Dusseldorf Tandemploy once arose from a fixed idea. Anna Kaiser and Jana Tepe wanted to make job sharing popular – and possible – in Germany. So from one day to the next they quit their jobs at a personnel consultancy specializing in the digital economy and went into business for themselves. They founded the start-up Tandemploy in 2013 and became pioneers of the New Work movement.
Her creativity and courage paid off. To this day, their software ensures that employees in corporations such as Deutsche Lufthansa and Evonik can share their jobs, develop professionally or simply “blindly” meet for lunch. The information that the employees casually disclose is anonymized and allows HR managers to have a more accurate picture of their workforce.
Now the founders are selling Tandemploy. You and all of the previous shareholders are exchanging their shares in the start-up for shares in the technology group Phenom. It is the first exit to emerge from Encourage Ventures, a network of female investors who invest exclusively in start-ups with at least one woman on the founding team.
With the takeover, the founders become employed managers. Like all around 30 employees, they are moving to Phenom with their German employment contracts. Jana Tepe will be Head of Marketing for the EMEA region, and Anna Kaiser, as a thought leader, will drive network development around the topics of artificial intelligence, digitization and the future of work, among other things.
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>> Read also: Tandemploy founders about job sharing – “Every HR department has this on their agenda today”
Both see the sale as an opportunity to further develop their product and make it accessible to millions of employees. Tandemploy started out as a B2C job sharing platform and has since evolved into a B2B talent marketplace software. “For us, it was always about thinking big and implementing our vision: We want to enable more collaborative work and thus change the world of work,” said Jana Tepe of the Handelsblatt.
“We thought about this step carefully, had different offers and weighed them up against each other and were ultimately convinced that we would achieve the greatest possible effect together with Phenom.” The merger with another tech company was therefore the most promising and obvious next step. After all, you don’t just want to preach collaborative work, you want to practice it yourself.
Second acquisition for Phenom in Germany
In addition, the technology group Phenom has a broader and more global structure. The Tandemploy software should now also use this. Co-founder Anna Kaiser says: “Despite all the encouragement and success, it became increasingly clear to us that integrated solutions will be more in demand than software islands in the future in the personnel management market. We are excited to help shape the world of work on a global scale, leveraging the tremendous reach and functionality of Phenom’s talent experience platform.”
The technology company Phenom is based in Philadelphia and has set itself the goal of helping people with artificial intelligence-based software to find the right job. The start-up founded in 2011 by the Indian brothers Mahe and Hari Bayireddi is now one of the fastest growing tech companies, according to an analysis by the auditing firm Deloitte.
With Tandemploy, Phenom is strengthening itself in Germany for the second time. Last year, the Talentcube company from Munich went to the US company. The group, which now has a total of 1,200 employees, thus complements the existing European locations in Great Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. An IPO is expected in the near future.
For co-founder and CEO Mahe Bayireddi, the acquisition of Tandemploy is a strategically important step in expanding the product portfolio: “Tandemploy is passionate about making people’s work more collaborative, productive and enjoyable.”
And he goes on to say: “Their pioneering role in Germany, their remarkable technology and their well-respected corporate culture are a perfect fit for Phenom and will rapidly accelerate our growth in the EMEA region. We are very pleased that they have decided to join us to continue to transform the industry together.”
It was only in January last year that Kaiser and Tepe raised new money for the expansion in a round of financing. It was a well-received deal. Because the founders only let women get a chance. With their “All Female Deal”, as they called it, they set a signal. It was the first all-female financing round of this dimension for a German tech start-up that is under female leadership.
Start-up funding specifically for women
With the sale of the shares, the two expanded their group of shareholders, which had previously been dominated by men such as the former SAP CFO Werner Brandt, to include five female investors who hold top positions in the economy and are experts in the areas of digitization, financing and human resources.
In doing so, they also indirectly laid the foundation for founding Encourage Ventures. 400 start-ups and investors are now involved in this network.
>> Read also: These women believe in young founders
But that wasn’t enough for the 35 and 38-year-old entrepreneurs. Despite all the encouragement and success, it became increasingly clear to them that integrated solutions will be in demand in the personnel management market in the future and fewer software islands like theirs.
Like their ten former shareholders, the founders want to remain invested. For investor Stephanie Bschorr, who joined in 2021 as one of five new investors, the takeover by Phenom is “a right and important step”. She therefore accepted the takeover bid like all other former shareholders.
“We are very confident that both the team and the software from Tandemploy can develop well at Phenom.” In addition, an IPO as an exit is now also in prospect. The first all-female deal has developed fantastically and shows the potential of the Encourage Ventures network.
More: 100 women who move Germany