How Welcome to the Jungle’s Mission Shapes Its Scaling Strategy
Welcome to the Jungle holds a special place in our hearts – and our portfolio. This was Revaia’s very first investment at the end of the year 2019 when we led the company’s €20m series B round. The timing proved to be fortuitous.
After several years of refining its platform and business model, Welcome to the Jungle saw its growth accelerate over the next two years, catalyzed by a strong product-market fit as well as the impact of the pandemic. In January 2023, we doubled down on our belief in the company as part of its €50m series C round.
Founded in 2015, Welcome to the Jungle is often mistakenly seen as a niche business primarily focused on the French market. It has now paved the way to become a global employer branding platform serving the needs of clients from startups to the largest corporations. What we have appreciated from the start of our partnership with founder and CEO Jeremy Clédat is the thoughtful leadership he has brought to developing the company. He has methodically remained focused on the long-term when it comes to growth and expansion, taking a deliberative approach to ensure that each new step aligns with Welcome to the Jungle’s bedrock values – both in terms of its culture and its business.
Almost a decade after its creation, this mission-driven approach to disrupting the job-seeking marketplace has created a foundation the company is using to leverage for its ambitious international expansion strategy. Jeremy recently spoke to a gathering of Revaia’s investors where he shared the keys to Welcome To The Jungle’s success and how this has positioned the company for its global campaign.
“Our mission as a company is to give work a meaningful role in our lives,” he said. “That starts with finding the right job in the right company for each individual, so your work meets your personal and professional aspirations.”
Standing out from the crowd
Turning back the clock to 2015, there was no shortage of online job sites after almost two decades into the internet revolution. For most observers, there was not an obvious need or opportunity for a new platform to enter this fray.
Jeremy and co-founder Bertrand Uzeel saw a broken market that wasn’t serving the needs of job seekers, recruiters, or employers. The solution was not just about tech, but also about rethinking how companies valued recruiting and hiring.
Welcome to the Jungle saw the hiring process as a critical moment for companies to establish their brand. In doing so, job hunters would be more likely to find employment opportunities that align with their aspirations.
“An employer brand is what you're going to develop to attract the best talent to join you and help you grow because those employees are more likely to feel inspired by your mission,” he said.
The core platform to address this challenge is Welcome to the Jungle Solutions. Rather than just posting job openings, companies create a page to showcase their brand to candidates. Welcome to the Jungle helps produce the right content for the pages such as photos, videos, and articles that capture the business and culture. The idea is to provide an environment where candidates can learn what it would be like to work at a given company – and to see if they can truly envision themselves in that setting.
Job seekers can create a free account and then use that to explore openings and apply. An applicant tracking system (ATS) allows companies to manage the process.
This is complemented by additional content the company produces about the world of work, how it is evolving, and the search for meaning.
“We believe that if we want to restore work to a central role in people's lives and a lasting one, you have to educate them to help them better understand this world,” Jeremy said.
To reinforce this new relationship with recruiting, the company moved away from the classic transactional model common to classified ads where a company pays to post a listing for a certain duration. Welcome to the Jungle launched a subscription business model that would incentivize companies to build their brand even when they were not in heavy recruiting periods.
“If recruitment is important to the employer’s brand, you need a long-term commitment from companies,” he said. “We wanted the business model to reflect that.”
This model has resonated strongly. Between 2015 and 2018, growth was consistent as they developed the early version of the platform. By the time Revaia invested in 2019, Welcome to the Jungle had reached €8m ARR. When Welcome to the Jungle announced its Series C in January 2023, ARR had grown to €31m.
Larger horizons
Welcome to the Jungle might be the perfect example of how measured and steady growth can still win the race. As various technical and funding fads came and went, its leadership maintained a reflective approach to building the company.
For instance, even though the company was experiencing strong growth among its traditional small and medium-sized businesses, Welcome to the Jungle wanted to move up to serve larger enterprises. To do so, the company engaged in a year-long study that challenged every aspect of its business model and pricing strategy, resulting in changes in how it communicated its value proposition and rates for different tiers. (For more, see Jeremy’s presentation last year)
Those larger customers are now 50% of the company’s ARR.
“It’s important to validate the quality of the product which is now aimed at all types of companies,” he said. “It’s been a key factor in our growth.”
Serving larger customers also eventually requires a larger geographical reach. When Welcome to the Jungle raised its last funding round, a big part of the motivation was international expansion. Until that moment, Welcome to the Jungle had offices in France and the Czech Republic.
Growing organically could be complicated. Welcome to the Jungle has a candidate marketplace dimension in its business model and building the scale and moat necessary to serve companies in each local territory could be cumbersome.
Fortunately, Welcome to the Jungle was in a financially strong position in early 2023 thanks to that purposeful approach to managing the business. With the additional funding and the broader slowdown in tech investing, several attractive acquisition targets became available that had built strong products but were having trouble raising more cash.
“This market didn't exist two years ago,” Jeremy said. “Now we have the opportunity to grow through acquisitions.”
The company began to scout and meet with various potential partners. This eventually led to discussions with London-based job search platform Otta. Founded in 2019, Otta had built a strong business catering to tech companies, including a presence already in the U.S. market.
While both companies had about the same amount of traffic to the respective sites, Otta had not yet figured out how to monetize that as well as Welcome to the Jungle. For instance, 60% of Otta’s traffic is in the U.S. where its platform is free, but 99% of its revenue comes from the UK.
Jeremy sees a huge opportunity to figure out the keys to monetize that and give Welcome to the Jungle a launching pad in the U.S. At the same time, he is targeting €10m ARR in the UK.
Overall, Welcome to the Jungle is aiming for €65m in ARR by the end of 2025 and intends to be profitable in France by early 2025 as well. In addition to serving larger customers and new geographies, Welcome to the Jungle will be rolling out new products in the coming months that will represent new revenue streams.
“We have 8% of our business abroad,” he said. “The big focus is to increase this over the next few months. Our feeling is that you can create all this without betraying your values and convictions.”
Secrets to success
Welcome to the Jungle stands at a pivotal moment, transitioning from a strong local champion to a bigger international player. Jeremy shared three elements that he felt were key to Welcome to the Jungle’s success:
- Differentiation: On a fundamental level, Welcome to the Jungle saw its competition focused on serving the needs of companies and recruiters. By looking at how to create a better balance between employers and candidates, Welcome to the Jungle felt it could offer a superior experience to all sides of the hiring equation.
- Long-term thinking: Companies must continuously recruit, but people in certain job categories will be seeking new jobs more frequently, either out of necessity or for career advancement. So the founders wanted Welcome to the Jungle to stand for something beyond job listings, to create a brand and product that candidates felt could really help them get ahead in their careers, and hopefully make them repeat customers if they associate a strong experience with their job hunt.
- Mission-driven: Welcome to the Jungle has always seen its role as more than just helping a company fill a seat or a candidate get their next paycheck. More fundamentally, it wants to make work more fulfilling for employees and match companies with candidates who will be passionate about helping that company flourish. The conception of Welcome to the Jungle, its functionalities, and its business model are all designed to encourage a more virtuous hiring cycle.
The result of these elements is that Welcome to the Jungle has grown until now almost entirely organically, with almost no spending on candidate acquisition or other growth hacking tricks. Its brand does the talking for it.
“What we've tried to do at Welcome is to build a product that meets the expectations of both candidates and recruiters to create a good team,” he said. “Because if the right team is created, the company will succeed by bringing its mission to life. That has been our commitment from the beginning and will continue to be our goal.”