Romanian startup that developed solution for HR sector raises USD 2 million for expansion

Nestor, a People Intelligence Platform transforming how organizations develop and retain talent by creating a common language for skills at work, announced it raised a USD 2 million seed round for further expansion.

The round is led by Eleven Ventures, joined by Underline Ventures, and prominent angel investors from the San Francisco Bay Area. Lead investor Eleven Ventures has been an early backer and key part of scaling into the global markets of companies such as Payhawk and Gtmhub in verticals like fintech and the future of work.

Founded by Bogdan Apostol and Raluca Apostol, Nestor is a People Intelligence Platform that brings together employee engagement, performance management, and development planning with a skills-based approach and uses predictive analytics and nudging automation to help organizations develop and retain talent.

The solution links skills to the most important talent operations by creating a unified skills-based profile to enable employees to forge new career paths or lateral moves based on both their interests and the organizational needs.

This funding round will enable Nestor to grow its sales and customer success teams and accelerate its expansion on the newly entered US and Latin America markets with a focus on mid-to-large enterprises, the startup said.

The company will further invest in its product innovation and plans to launch its smart career pathing module so that employees can easily explore what the alternative paths they can take in their careers are and what skills they should focus on acquiring in the next period.

Nestor is now trusted by HR and people leaders in the most forward-thinking mid-to-large enterprises, including Fortune 500 companies, across Europe, North America, and Latin America. Nestor's platform achieves a 98% adoption rate in organizations, as employees see a clear output in their individual career growth, develop new skills, discover opportunities, take new roles, and are retained for longer.

Recently, UiPath's Chief Culture Officer, Andreea Baciu, became an advisor.

"Every employee is unique. We envision a world where every employee receives the right opportunity at the right time to continually learn and improve the skills that will help them succeed. We help organizations make an impact on each employee's development and enable HR people leaders to build agile people strategies that move beyond the traditional job approach by placing skills at the front and center of their talent operations," Bogdan Apostol, CEO & Co-founder of Nestor, said.

"Bogdan and his team are reimagining the multi-billion dollar people analytics and talent software market by offering workforce visibility over non-linear assets such as employee skills & capabilities, engagement, performance, culture, and career mobility in an effortless and codified way. We are thrilled to join Nestor's journey to deliver an end-to-end people intelligence platform to support organizations worldwide," Vassil Terziev, Managing Partner of Eleven, said.