Reykjavik, Iceland · Startup 50skills is a Reykjavik-based HR SaaS platform that streamlines the full employee journey — from hiring through onboarding, crossboarding and offboarding — in a single workspace. The platform centralises employee data, eliminates repetitive data entry across HR systems, and integrates with the tools employers already use. Founded in 2017, the company raised €2.5M from Frumtak Ventures in 2022 and has since grown to approximately 22 employees serving customers in over 20 countries. Major Icelandic clients include Icelandair, PLAY Airlines, IKEA, Vodafone, Securitas and Domino's. The company reported $2.1M in annual revenue in 2024.
Reykjavik, Iceland · Startup Alda is an Icelandic HR-tech startup founded in 2022 that provides a culture intelligence platform for measuring and improving workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The platform combines inclusion surveys, gamified micro-learning, AI-powered action plans, and real-time DEI dashboards. Alda has raised €2.9 million from Frumtak Ventures and Tennin, and counts Aker Solutions, Icelandair, and Avalanche Studios among its clients. It was named a Gartner Cool Vendor in 2025.
Barcelona, Spain · Person Co-founder of Factorial and a partner in the Itnig startup ecosystem in Barcelona, where he has founded and backed multiple SaaS companies. He focuses on company-building and operations across the Itnig portfolio.
Novi Sad, Serbia · Startup CAKE.com, formerly COING, is a bootstrapped productivity software company founded in Novi Sad in 2009 by Nenad Milanovic. It is best known for Clockify, the world's most widely used free time-tracking app, launched in 2017 and now used by over 5 million users globally including HP and American Express — voted best overall time-tracking app by Forbes. The company expanded its product suite to include Pumble (team messaging) and Plaky (task management), rebranding the family of tools under the CAKE.com umbrella in 2023. The company reached $25M+ ARR entirely bootstrapped without venture capital.
Madrid, Spain · Startup Cobee is a Madrid-based digital employee benefits and flexible compensation platform that lets companies offer and employees manage benefits such as meal vouchers, training, health and life insurance, wellbeing and discounts through a single app and card. The company expanded beyond Spain into Portugal and Mexico, serving over 1,500 clients. In 2024 global employee-benefits company Pluxee acquired Cobee, which continues to operate as part of the Pluxee group.
Lisbon, Portugal · Startup Coverflex is a Portuguese startup that builds a compensation management platform bringing together every part of employee compensation beyond salary, including flexible benefits, insurance, meal allowance and exclusive discounts in a single product. Employees manage their benefits, meal allowance, insurance and discounts through the Coverflex app and card, and can direct part of their balance toward savings products. Founded in 2019, it operates across European markets including Portugal, Italy and Spain. In February 2023 it raised a €15 million Series A round to support its European expansion.
Warsaw, Poland · Startup Technical skills assessment platform used by enterprise engineering teams to screen, interview, and upskill developers with real-world coding tasks. Pivoted in recent years toward developer skills management and internal capability mapping alongside hiring. Backed by Movens Capital.
Athens, Greece · Startup Epignosis is an Athens-based learning technology company behind TalentLMS, one of the most widely used cloud learning management systems for SMBs and mid-market companies. TalentLMS enables organizations to create, deliver, and track employee training programmes with minimal setup and a strong focus on usability. The company also offers eFront for enterprise and compliance-heavy training requirements. With tens of thousands of organizations using its products across 150+ countries, Epignosis is a major Greek SaaS success story that proves deep product focus in a mature category can yield global reach from a non-traditional startup geography.
Barcelona, Spain · Startup Factorial is an all-in-one HR & business management platform built for SMBs and mid-market companies. Founded in 2016, it unifies time tracking, payroll, recruitment, performance reviews, and document management into a single cloud product. The company hit $100M ARR in 2024 and achieved a $1B valuation backed by Atomico, Tiger Global, and CRV. In 2025 General Catalyst injected $120M to fund expansion into Germany, France, and Italy. As of 2026 the company employs ~2,000 people and is exploring a $200M round at a $2B valuation.
Madrid, Spain · Person Co-founder and co-CEO of Jobandtalent, the staffing-marketplace unicorn he started in 2009. He leads the company alongside co-founder Juan Urdiales, scaling its on-demand workforce platform internationally.
Baku, Azerbaijan · Startup Glorri is a Baku-based HR operating system that unifies sourcing, applicant tracking, interview collaboration, offer management, and onboarding inside a single workflow, with an explicit focus on fast-growing teams in the Caucasus and broader CEE region that have outgrown spreadsheets but can't justify seat pricing from Workday or Greenhouse. The product layers company-branded career pages, a candidate CRM, scorecards, and automated stage progressions onto a mobile-first recruiter experience, and connects to local job boards where traditional global ATS vendors have poor coverage. Glorri gained regional visibility through the 500 Global Eurasia accelerator and is notable as one of the first Azerbaijani HR-tech startups trying to serve the entire hiring funnel rather than just the top-of-funnel sourcing problem.
Munich, Germany · Person Hanno Renner is Co-founder & CEO of the HR software unicorn Personio. A founder in the German startup ecosystem, Hanno leads the HR software unicorn Personio.
Helsinki, Finland · Startup HappySignals is the leading SaaS platform for IT Experience Management (ITXM), measuring how employees perceive IT services and translating that data into productivity and service quality improvements. Founded in Helsinki in 2014, the platform covers over one million employees across 130 countries and integrates with major ITSM tools. In 2024 the company raised €12 million led by Mandatum Asset Management to fund global expansion. Customers using the platform report an average 26% increase in end-user productivity, and the company hosted the inaugural ITXM Summit in London in May 2026.
Kraków, Poland · Startup HCM Deck was founded in 2016 in Kraków by Szymon Janicki and Rafał Nieśluchowski. The company offers a cloud-based employee development platform covering learning, communications, and feedback, serving enterprise clients such as Rossmann, Leroy Merlin, Decathlon, and Allianz. It raised a total of roughly $4M, including a 2019 round led by mAccelerator (mBank's VC fund) with co-investment from Innovation Nest.
Tbilisi, Georgia · Startup Helio.ai is an AI-powered recruiting platform from Tbilisi focused on automating candidate screening and improving hiring quality. The product combines ATS workflows, multilingual CV matching, and behavioral assessment tools to help teams make faster, less biased hiring decisions. The company has expanded across regional markets with backing from Georgian and international investors.
London, United Kingdom · Startup All-in-one HR platform ('Bob') for mid-sized and multinational companies covering core HR, talent, payroll, benefits, workforce planning and an embedded AI assistant. Founded 2015 with London and Tel Aviv roots.
Amsterdam, Netherlands · Startup Homerun is an Amsterdam-based recruitment and applicant tracking system (ATS) founded in 2015, purpose-built for small and medium-sized businesses that prioritise employer branding and candidate experience. The platform enables companies to create customised career pages, manage candidate pipelines, and collaborate on hiring decisions. In January 2024 Homerun was acquired by ISH Holding, a B2B SaaS group, while continuing to operate independently under its own brand.
Riga, Latvia · Startup Hyperjob is a recruitment SaaS platform that lets companies create branded, interactive job-ad microsites reported to achieve up to six times higher candidate conversion rates than plain job board listings. Founded in 2021 by Janis Kreilis, Juris Sorokins, and Roberts Tomme, the company raised €435k in a seed round led by SMOK Ventures in 2023. The platform also offers automated, personalised LinkedIn and email candidate outreach.
Milan, Italy · Startup Jet HR is an all-in-one Italian HR and payroll platform designed to eliminate the bureaucratic complexity of managing employees under Italian labour law. Founded in 2023 by Marco Ogliengo and Francesco Scalambrino, the Milan company automates hiring, payroll, shift management, expense reports, and compliance into a single system with dedicated labour law consultants included. Used by over 1,000 Italian companies across hospitality, tech, and manufacturing, Jet HR has raised €41.7 million — including a €25 million round led by US VC Base10 Partners — making it one of Italy's fastest-growing B2B SaaS startups.
Luxembourg City, Luxembourg · Startup Job Today is a Luxembourg-registered mobile-first hiring platform focused on the hourly-and-service segment of the labor market — retail, hospitality, warehouses, logistics, beauty, care — where traditional job boards like LinkedIn and Indeed have always been an awkward fit. The product lets candidates build a one-tap profile, browse open roles around their location, and chat directly with employers inside the app, effectively turning the recruiting process into a messaging experience closer to Tinder or WhatsApp than a legacy ATS. Founded by Polina Montano and Eugene Mizin in 2015, the company raised over USD 35 million from investors including Accel and Mangrove Capital Partners and operates primarily in the UK and Spain. Job Today is one of the more visible consumer-facing tech companies headquartered out of Luxembourg and a useful example of how the country's legal and corporate infrastructure attracts startups far beyond pure finance.
Madrid, Spain · Startup Job&Talent is a Madrid-born AI-powered workforce management platform connecting businesses with temporary and essential workers at scale. Founded in 2009 by Juan Urdiales and Felipe Navío, it has evolved into Europe's largest tech-enabled staffing marketplace, handling real-time shift planning, attendance, and worker retention. In April 2025 the company raised €92M at a €1.3B valuation — backed by Atomico, BlackRock, Kinnevik, and Goldman Sachs — to accelerate AI agents for workforce reliability. Total funding exceeds $1.2B, and the platform operates across Spain, the UK, Germany, France, and the US.
Belgrade, Serbia · Startup Joberty is a Belgrade-based workplace community and employer review platform built for the tech industry, combining a Glassdoor-style review engine with a tech jobs board and salary benchmarking data. Founded in 2019 by Nikola Mijailovic, Dusica Mijailovic, Slavko Saponjic, and Nebojsa Aradski, the platform allows developers to research companies, explore salaries, read interview experiences, and apply for tech roles. Joberty has expanded to six markets — Serbia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, and Slovenia — and won the Gitex Future Stars competition in Dubai. Its CompensationX product provides real-time salary benchmarking for IT companies across the region.
Barcelona, Spain · Person Co-founder and CEO of Factorial, the Barcelona HR software unicorn. A serial entrepreneur from the Itnig ecosystem, he previously founded Redbooth (Teambox) before building Factorial into a global HR platform for SMBs.
Madrid, Spain · Person Co-founder and co-CEO of Jobandtalent, the Madrid-based workforce-management and staffing marketplace unicorn backed by SoftBank. He co-founded the company in 2009 to digitise temporary-work matching across Europe and the Americas.
Dublin, Ireland · Startup Kota is a Dublin-based platform building API-driven infrastructure for employee benefits and insurance. It enables companies to offer and manage health insurance, life insurance and pension benefits, syncing with existing HR tools such as Personio, HiBob, BambooHR and Workday. Regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland, Kota partners with providers including Irish Life, Allianz Partners and Smart Pension. Founded in 2022 by Luke Mackey, Patrick O'Boyle and Deepak Baliga, the company raised a $14.5 million Series A in May 2025 led by Eurazeo, bringing total funding to nearly $23 million.
Warsaw, Poland · Angel Investor Angel investor and host of the Zaprojektuj Swoje Życie podcast, Maciej is known as one of Poland’s most transparent private investors, openly sharing portfolio wins and failures. With prior senior leadership roles at Dell and NTT, he focuses on stable B2B SaaS models and healthtech opportunities. His publicly discussed portfolio includes Just Join IT, Booksy, and HiPeople.
Warsaw, Poland · Angel Investor Co-founder of Grupa Pracuj and managing partner at Pracuj Ventures, Maciej is one of the most active HR-tech focused investors in Poland with a portfolio spanning 40+ companies. He is known for scaling marketplace and B2B software models, and remains a key shareholder in Grupa Pracuj following its Warsaw Stock Exchange IPO. Notable startup involvements include Symmetrical.ai, Jutro Medical, and SonarHome.
Paris, France · Startup Malt is a Paris-founded freelancer marketplace launched in 2013 that connects independent professionals with companies seeking project-based talent in tech, marketing, design, and consulting. The platform operates across France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, and the UK, and has over 700,000 registered freelancers serving enterprise clients including Airbus, L'Oreal, and BNP Paribas. Malt has raised over EUR 100 million and manages compliance, contracts, and payments to simplify the hiring process. It is a leading European alternative to Upwork and Fiverr, with a strong focus on local enterprise freelancing.
Belgrade, Serbia · Venture Capital Omorika Ventures is a Belgrade-based seed and early Series A fund launched in 2024 to address the shortage of institutional early-stage capital in Serbia and the broader Balkans. The fund secured €5 million in public co-funding through the Innovation Fund of Serbia's Serbia Ventures program and is operated by three founding partners with deep roots in the regional startup ecosystem via ICT Hub. It invests in tech companies with globally ambitious Serbian founders, providing capital alongside strategic support, mentorship, and international investor introductions. Portfolio companies include cybersecurity platform Trickest and HR-tech startup OneAssessment.
Paris, France · Startup PayFit is a Paris-based fintech founded in 2016 that provides cloud payroll and HR software for small and medium-sized businesses, automating pay runs, leave, expenses and employee management across several European countries. It reached unicorn status in 2022 and serves tens of thousands of SMEs.
Barcelona, Spain · Startup Payflow is an earned-wage-access fintech letting employees draw down accrued salary at any time during the month at no cost, with employers paying a platform fee. It has grown into a financial-wellness app serving 800+ companies and 500,000 employees across Spain, Portugal, Peru and Colombia.
Munich, Germany · Startup Personio is a Munich-based HR software company that has become one of Europe’s most valuable SaaS startups. Founded in 2015 by Hanno Renner (CEO) and three co-founders from the Technical University of Munich, Personio set out to streamline HR management for small and mid-sized businesses. Its cloud platform offers an “all-in-one” suite – from recruiting and applicant tracking to payroll, attendance, and performance management. Personio’s focus on Europe’s underserved SME segment paid off spectacularly: as of 2024, the company serves 12,000+ customers across 70 countries (primarily firms with 10–2,000 employees). This rapid growth attracted major VC funding. Personio became a unicorn in January 2021 with a $1.7 billion valuation, and by October 2022 it raised a $200 million Series E extension at a staggering $8.5 billion valuation – making it one of Europe’s most valuable private tech companies at the time. Investors like Index Ventures, Accel, Lightspeed, and Greenoaks have backed Personio. The company has since expanded to 8 offices (including London, Dublin and Amsterdam) and grown to about 2,000 employees. Despite the size, Personio continues to post strong metrics: in 2023, revenue reportedly doubled and the firm reached over 15,000 customers by 2025. Personio’s success is often attributed to its user-friendly, modular platform tailored to non-technical HR teams at smaller companies. It integrates with 100+ other business tools and emphasizes automation of routine HR tasks. Now valued at $8.5 billion+, Personio is widely seen as a future IPO candidate and a role model for Europe’s B2B SaaS boom – proving that an “SMB HR” niche can scale to a global category leader.
Amsterdam, Netherlands · Startup Recruitee is an Amsterdam-based applicant tracking and recruitment collaboration platform, founded in 2015 and serving talent acquisition teams globally. The platform offers structured hiring workflows, branded career sites, and candidate pipeline management. In 2021 Recruitee and Finnish HR software firm Sympa joined forces under the Tellent group backed by PSG, with both products continuing to operate independently. The combined group serves over 4,000 customers across Europe and the USA.
Lisbon, Portugal · Startup Global employment platform offering Employer of Record (EOR), global payroll, contractor management and compliance across 100+ countries on owned infrastructure. Founded 2019 in Lisbon; a Portuguese unicorn.
Paris, France · Startup Skello is a SaaS workforce-management platform that helps businesses build and manage employee schedules, track time and absences, and handle related HR and payroll-preparation tasks. It is widely used in shift-based sectors such as retail, hospitality, pharmacies, bakeries and gyms. The company is headquartered in Paris and raised a 40 million euro Series B round in 2021 led by Partech, with existing backers XAnge and Aglaé Ventures, to expand across Europe.
London, United Kingdom · Startup Sona is a London-based workforce management platform built for frontline and deskless workers in industries such as hospitality and healthcare. Its integrated, AI-powered system combines scheduling, HR, payroll, compliance and business intelligence tools into a single people operating system. Founded in 2021 by Steffen Wulff Petersen, Oli Johnson and Ben Dixon, the company aims to serve the large global population of frontline workers. In April 2026 Sona raised a $45 million Series B led by N47, with participation from Felicis, Northzone, Gradient and Italian Founders Fund, taking total funding above $100 million.
Paris, France · Startup Swile is a Paris-based employee benefits and fintech platform founded in 2018 by Loic Soubeyrand. The company digitizes meal vouchers, gift cards, mobility credits, and other employee perks into a single smart card and mobile app, replacing the paper-based benefits systems that remain common across France and Southern Europe. Swile raised over EUR 200 million from investors including SoftBank Vision Fund and has been valued at over EUR 1 billion. In 2022 it merged with Brazilian benefits platform Bswift to expand into Latin America. Swile is a leading force in modernizing employee experience across Europe.
Ghent, Belgium · Startup TechWolf is a Ghent-founded enterprise AI company building the skills inference layer that large organizations need to move from role-based to skills-based operating models. Instead of asking employees and managers to maintain a skills taxonomy by hand (which never works at scale), TechWolf ingests signals from the systems where work actually happens — HRIS, ATS, learning platforms, project-management tools, internal wikis — and uses NLP models to derive a live, probabilistic skills graph per employee. Large enterprises plug that graph into internal mobility, workforce planning, strategic sourcing, and generative-AI copilots to answer questions like 'who inside the company can staff this project?' or 'how exposed is this business unit to automation?'. The company has raised growth capital from Felix Capital and Stride.VC and counts several Fortune 500 HR and technology buyers among its clients, and has partnered with SAP SuccessFactors, ServiceNow, and Workday as an embeddable skills engine — a strategically useful position in a category now being chased by the biggest HCM vendors in the world.
Amsterdam, Netherlands · Startup Skills-based pre-employment assessment platform offering 350+ tests, AI video interviews and resume scoring to help companies hire on real skills. Founded 2019 in Amsterdam.
Paris, France · Event The world's leading HR and workforce technology conference and expo, organized by UNLEASH Group at the Paris Convention Center on 20-22 October 2026. Three days across seven conference stages, summits, an exhibition and startup showcases covering AI, skills, workforce strategy, reward, people analytics and the future of work, drawing thousands of senior HR leaders and HR-tech buyers.
Bratislava, Slovakia · Venture Capital Venture to Future Fund (VFF) is a state-backed venture capital fund established in 2019 through a joint initiative of the European Investment Bank, the Slovak Ministry of Finance, and Slovak Investment Holding. It launched investments in June 2020 with an initial €40.4 million mandate, subsequently expanded by €15.3 million from the Slovak Recovery and Resilience Plan in 2024, extending its investment period through 2026. VFF focuses exclusively on Slovak innovative SMEs and EU companies with capital ties to Slovakia, deploying €400,000–€7 million per company. Since inception it has backed 16 companies including Photoneo, Sensoneo, Fuergy, and Powerful Medical.
Athens, Greece · Startup Workable is an Athens-founded HR and recruiting platform that helps companies source, evaluate, and hire candidates through an integrated applicant tracking system, AI-powered sourcing, and structured interview workflows. The platform serves over 27,000 companies and has expanded from recruitment into broader HR operations including onboarding, time tracking, and employee management. Founded in 2012, Workable has raised over $100 million and built a globally competitive product from Greece, making it one of the country's most prominent B2B SaaS exports and a demonstration that world-class HR technology can originate outside traditional tech hubs.
Amsterdam, Netherlands · Startup WorkFlex is a travel compliance automation platform that helps companies manage international employee mobility, including workations, business trips, and work-from-abroad arrangements. Its software assesses cross-border compliance risks such as tax, labour law, and social security, and automates the related paperwork, handling A1 certificates, visas, posted-worker declarations, and tax requirements. Employers use it to track and approve temporary remote work from abroad while staying compliant. The company was founded in 2022 by Patrick Koch and Pieter Manden, the latter a tax lawyer who previously led PwC's remote work compliance function. WorkFlex is headquartered in Amsterdam.
Dublin, Ireland · Startup Workhuman operates a cloud-based employee recognition and continuous performance management platform used by over 7.5 million employees across 180 countries. Founded as Globoforce in Dublin in 1999 and rebranded in 2019, the company enables peer-to-peer recognition moments that drive engagement, culture, and retention at enterprise scale. Headquartered in both Dublin and Massachusetts, Workhuman employs over 600 staff in Ireland and has attained unicorn status, with clients including LinkedIn, Cisco, and Procter & Gamble.
London, United Kingdom · Startup UK insurtech offering group life insurance and employee benefits gamified with wellbeing rewards to encourage healthy living. Founded 2016 in London; expanded to the US and South Africa.