There is a shortage of staff in Germany. Not only in professions that require top specializations, but also in gastronomy, in air traffic and above all in logistics. Since the corona pandemic, this has been an emerging market that has also produced new business models such as express delivery services. In order to find the right companies for thousands of workers here, four Munich residents founded a start-up.
Simpmatch is the name of the one-year-old company owned by Richard Fischer, Steven Miller, Emanuel Wernitz and Michael König. Fischer has worked at Amazon for more than four years, among other things he was tasked with hiring new courier drivers – and often failed in the search, as he explains in an interview with “Gründerszene”.
He has been friends with his three co-founders for many years. Miller brings the marketing expertise, Wernitz is CTO and König comes from sales. "When the idea came about, there was no hype about gorillas and the express delivery services," emphasizes Fischer. That was in 2019, the portal started in the spring of last year.
The first brand of the Munich start-up is Driverhero. The platform is aimed at companies that are looking for truck drivers, bike couriers, suppliers of electric scooters or warehouse managers.
According to Simpmatch, customers include Unicorn Gorillas and Munich delivery service Knuspr, as well as Hellofresh and Wolt. So far, the service has been available for seven major German cities and Zurich.
"We are not a classic job portal," says CEO Fischer. "We only do the sourcing of the applicants." Companies pay a monthly fee for the support, which is between 199 and 1200 euros. Job seekers create a profile via Driverhero, including documents such as work permits and driver's licenses.
The start-up takes care of verifying the information so that customers no longer have to do it. Depending on the job application and the desired distance to the workplace, Driverhero suggests suitable positions to the applicants.
With one click, they can then book an interview with the respective company. On average, the drivers would find a job within five days, according to the CEO.
The Munich start-up is reacting to the changing situation on the labor market, in which companies can no longer choose between specialists, but even have to court potential employees.
Since this problem does not only exist in logistics, but also in gastronomy, in hotels or even at airports, Simpmatch has started a new portal. Workup aims to address precisely these customers.
On top of that, the founding team is planning an offer for online further training in order to train applicants who come from logistics, for example, for unskilled work in the hotel industry. The start-up wants to create the content itself, and companies have already promised their support, according to the co-founder. For the customers, such career changers would at least promise planning security despite the initially low qualifications.
In order to be able to realize these new projects, Simpmatch has just received a seed investment of 2.5 million euros. The money comes from the VC Bonsai Partners from the USA and the Munich fund 10x Founders, behind which is a group of business angels like IDNow founder Felix Haas. Entrepreneurs such as Niklas Plath and Christopher Huesmann, managing director of Flaschenpost, have also taken part in Simpmatch.
According to its own information, the company has placed more than 10,000 job seekers since it started a year ago. "Our approach works and is needed," says CEO Fischer.
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