Can the leading employment marketplace in Africa be born in Europe? Yes, this is the story of Jobartis.

The startup created by Luis Verdeja (Ph.D. in Economics and double Masters) in 2013 and fresh out of our Garden, as we like to call our Growth Acceleration program, was one of the first startups to become part of our family.

Jobartis spent almost a year with us at the Madrid Campus, with frequent trips to Africa, where the bulk of its users are. The startup has more than 500,000 registered candidates and processes more than 1,000,000 applications per month. With 300,000 monthly visits to its page, it is the second most visited Angolan website. In addition to the employment portal, this year Jobartis has begun to organize job fairs. Its first edition was attended by more than 10,000 candidates, something that pleasantly surprised Verdeja’s team. In collaboration with local universities, they have also created courses to keep candidates updated in subjects such as Digital Economy or Recruitment and Selection. After leading in Angola, they have just opened in Cameroon, Zambia and Gabon.

A couple of weeks ago, we celebrated the graduation ceremony in our Madrid Campus, where they still have their home. Patricia de Loro, our Chief Product Officer, worked closely and diligently with them. “At the beginning they were a job advertisement site, very basic, with traction in different sectors such as banking, real estate, manufacturing, marketing, energy, telecommunications, and tourism,” she said. Even though they are not the first to do something like this, there were some aspects that made the difference:

• Their ability to identify the needs of the local market and fill that gap with services to attract employment, helping companies find the ideal candidate
• International mindset to expand to more places in Africa
• Their ability to monetize from the beginning

Patricia believes that their mission is aligned with TheVentureCity’s mission: “We want to make an impact in emerging ecosystems.”

Jobartis joined to boost their Growth. During this time they began to make decisions based on data, develop a Product Mindset, and adopt new tools to define and execute their strategy better. “The team is ready to think about smartphones,” said Patricia.

Our ‘Product Queen’ reiterates the privilege it has been working closely with Jobartis team and highlights the achievements to reach the next level, preparing the strategy to satisfy customers and reach new investors: “The defined roadmap and the initiatives implemented have allowed them to double the number of optimal candidates in their database, triple the number of candidates who apply for a position (up to 22 candidates) and increase the number of candidates for job offer by 23%.”

Luis Verdeja tried to alleviate the loneliness of being an entrepreneur by entering the program, but he discovered much more: “The program has contributed a lot, from small product improvements to even giving us the boost we needed to internationalize the company. But above all, it has undoubtedly helped us to focus on the product, which has improved the most, and made us more methodical.”

However, he recognizes it is not always simple: “It has been challenging for us to adapt and absorb all the learnings from the program and be able to take on everything the Garden Growth Accelerator had to give us.”

In addition the the achievements listed by Patricia, Luis adds one more relevant point: “In the last year we have increased sales by 80%.”

Wow, did the first startups really enter a year ago? Seems like yesterday. Or it seems like it was four years ago. The startup speed seems like dog years…

After listening and better understanding the needs of our founders, we are refining our accelerator to be more effective. So stay tuned as we will soon share our news and plans for the future with you!