Localyze, helping companies access international talent and mobilise their workforce globally

Localyze is on a mission to help millions of people immigrate across borders, one relocation at a time. It helps companies easily access international talent and mobilise their workforce globally. We currently work with both fast-growing tech companies and more traditional businesses. Some of our clients include Wayfair, Personio, WayFair, Freenow and more.

How has the business evolved since its launch? When was this?

The business was founded in 2018 after us three co-founders had personally experienced the pain of relocating - living between a combined 15 countries. In 2019 we participated in Y Combinator (S19) and closed Series A ($12M) backed by Frontline Ventures and Blossom Capital. During the pandemic, we saw a significant uptake in demand from employees and businesses to move and hire internationally. This led to our rapid growth and expansion into new regions. Last year, we raised our Series B ($35M) led by General Catalyst after also acquiring TruePlan — US based HR tech startup — to fast-track our entry into the North American market. To date we’ve helped more than 5,000 people to relocate and grown our team to over 100 employees worldwide.

Localyze is available across Europe, the UK, and we officially launched into the United States at the beginning of this year.

Our proposition continues to evolve with a dual focus on HR decision makers and their Employees. We know there's an important need for those decision makers to better serve their current and future employees - and to do so with less overhead. This is why we recently released the new version our Talent platform.

Tell us about the working culture at Localyze

We are proud to be leading the way when it comes to the future of work. Localyze is a remote-first company with employees spread across many different countries, nationalities, and backgrounds. We believe in an inclusive and diverse workplace where individuals can thrive and shape the future of global mobility and immigration. Creating a strong employee experience is at the core of our operating principles. We recently launched our new Operating System that allows our teams to choose between a remote only or a coworking track in addition to team offsites and meet-ups. We are always looking for new ways to foster a better place to work.

How are you funded?

We are VC funded. We raised a $12M Series A in summer of 2021, led by Blossom Capital and Frontline Ventures. Followed by a Series B in 2022 of $35M, led by General Catalyst.

What has been your biggest challenge so far and how have you overcome this?

When we started Localyze, we didn’t have any idea about how to build product or engineering organisations. Building a product from scratch was new to us. Both Franzi and I have a technical background, but building a SaaS platform was a new venture and we had to teach ourselves everything. From building out the first wireframes, to growing a tech team. This wasn’t easy, but we constantly tried to get better, learn from our mistakes, and actually managed to build an extremely strong R&D team over time.

How does Localyze answer an unmet need?

Crossing borders for work has become mainstream and spending part of their career abroad is the new normal for many people. But the relocation industry is stuck in the past, far away from software, automated processes and customer (user) centricity.

Today, more than 280 million people (3.6% of the global population) live in countries other than where they were born and more than 50% of workers are willing to take jobs abroad. These numbers are only going to continue to grow. Meanwhile, labor shortages globally cost’s businesses more than $3B per day, leading many companies to rely more and more on international talent. Match this with the uptake in digital nomads, and with companies increased need to bring their global workforce together, there’s a huge opportunity to digitalise the way companies run their Mobility programs.

What’s in store for the future?

We are on a mission to become the number one globally mobility provider, available and present everywhere around the world. We’re doing this by constantly enhancing our product offerings to simplify and accelerate the Mobility journey for both HR managers and their employees – whether it’s releasing new features, creating a marketplace for Talent & HR managers or opening up new geographies.

We just launched the latest version of our Talent platform which makes it even faster, easier, and less complex for employees to navigate what can be a challenging and scary immigration journey. It includes quick access to key elements – appointment dates, knowledge and partner offers, documents – from a single dashboard on mobile and desktop, as well as a personalised, transparent, step-by-step journey.

And finally, a more personal question! What’s your daily routine and the rules you’re living by at the moment?

Inbox 0 has probably been the biggest gamechanger for me. When we started Localyze, I was quite unstructured and more intuitive vs working in a specific structure. This gets very hard when you start managing and also having to prioritise requests from the team. My inbox is now my most important to do list and it really helped me stay on top of things. If you try to get to inbox 0 every day, you really have to prioritise and block time for specific tasks, but the big benefit is that people know when to expect what from you, also it also helps you mentally to not feel overwhelmed.

Hanna Asmussen is cofounder and CEO Localyze.