Staff planning service L1nda secures €1 million in funding. The startup from Amsterdam helps businesses to schedule and manage their personnel and their costs. The funding comes from Newion Investments and current shareholder DHG. The startup can now focus more on expansion, which also means they’ll be looking for a rollout in other countries than The Netherlands.
Made for X and Y
L1nda provides online services for entrepreneurs from small and medium sized businesses to manage their staff. In the online environment, they can create fitting schedules, track availability and have an overview of the costs. The Amsterdam startup also takes care of the feedback to the personnel, keeping everyone in the loop, while making scheduling more flexible and dynamic. According to the startup, exactly what generation Y and X are looking for.
Doing well in the hospitality sector
Originally the startups services were meant for several industries, but currently it is mainly focusing on the hospitality sector. Suren claims to be local Dutch market leader with 30.000 employees in this sector using their service daily. It also showed some strong growth. L1nda claims ‘triple digits’ over the past two years.
Newion and DHG invest
The €1 million in growth money comes from Newion Investments, which also invested in startups like Mall-connect and Instant Magazine, and DHG who was already a shareholder in L1nda. “Three years ago we did the first investment in L1nda”, says Thijs Gitmans. He is the driving force behind investor DHG, together with Rob de Heus, who is also heavily involved in Peak Capital, a prominent investor in the rapidly growing auction site Catawiki. Gitmans: “We invested in L1nda because we had great confidence in the team, their knowledge of the hospitality business and their vision on the future of workplace management. Since that moment, L1nda grew out to be the market leader in The Netherlands. Now we can help them to scale-up internationally.”
Created from own experiences
Wouter Suren started L1nda in 2009, after he worked in the hospitality business himself. While managing Crea Café in Amsterdam, he started to realize that managing personnel should be a lot easier. L1nda is the company that grew from that idea. In 2013 they already raised an unnamed sum of growth capital from DHG.
Pictured: Wouter Suren – source