once: firstly, it will add massive value to job seekers all across the world, and secondly it will help us grow our talent tools and give us indicators of which talent is looking for which opportunity and when they are looking for it. Adding value while growing our talent pools. Double tick.We have a load more features that are currently in-play or set to be launched in the next weeks but for now I want to tell you about how we plan to become the central point of focus for remote workers all across the world.Amazon & 3rd party sellers + Athyna 3rd party hirersRecently, I read the Amazon shareholder letters—those penned by Bezos anyway. The next stage of growth for Athyna, will be focused on becoming the central hub for remote work and building global teams. And it couldn’t help but strike me how similar the decision-making process has been to the Amazon decision to open up to 3rd party sellers.The analogy here is Athyna opening up a global jobs board that offers not only Athyna jobs—but all remote jobs listed across the world. No one owns this space. RoadmapWe plan to build AI around every stage of the recruitment process. Next on the roadmap the the launch of Ava, followed by an AI recruitment companion—think Gong but for recruiters. While also in the next couple of quarters releasing async GPT interviews, coding tests and technical interviews and finally the jobs board to wrap the year.Much of what we are building will start as internal tooling to deliver the most incredible talent in as short of timeframe as possible. But the option to spin our the tools is very interesting to us. There are a handful of revenue opportunities but there is something that is even more interesting if we get other recruiters using our Athyna AI tools—data.Vision for the futureOur vision for the short to medium term is to build the biggest business as possible in the business model we have today. As a talent marketplace. But as we grow and build out an incredible advantage around data many more opportunities open up to us.One of our investors made this one for us.Sponsored jobs, boosted profiles, enrich talent profiles, AI-sourcing, all while delivering the best of global talent to the biggest companies in the world. The future is exciting—and we are excited to play our part in building it.Invest with usIf you believe in what we are building you can take part. We have raised $2.5M in our Pre-Series A but we have a 10% allocation left for our community. And that’s it really. It’s an exciting time to be in business, an exciting time in tech, and above all else an exciting time to be part of Athyna.Cheers,Doc

## FAQ
1. **I cannot find find a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) statement for Athyna. Did you file it under another name?**
   - G'day John! Our name is actually Athyna, Inc. Hopefully you will be able to see it under that name and if not feel free to let me know and I will look into it further for you. 🙏
2. **Hi - Interesting company with impressive traction. (1) How has the current macro environment impacted growth and business overall? Are you still on target for $6mm+ in revenue for 2022? (2) How have you implemented payroll, taxes, benefits, etc. that are compliant in 150+ coun...**
   - G'day Jeff, great questions! Let me see if I can answer them for you in as much detail as possible. 1. The macro environment for us has meant that pipeline and growth has slowed a little last 3-months but we entered 2022 with the motto of 'growing better not faster' this year so it's not altogether been bad as we have halved our burn and also wildy improved retention in the last 6 months which were two of our goals. As for $6M, those projections were taking into account closing a round at the...
3. **Hi, I don't understand why you are investing 5% of top-line revenue into climate tech startups when your not yet cash flow positive. According to your Form C, your current burn rate is ~ $47K/month, and you anticipate needing additional fundraising efforts within the next 18 m...**
   - Hey Daniel, thanks for your question. In mid 2021 we ran two sessions as an entire organisation, the first to realign our values after 3 years of operations and the second to decide on what type of impact we wanted to achieve as an organisation as well. We looked at models like 1% for the Planet, Who Gives A Crap's 50% of profit pledge and a few others and we decided as an organisation that we wanted to make sure that we diverted a meaningful amount of our revenue to impact and in this case s...
4. **Nice Concept, My wife and I are interested in investing in this company. Have concerns about your revenue projections also will like to have more information on your past year financials, interested in investing with significant amount. Thank you in advance for this information.**
   - G'day Donald! Thanks for writing and thanks for your interest. If you shoot me an email to doc@athyna.io we can chat further and I can give you access to a lot more of our financials etc.. Looking forward to it. Thanks mate. 🙏
5. **So I'm curious, what investments have you made so far with this money, and what impact have you had? How much total have you invested? Thanks.**
   - I think this came through twice so answered the original version. Thanks!

## Team
- Bill Kerr (Founder & CEO)
- Santiago Nisnik (Head of Product)
- Simone Kier (Head of Growth)
- Leandro Cartelli (Head of Talent)
- Argentino Molinuevo (Head of Sales)
- Sofia Etchebarne (Sales Manager)
- Robert Dragne (Head of Customer Success)
- Josefina Cordoba (Creative Director)
- Martin Lichtman (Head of Finance)
- Taina Silingardi (Head of People & Culture)
- Beatriz Guevara (Chief of Staff)

## Recent posts
- We raised $2.5M! (2024-05-21T12:30:36Z)

## Q&A
- Q: Super interesting story. And I really love capital efficient businesses. So many hollow unicorns on the market today. I have one question for you I'd love to ask: what have you done differently in 2022 compared to 2021 and what is the thing you have been most proud of in 2022?
  - A: Well, throughout 2020 (post COVID hit, so April onwards) and 2021 we grew around 23% MoM without really trying. However, that type of growth is hard to handle with a bootstrapped startup. The wheels weren't falling off but they were definitely wobbling. So coming into 2022 we came in with the motto as an organisation to 'grow better, not faster' and that's been a massive win for us. What does that mean? It means growing more sustainably by hiring in the right places, focussing on ops, CX and experience rather than doubling down on commercial, optimising churn so on and so on. We basically came in with the mindset of preparing for when we close out out our round to be able to spend our money well (efficiently) and to be a well oiled ship. And the thing that I am most proudest of is how we have navigated a pretty rocky external environment. Here is a quick story - So, I spoke with one of the funds that are still quite interested in investing into us a few weeks back and I told them over the last few months we’ve continued to grow MoM, moved NRR to the negative churn territory (100+%) and we have brought out monthly burn down from around $55k to less than $10k without a single layoff and they were flummoxed. Their portfolio companies at our stage were “burning 10-20x the cash, churning like crazy and going backwards”. So overall the strategy for this year has been to become a better organisation as a whole, which will prepare us to scale. And what I am most proud of is that we have held it all together through a rock period. Thanks for the question! ✌️
- Q: Thanks for the quick response, Bill. Few more questions. Per KingsCrowd you've made 88 placements in total. Is that correct? Can you update with YTD numbers and previous numbers. Also what is YTD revenue (or as recent as possible)? What percentage of revenue is coming from EOR and what do you expect it to contribute by end of year? I also see below there's a priced round going on, what is the round priced at? Thanks
  - A: Ok so, to answer all of your questions Joe... Question: You've made 88 placements in total. Is that correct? Can you update with YTD numbers and previous numbers. Answer: Yes, 88 placements and current YTD revenue and comparisons are: - 2022: $1,824,758.65 - 2021: $426,785.00 (through same period) - 2020: $89,299.73 (through same period) Question: What percentage of revenue is coming from EOR and what do you expect it to contribute by end of year? Answer: 99% of our revenue comes from our Talent product right now and none from EOR. EOR is built but we won't start investing in it until we finalise this round as it's a very capital intensive thing to get off the ground, with low margins initially as all EOR is enabled by white-label partners. So we are still very much laser focussed on our Talent product for now. We expect that by the end of the year it will be contributing very little. We expect only just over $100k+ this year but we expect it to bring between 15-20% of our revenue in FY23 and around 40% in FY24. Question: I also see below there's a priced round going on, what is the round priced at? Answer: We currently have 100+ investors still in our investor pipeline on then priced round side. No term sheets as yet but as for the valuation we have been shopping it's the same as the Wefunder campaign at $16M. Let me know if you have more questions mate and I will jump on them straight away!
- Q: Very interesting company/team. Can you describe your revenue sources more in depth? Do you get a typical recruiter fee? Any plans of getting into recurring revenue in some way? Thanks
  - A: G'day Joe, thanks for your question mate. As per our current revenue, it all (around 99%) comes from our Talent product (talent acquisition marketplace), which was our original business model. The new products are all pre-revenue or more or less. But to give you a super clear overview of the process: when we place a talent into our clients business we charge a 35% margin to the client and we charge that on a recurring basis for the entire duration of their engagement together. So, the talent sets their rate at which they want to get paid and we put our margin on top. For the client it's super interesting because our talent comes from developing economies which usually gives a company access to a higher quality of talent than they would have been able to access by competing locally. And they'll usually save 50-60% of their resources from hiring locally as well. But to be super and transparent, yes, all of our revenue is actually already recurring revenue. 💪🏼
- Q: Hi Bill. Interesting startup in a space that I can definitely see growing and impressive traction. I’m also impressed with the foresight to prioritize climate tech investing as a part of revenue stream, impact, and company culture. A couple questions I have as I consider an investment: 1) How is your burn rate and expenditures not higher than it is with 60+ employees in such an early stage company? 2) What’s a very rough draft of your exit or investor returns strategy? 3) How would the SAFEs work in conversion if you’re doing a priced round with VC investing at the same time 3.5) Would this SAFE round need to close immediately if a term sheet comes from a bigger VC that’s in a vetting process now, and how is the VC interest progressing at the moment? And 4) To what do you attribute your CAC being so low on a relative basis, and is that sustainable as you scale? Thank you for your time and answers.
  - A: G'day Aaron, thanks for the awesome questions mate. And thanks for the kind words also. Let me see if I can answer these questions as clearly as I can for you. 1. I would say the reason burn is so low is because we are 'eating our own dog food' in terms of our how we build our team (we pay competitive local salaries w benefits and equity for every employee) and have team in Latin America, Europe, Asia etc. where salaries are less than half of local to our markets we sell into (US, APAC, EU etc.). We also have a couple of exceptionally strong acquisition channels that are very low CAC. 2. As far as an exit strategy goes, I am a real mission-driven founder so its not something I spend a lot of timing thinking about. I think of Athyna as my baby and as a big piece of art, however as the years progress I do think about it more and more as every one of our staff own equity so I need to think in the best interest of myself and also them. I have always believe Athyna can be successful enough to IPO in the future, without a doubt as I back our team to continue to execute very well like we always have however the market has cooled considerably and should it stay cool for a few years, maybe our destiny is to be an M&A target for many larger firms out there. We have already had a lot of early enquiries by strategic acquirers in the market we play in but it makes no sense for us to sell in the next couple of years but I could certainly see a future in which in 3-5 years we are acquired by one of the larger employment platforms or talent marketplaces. I've always backed us in to compete with those who would acquire us but if the market stays cool then maybe they stay a cycle ahead of us fundraising and growth wise. 3. We would plan it so that the SAFE would convert at whatever a priced term sheet comes in at so long as it's at or below the prices round. The current val is $16M but say for example one of the firms we are talking to send us terms (and we accept them) at $13M then we'd adjust the SAFE to those terms, close the Wefunder campaign then sign the priced round. As to the VC side, we got really close to a term sheet a few weeks ago with a mid-sized firm out of Austin, but it got nixed due to a conflict with a portfolio company. We have two investment committee pitches coming up in the next fortnight, one with a very small fund out of Aus and one with a $2B fund out of Europe and we also have 100+ funds still in the 'maybe' column if you will at either 1st, 2nd or 3rd call or some that are even deep in some light diligence. 4. Our CAC is super low right now because we are very heavily reliant on two functions and those two functions we do exceptionally well. One is not so scalable, I mean it is but it's linearly scalable and the other is our secret sauce. We have one customer acquisition channel that is so powerful it's just incredible. We actually had a software factory out of LATAM wanting to invest in us (still live convos) who used the same strategy as their main mechanism that scaled them from $0 to $400M in revenue. Not meaning to be real cloak and dagger about it. I can spill all the beans if you want to know more at doc@athyna.io. As to maintaining the CAC this low in the future. On the channels we have working, I'd say yes. But we need to open up new channels. I'd say we have two channels that work really well but all great businesses have four or five channels that they have nailed. So still work to do there. I think as you mature in relation to your brand, your product, your ops, you gain efficiencies and improvements that lower CAC across all channels really but we are not there yet. The two channels I feel like we need to really get working next are partnerships and digital. Anyway, sorry for the super long answer, just trying to be as clear as possible for you. Thanks Aaron, any more questions let me know. 💪
- Q: So I'm curious, what companies have you invested in so far, and what impact have they had? How much money have you invested, and are you expecting a return on said investment, or is it more in the way of philanthropy?
  - A: Hey Dan, so far we made a small investment into a carbon offsetting startup. We acquired it for $15k in fact. You can check it out at Nul.to. It took as few months to iron out the handover kinks but since then we have grown revenues by 25% in the last few months. We are making all investments with the aim to make a return on investment to be honest. I am a Mentor & Investor at Startmate, Asia-Pacific's largest and most successful accelerator and I am also a Limited Partner at Blackbird VC, Australia's largest VC fund so we actually have access at Athyna to some pretty incredible deal flow. Startmate usually sees the best startups in the earliest stages and a lot of the time we'd have a chance to invest there. Blackrock CEO Larry Fink said he thinks the next 1,000 unicorns, or start-ups worth at least $1 billion, will be involved in climate technology and we agree. So this is a way for us to diversify our revenue but also just to help fast-track and support startups tackling the biggest problems. Hope that helps to flesh out the idea of what we are thinking around it all some more. Thanks!
- Q: So I'm curious, what investments have you made so far with this money, and what impact have you had? How much total have you invested? Thanks.
  - A: I think this came through twice so answered the original version. Thanks!
- Q: Nice Concept, My wife and I are interested in investing in this company. Have concerns about your revenue projections also will like to have more information on your past year financials, interested in investing with significant amount. Thank you in advance for this information.
  - A: G'day Donald! Thanks for writing and thanks for your interest. If you shoot me an email to doc@athyna.io we can chat further and I can give you access to a lot more of our financials etc.. Looking forward to it. Thanks mate. 🙏
- Q: Hi, I don't understand why you are investing 5% of top-line revenue into climate tech startups when your not yet cash flow positive. According to your Form C, your current burn rate is ~ $47K/month, and you anticipate needing additional fundraising efforts within the next 18 months to stay a viable entity. Shouldn't every last dime of revenue go to scaling the company's growth?
  - A: Hey Daniel, thanks for your question. In mid 2021 we ran two sessions as an entire organisation, the first to realign our values after 3 years of operations and the second to decide on what type of impact we wanted to achieve as an organisation as well. We looked at models like 1% for the Planet, Who Gives A Crap's 50% of profit pledge and a few others and we decided as an organisation that we wanted to make sure that we diverted a meaningful amount of our revenue to impact and in this case sustainability. Also, aside from the fact we think it's a great thing to do - studies show that companies that are mission driven have a number of benefits afforded them that other companies don't. To list a few, mission driven companies usually: Attract better talent Studies show (Swytch) that 70% of workers are more likely to apply to a sustainable company. Nearly half of those polled also said that they would take a pay cut if they were working for an environmentally or socially responsible company. More innovation Having higher levels of purpose throughout your organization shows to drive innovation by up to 30% (Deloitte). Simply put, inspire your employees and they will work more creatively. Studies also show more innovative companies outperform the competition. Appeal to your market Consumers prefer to buy good and services from companies that reflect their values and beliefs when possible, studies show (Accenture). 62% of consumers polled said that they would choose companies that aligned with their interests. Create a community It has been shown that brands who show a strong purpose in the eyes of consumers are recommended 4.5 times more to friends and family (Zeno Group) than brands without. Build impact and build yourself a pack of stark-raving fans. Employee engagement The average costs of disengaged employees is between $3,400 and $10,000 per year studies have shown. This costs companies $350B per annum (Gallup) in the US alone. Buck the trend. Inspire your people and do better business. Outperform the market The most compelling evidence (EY) shows that purposeful companies outperform the stock market by 42% and companies without a sense of purpose within their mission/vision underperform the market by an average on 40% across the board. Incredible. Obviously when you look at our Form C it can look irresponsible or strange that we have this pledge but it was built into and we want to stand by it. We take the 5% from our net revenue so it's not as large as it may seem. Our ARR is inclusive of talent salaries (so it could be thought of as GMV) so it comes from our net revenue, our take rate. Before making the decision I spoke with a number of other successful mission-driven founders with similar pledges all of which think their companies actually make a lot more than they give via their pledges, donations, investments etc.. We also studied a lot of the leading reports on all of the things I mentioned above. Below are the studies I cited above. Anyway, we can be profitable really quickly (burn is ~$25k per month now) and have a great business so feel quite comfortable in the decision and I hope this reply highlights the thought process in making this decision. Cheers. 💪 References https://www.conecomm.com/research-blog/2016-millennial-employee-engagement-study https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/deloitte-review/issue-10/sustainability-2-0-innovation-and-growth-through-sustainability.html https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/de/Documents/risk/DI_DR27-Sustainability-transformation.pdf https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2019/06/04/10374331/consumers-willing-to-pay-more-for-sustainable-products-accenture https://newsroom.accenture.com/news/more-than-half-of-consumers-would-pay-more-for-sustainable-products-designed-to-be-reused-or-recycled-accenture-survey-finds.htm https://www.zenogroup.com/insights/2020-zeno-strength-purpose https://www.forbes.com/sites/afdhelaziz/2020/06/17/global-study-reveals-consumers-are-four-to-six-times-more-likely-to-purchase-protect-and-champion-purpose-driven-companies/?sh=2d7cab16435f https://assets.ey.com/content/dam/ey-sites/ey-com/en_gl/topics/digital/ey-the-business-case-for-purpose.pdf
- Q: Hi - Interesting company with impressive traction. (1) How has the current macro environment impacted growth and business overall? Are you still on target for $6mm+ in revenue for 2022? (2) How have you implemented payroll, taxes, benefits, etc. that are compliant in 150+ countries in such a short period of time? Payroll alone in multiple countries is a daunting challenge (to my understanding). (3) Have you received any commitments from VCs for this round?
  - A: G'day Jeff, great questions! Let me see if I can answer them for you in as much detail as possible. 1. The macro environment for us has meant that pipeline and growth has slowed a little last 3-months but we entered 2022 with the motto of 'growing better not faster' this year so it's not altogether been bad as we have halved our burn and also wildy improved retention in the last 6 months which were two of our goals. As for $6M, those projections were taking into account closing a round at the mid way point of the year (which is already past us). We obviously can put some fuel on our very efficient growth with capital from a closed round but as we've not closed the round we may be a bit behind there. In the first 6 months on the year we moved from $1.8M to $2.9M so we are (organically) on track for closer to $4.5M. Having said that, should we close the round and be able to invest in growth in the next 4-6 weeks we can probably get back on track towards the $6M. 2. Yep, you're absolutely correct, it's very daunting and quite complex. With our Employees (EOR) product, at the moment it is powered by white label agreements. All of the others players in the space (bar one) started in the same way. EOR is actually not a new products it's just now been turned into a SaaS play. So we have key partners in a number of geographies that will underwrite our product in the early days. This is a blessing and a curse as it means it's a slower start to the launch of the products but once we start to hit some traction in each country then we can open up our own entities (driven by demand) which means we own the experience and the margins on that product. 3. We have 2 small checks on the SAFE note from funds in Australia but we have a priced round that is live and no firm commitments but we have 2 investor committee pitches this week and in the last fortnight we met with General Atlantic (twice), Sequoia, Bessemer, Accel (twice), K1 (twice) and loads of other great funds. We actually have over 100 funds in the 'maybe' column right now, some are deep in diligence, some we have just started chatting with. But this round would be priced and not on the same terms as the SAFE as the 'top end of town' per se, don't usually invest on SAFEs. I hope that fleshes things out a little more and happy to answer any more questions you may have, just shoot them through. 💪
- Q: I like the product, I think the market is right. I want to know how you think about business. What is important to you and what is your secret sauce?
  - A: G'day Jake! Thanks for the question mate. 👋 To me the secret sauce for every organisation, is its brand and its culture. They are truly the only things that most organisations own that is truly defensible and unique. Since day 1 at Athyna I have echoed that brand and and culture are the keys to our success moving forward. Of course market, product, timing (luck) and so forth are important but for me, it all falls apart without brand and culture. If you have a strong brand you attract world class talent to come and work with you and if you have a super strong culture that world class talent is motivated to do their best work. And if you have world class talent motivated to do their best work, the sky is the limit for you. In our case, over-indexing on brand and culture has meant that we have been able to onboard talent from Amazon, Meta, WeWork, Uber, DiDi, Rappi, Oracle and more.
- Q: I cannot find find a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) statement for Athyna. Did you file it under another name?
  - A: G'day John! Our name is actually Athyna, Inc. Hopefully you will be able to see it under that name and if not feel free to let me know and I will look into it further for you. 🙏
- Q: Great idea. But I think market is overcrowded in this remote talent category…. Please correct me if wrong ? Also, how do you compare with Arc, Codementor, Codecombat, Aspireship and other remote talent agencies…. ?
  - A: Hey Sagar, thanks for the question - and yes, there are a lot of players in the remote talent space. The thing is, I would argue most markets are overcrowded. For example there are 1600+ CRM companies in the US alone. Where I think we differ is by level of ambition and what we are building. There are an endless amount of remote talent consultancies / agencies. I mean, I myself get pitched in my inbox by 10 different firms a week. We are building a tech platform that matches talent. The final product for us will look like millions of the worlds best remote commercial & technical talent matched across to companies in hours not weeks. There are really only a handful of players that are doing well in that space. Turing, Andela and the like our our closest competitors and there are no clear winners in the space. And the space (global teams overall) is growing like a rocketship. So although I do agree it's a somewhat busy space, it's ever growing and all I concentrate on is us executing. And if we keep executing we will build a massive company. If you have any other questions feel free to drop them on here or email me directly at doc@athyna.io. Thanks Sagar. 🙏
- Q: Hey - I have been following your story and Athyna for a long while on the socials and I recently saw you post about the growth of your ARPU. Which seems super impressive. Can you please explain why you think you have had such success in growing the size of your accounts?
  - A: Hey Alan, thanks for the question mate. Great stuff. So as to our ARPU, you are right, it's been awesome. I will break down how I have seen our ARPU grow in 6 months increments along the way. Here goes... - 01/19 ARPU $185 p/m - Month one. No need to explain here. - 07/19 ARPU $545 p/m - Early adopters were SME. Lovely folks. Not our ICP. - 01/20 ARPU $568 p/m - Lots of churn, low value opportunities still. Still SME. - 07/20 ARPU $1,163 p/m - By this stage we'd pivoted to startups. More commercial roles. - 01/21 ARPU $1,349 p/m - Starting to slowly get better at upselling. - 07/21 ARPU $1,562 p/m - Begin moving up startup value ladder. Series B, listed companies etc.. - 01/22 ARPU $2,714 p/m - Open up Web3 and technical roles. Earlier we focussed on non-tech. - 07/22 ARPU $3,979 p/m - Spent 6-months doubling down on retention. Rapidly improved ops. - Today ARPU $4,621 p/m - Everything firing on all cylinders. When you look at it laid out like that it does look pretty great. And although those timelines and notes are pretty loose, that is the overall story how we continue to grow our ARPU over time. Hope that helps. 🙏
- Q: Hey there, I run a community round focused venture fund and have a few questions for you that I'd love to ask 1 on 1 if possible. What's the best way to reach you before end of the community round for a zoom meeting?
  - A: G'day Tristan, how's it going mate? I can chat this week for sure. I'd be able to today but I am actually flying in a bit. I have connected on LinkedIn and my email is doc@athyna.com so let's find some time to chat. Thanks mate! 💪
- Q: Can you explain more about how the investor perks work?
  - A: G'day Jim, good pickup there! We actually had a few new products we were working on when we launched the campaign, but we scrapped them to focus more deeply on our core. Basically 2020-2021 mindset was to build everything for everyone, all at once. Now that the market is back to normal levels (or worse) we wanted to double down on focus. So the perk attached to $500+ and $1,000+ were attached to our old products. I didn't actually notice that they were still on the account until now. For $10,000+ you would get $1,000 of hiring credits on Athyna's platform. SO for example, if you are looking for an SDR and hire them through Athyna you'll get $1,000 credit. Hope that clears it up for you!