Skillvue, a start-up that has developed a platform using AI to enable companies to adopt a skill-based approach to recruitment, talent development and internal mobility, reports that it has closed a EUR 2.5 million pre-seed round.
The investment is led by Italian Founders Fund (IFF), an Italian venture capital fund created by startup founders and led by Lorenzo Franzi, and Edoardo Ermotti’s 14Peaks Capital. Also participating in the round were Orbita Verticale, Ithaca 3, the investment vehicle of Luigi Berlusconi and Giorgio Valaguzza, the Spanish fund Kfund, formerly investors in the unicorn Factorial, and several business angels.
Founded in Milan in 2021 by Nicolò Mazzocchi and Simone Patera, Skillvue, which initially had the name Algo AI, is the platform that allows companies to analyse the competences of candidates and employees in a fast, objective and scalable way and thus adopt a skill-based approach in recruitment, talent development and internal mobility activities. In the selection phase, its innovative technology, based on proprietary AI, carries out asynchronous interviews aimed at assessing the skills and motivation of candidates, which makes the identification of high-potential candidates immediate. This approach increases by up to five times the ability to predict what the actual job performance will be and is today particularly appreciated by companies that hire a lot of young resources or for public contact roles, where the traditional CV is not representative of a person’s skills and motivation.
In the post-selection phase, Skillvue is a strategic tool to support HR departments in analysing the skills of their workforce on a large scale and basing their choices on objective and parameterised data. This makes it possible to place resources more effectively in the company (+107% probability compared to traditional non-skill-based methods), to retain high-performing employees for longer and to build growth and training paths that are more closely aligned to the real needs of companies and employees (a key issue for as many as 73% of employees). Skillvue’s technology is in line with European GDPR regulations and the AI Act.
Skillvue is already present in markets such as retail, large-scale retail trade, banking and insurance, and collaborates with companies in other sectors and the public administration. Clients include Carrefour, Credem and Acquedotto Pugliese. It is based in Milan and has a team of 13 people.
“We are happy with this round because the capital injection will allow us to strengthen our team with strategic figures especially in the area of AI, to expand in the Italian market, to approach the foreign market on the strength of our positive experience with clients such as Carrefour, and to consolidate our technology with the aim of further improving its application in the three verticals of recruitment, internal hiring and talent development,” explains Nicolò Mazzocchi, CEO and co-founder of Skillvue (pictured here with Simone Patera, also a co-founder), in a note.
“Putting skills at the heart of corporate strategies is now the key element in ensuring the competitiveness of companies, both in the short and long term. In fact, the figures speak for themselves: as the World Economic Forum points out, the skills crisis is one of the biggest challenges of our time, second only to climate change, with a total cost of some USD 11.5 trillion. This is why we are delighted to have in our portfolio a company like Skillvue, which responds to this issue by helping companies revolutionise their approach to selection, internal mobility and development through fast, effective and scalable skills analysis,’ comments Lorenzo Franzi, founding partner of IFF.
“We firmly believe that AI can play a key role in transforming the way HR teams and departments operate, particularly in the areas of recruitment and employee progression. Furthermore, the assessment of soft skills is becoming increasingly relevant. Thanks to artificial intelligence, HR departments can now discover untapped potential on a large scale in both new candidates and the existing workforce. We are thrilled to bring Skillvue into our portfolio and to start collaborating with Nicolò, Simone and the rest of the team, as their solution lies at the intersection of these two trends and has already proven to be a product capable of meeting the needs of important enterprises,’ comments Edoardo Ermotti, founder and general partner of 14Peaks Capital.
The closing coincided with the announcement of the rebranding from Algo AI to Skillvue, with the aim of positioning itself to companies as the partner of choice for obtaining a clear and objective view of the competencies of candidates and employees.
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