UNLEASH is proud to announce that our prestigious Startup Award is returning for another year at UNLEASH World 2023.

Following on from a highly successful competition at UNLEASH America back in April – congratulations to our winners HourOne – we are super excited to bring you, the crème de la crème of emerging, game-changing tech to UNLEASH World in just two weeks in Paris.

The best and the brightest HR startups have been battling it out behind the scenes – and today we are excited to announce our five finalists of the Startup Award.

These five innovative startups will compete on-site on day one (at 11am on the innovation stage) at UNLEASH World 2023 in front of our panel of expert judges.

The winner will join an exclusive club of prestigious UNLEASH Startup alumni like Peakon (now part of Workday), Oneteam, Talent Alpha, Clustree, TandemHR and CandidateID.

Not to mention, they will win our grand prize: a sponsorship package worth a whopping €50,000!

Who are the UNLEASH World Startup Award finalists?

Talk’n’Job

German-based Talk’n’Job was founded in 2020 with the aim of ending old-school recruitment, particularly in blue collar jobs.

It is a virtual voice-guided job application, available in the job seekers’ chosen language, which acts as an additional recruiting channel for every company size, and across all industries.

Talk’n’Job allows for more high-volume hiring, as it can generate a lot of applicants cost-effectively, and eases the process for candidates and recruiters alike.

Current partners include Steigenberger Hotels, Braun and Westwing.

Flowee

Founded in 2022, Flowee is a French startup that aims to help companies with their transition to hybrid and flexible work. It was created in partnership with the Nexity Group, Fabernovel and Citizengate.

Flowee offers a collaborative platform that employees can use to figure out which days to go to the office (and build social connection with their peers while working in-person), as well as book their workspace seamlessly.

This, in turn, gives organizations better insights into their employees’ work patterns, and therefore better manage their sites and workplaces.

Revelio Labs

Revelio Labs is a workforce intelligence startup that has created the world’s first universal HR database.

Based out of the US, the startup has collected (and standardized) unstructured data from hundreds of millions of public employment records, thereby creating a clear picture of current and historical workplace trends of the global labor market, as well as individual companies.

This data, and related insights, are absolutely essential to organizations and HR teams grappling with talent attraction and retention challenges.

Investors, academics and governments also make use of Revelio Labs’ extensive database.

deskbird

Swiss-based deskbird is a workplace management app for the world of hybrid work.

It is built for users, not building, and really gives employees visibility over when they should schedule their office and work from home days.

Businesses that are already making use of having a birds-eye view of hybrid work data to drive productivity include Schaeffler, Knauf, Heineken and Decathlon.

Confirm

Last, but certainly not least, is Confirm, a US-based startup is using science to rethink performance management.

Companies like Niantic Labs and Canada Goose already rely on Confirm to drive truly science-backed, bias-free decisions on development, promotion and retention.

Confirm actually recently won UNLEASH’s first-ever Digital Startup Competition.

Talking about the win, CEO Josh Merrill exclusively told UNLEASH: “We know the UNLEASH audience is among the best for HR leaders in the world, so having a way to connect with that audience and be given the opportunity to be seen by them as the UNLEASH digital startup recipient has been an amazing opportunity; thanks again.”

Meet the judges

There would be no UNLEASH World Startup Competition without our panel of ten esteemed judges – and the session moderator.

We are buzzing to announce that SmartRecruiters’ chief product officer Rebecca Carr will be moderating the startup competition on-site on day one at UNLEASH World 2023.

Carr has over 15 years of experience in the recruiting and HR technology space. She recently rejoined SmartRecruiters from Checkr – she has also previously worked at Jobvite, Branchout, and Playdom (acquired by Disney in 2010).

Moving on to our incredible judging panel, we have the full-range of HR tech expertise with investors, HR leaders and analysts joining us to decide the winner of the UNLEASH World Startup Award.

Katarina Berg is the CHRO of Spotify. She has worked at the audio streaming giant since 2013, leading the talent transformation during the business transition from startup to a mature international company.

Acadian Ventures’ general partners Thomas Otter has extensive experience in the HR tech world. Prior to becoming a VC with Acadian, he ran an advisory firm, led the product management organization at SAP SuccessFactors and was a research VP at Gartner.

Kathi Enderes, SVP Research at The Josh Bersin Company, has more than 20 years’ experience in HR management consulting. She is passionate about making work better and more meaningful.

Capital One’s head of diversity, inclusion and belonging Maureen Jules-Perez joins us as a judge for the second time – she sat on our panel for Startup Competition at UNLEASH America 2023. Maureen’s mantra is ‘tech for good’, and she has significant expertise in tech transformation.

Mike Bollinger is global VP of Strategic Initiatives at Cornerstone OnDemand. In his current role, he oversees research and insights at Cornerstone, and is laser-focused on identifying trends and innovations that will drive new, and better, work models.

Juliane Sterzl, CoachHub’s SVP of EMEA, started her career at Gartner. She has also worked at LinkedIn and Skillsoft, and brings extensive knowledge of how HR tech can solve HR leaders’ biggest problems.

Benjamin Visser, CEO and founder of allygatr, the primary HR tech fund in Germany. Benjamin is an experienced HR tech founder and investor – he was recently featured as part of the UNLEASH VC Voices series.

Mediahuis Ventures principal Piyush Hemnani is a startup founder turned investor. He is passionate about the intersection of tech and corporate finance.

Aspect43’s CEO Sarah White was named one of the top 100 most influential in HR Tech by HR Executive Magazine in 2022.Like Maureen, Sarah also re-joins us on the judging panel, after the huge success of UNLEASH America.

Mike Ettling, Unit 4’s CEO, has hopped over the pond to sit on our judging panel once again. Mike was previously president at SAP SuccessFactors. He is a highly regarded global thought leader in the IT and cloud software industries and is an active investor and advisor in startups.

Want to see the future of HR tech in action at UNLEASH World 2023? It’s not too late to grab your ticket for the show!