Founders, Take Note: Top 10 HR Tech Startups for Your Inspiration

Agile HR software development is becoming increasingly important as HR professionals look for new ways to enhance core functions and efficiently navigate major employee hiring and management shifts. 

According to a Gartner survey on HR Technology, 56% of HR leaders say that their technological solutions and strategies do not meet their business needs or allow them to deliver the desired business value.

The growing interest in new, value-generating solutions can be favorable for HR tech startups when those are sensitive to underserved market demands and win trust by meeting changing business needs with timely feature deliveries.

Let’s review the landscape of the HR tech industry and top HR startups to follow in 2024.

According to a Traxn report, HR startups were in the investors’ focus during the 2021 tech boom when they accumulated a record $25.1B in funding.

The number of investments lowered to $14.8B in 2022 and $5.3B in 2023. However, funding and managing an HR tech startup remains a good idea due to the constantly changing market.

Source: Tracxn

Based on a report by Fortune Business Insights, the HR tech market is growing at a 9.2% CAGR. Its size was estimated at $37.66B in 2023 and is expected to reach $40.45B in 2024 and $81.84B in 2032.

While large corporations, such as Workday, Oracle, Kronos, and others, dominate the HR tech market, a handful of startups have successfully kept up with the competition in their selected niches. 

According to the above Traxn report, 43,140 HR startups existed as of mid-2024, 76 of which had achieved unicorn status. According to Siift’s report on the state of EU HR tech, the top two funding sources are VC funds and angel investment.

Acquisitions are another sign of a vibrant startup scene. Among notable 2024 examples, HiBob purchased a London-based startup, Pento. Deel acquired a German startup, Zavvy, to enhance its career development and performance management capabilities.

Another factor affecting the growth and diversity of the Human Resources startup scene is the increased complexity of HR roles. HR departments face complex tasks, such as managing hybrid work environments, improving working policies, finding top talents, encouraging career development, and beyond.

The top five core niches for HR tech startups include:

However, the G2 platform divides HR software into 42 categories, where startups challenge established companies and each other.

Rapid changes create many opportunities to become leaders in a fragmented environment. New HR solutions constantly emerge in the market as HR tech startups strive to cover various functions when those quickly become part of an HR department’s responsibilities. 

Let’s check the most interesting ideas from different areas and their implementation.

Ranked 28 among CNBC’s 50 Disruptors in 2024, Deel provides a comprehensive platform for building and managing a global team. 

The platform enables organizations to hire specialists at any location and manage them as in-house employees or contractors. It serves 25,000 customers worldwide, including big names like Zapier, Klarna, and Shopify. 

End users can:

Y Combinator has funded Deel. It is evaluated as a unicorn and has been reported to be profitable in 2022. 

The startup also uses acquisition as part of its growth and expansion strategy, which enables it to add missing expertise and enter new domains. 

Rating: 4.8 (G2), 4.8 (Capterra), 4.8 (Software Advice).

Alternatives: Oracle Taleo Cloud, Rippling.

Website: https://www.deel.com.

Hireology is a recruitment solution focused on streamlined sourcing, hiring, and onboarding talents for multi-location businesses. 

The platform provides intuitive functionality and easy-to-navigate menus, letting managers track multiple candidates and job openings. Recruiters and HR managers can email candidates from the same platform, saving time switching between different software.

Also, managers can perform:

and more.

Functionality for referral program management is also available to decrease hiring time. Enhanced access management ensures that only authorized managers can access specific candidate information. 

Private investors back Hireology, and it is in the revenue generation stage.

Rating: 4.5 (G2), 4.3 (Capterra), 4.3 (Software Advice).

Alternatives: Workable, HiringThing.

Website: https://hireology.com/.

One of Deel’s key rivals, Rippling combines HR, IT, and finances within a single system. It was included in CNBC’s 50 disruptors in 2023 at position 14. 

Rippling offers an integrated platform for administrative tasks, targeting both HR vendors and payroll systems. When an employee’s role, benefits, or compensation change, the software automates the payroll. It also calculates applicable taxes without human intervention. 

The system precipitates operations by providing work from unified, single records. It also consolidates required work information and ensures seamless integration with accounting software. 

Y Combinator backs rippling. The startup is valued at $13.5B after raising $1.2B in April 2024. G2 has also named it one of the top 50 HR products in 2024.

Rating: 4.8 (G2), 4.9 (Capterra), 4.9 (Software Advice).

Alternatives: Deel, Paychex Flex, ADP Workforce.

Website: https://www.rippling.com/.

Claira AI focuses on competency management, helping companies understand and efficiently address their workforce needs. It evaluates candidates’ skills instead of resumes, removing bias and guesswork.

The software seamlessly integrates with various HR tools, including BambooHR, LinkedIn, Rippling, Google Workspace, etc, using available data to generate job descriptions, analyze sent CVs, and conduct job-specific interviews with candidates.

This software is an example of how AI in HR can be used internally for Human Capital Management. It can interview employees and find their hidden talents. Also, it can serve as an AI bot answering employees’ questions depending on their roles and access rights to organizational data.

The company was founded in 2020 and has gone through accelerator and early seed rounds; as of mid-2024, it is in early-stage VC.

Rating: N/A.

Alternatives: SmartRecruiters, Talegent.

Website: http://www.claira.ai/.

TestGorilla strives to remove bias from the screening process by providing tests of candidates’ competencies as an alternative to CVs.

Organizations benefit from a large test library. They can examine a candidate’s cognitive abilities, language proficiency, programming skills, personality, and much more, letting an organization find the best fit for a specific role. 

Subject matter experts designed the tests, which last between two minutes for typing speed and 30+ minutes for coding skills, to keep candidates motivated in completing tasks. 

The software provides multiple integrations with applicant tracking systems to ensure fast updates of candidate information. 

TestGorilla is in the series A round and has been named among the top ten B2B SaaS startups by Sift. 

Rating: 4.5 (G2), 4.2 (Capterra).

Alternatives: Manatal, ZipRecruiter, ADP Workforce.

Website: https://www.testgorilla.com/.

SmartHR is a leading Japanese HRM system providing a complete suite of tools for employee management and administration as a cloud-based platform.

The system enables users to create custom workflows for talent management, employee productivity, growth, and operational efficiency improvement. 

It also helps streamline social and employment insurance by automatically generating related digital documents and allowing users to send them to local authorities with a click. 

SmartHR is more oriented towards the domestic market and is less popular internationally. Still, it boasts over 60,000 registered companies, including many enterprises like Denso, Satudora Holdings, and JFE.

This startup has been in the market since 2013; it raised an impressive $140M in Series E round in July 2024.  

Rating: 5.0 (Capterra).

Alternatives: BambooHR, Zenefits.

Website: https://smarthr.co.jp/.

Employment Hero provides an end-to-end HRM system that can be used throughout the entire employee lifecycle, including:

Similarly to SmartHR, Employment Hero stands out from the competition by catering to the needs of a specific market, including Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. 

The platform provides a friendly interface and wide customization. The startup’s pricing is in AUD and less expensive than its competitors. 

The startup was founded in 2012 and has gone through eight funding rounds. It raised $168M in the latest Series E round in October 2023, which became the biggest capital raise for Australian companies that year, boosting the startup’s confidence.

Rating: 4.5 (G2), 4.4 (Capterra), 4.4 (Software Advice).

Alternatives: HiBob, Dayforce HCM.

Website: https://employmenthero.com/.

HR Geckos positions itself as copilot for HROps, which offers streamlined delivery of HR services through an AI-powered help desk. It promises to decrease the time and effort needed for an HR department to respond to a specific request.

The platform works on enhancing employee experiences, providing:

HR Geckos simplifies integrations with various communication channels, including a company’s internal messenger, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype, and WhatsApp. 

The startup was founded in 2023 and is in the incubator/accelerator stage, having received an undisclosed amount of venture investment. 

Rating: N/A.

Alternatives: Socrates AI, Leena AI.

Website: https://hrgeckos.com/.

CandorIQ enables companies to balance people spending and staff turnover by designing, executing, and monitoring a transparent compensation strategy.

The software provides a centralized platform, improving collaboration between the HR department, finance, executives, and line managers. It helps with cost-efficient employee scaling and high satisfaction from compensation.

Users benefit from simplified headcount planning, workforce management, merit cycle automation, and pay ranges. AI-powered analytics helps with real-time insights on cash burn, hiring velocity, headcount requests vs. number of employees, and more. 

CandorIQ ensures easy integration with HRM and accounting software, including Deel, BambooHR, QuickBooks, Zenefits, and many others to support end-to-end operations. 

This HR startup is in the early VC stage, with Y Combinator among its backers. 

Rating: 4.8 (G2), 5.0 (Product Hunt).

Alternatives: HiBob, Paycom.

Website: https://www.candoriq.com/.

Figures is also a centralized platform for simplified compensation management. It strives to help companies remove uncertainties and drive fair compensation policies and salary decisions by providing real-time compensation benchmarks. 

The platform enables organizations to create and update a consistent and relevant compensation policy based on several factors, including:

and more.

Figures software enables organizations to securely share salary ranges between HR managers, department managers, and employees, ensuring a transparent discussion and optimizing hiring offers. 

The software can help companies adapt to the requirements of the EU Pay Transparency Directive, eliminating chances of discrimination claims. 

Figures went through two seed rounds while raising $6.94M during the second one. 

Rating: 4.4 (G2).

Alternatives: Elevo, Workday HCM, CandorIQ.

Website: https://figures.hr/.

Helping HR startups get their project up and running is one of our key competencies, for which we provide comprehensive services, including:

and more.

At IT Craft, you benefit from flexible cooperation terms:

Flexwise is a secure platform for hiring and managing pre-vetted healthcare professionals and forecasting workload needs.

The IT Craft team reworked and finalized the requested MVP solution, enabling the client to launch the envisaged functionality.

While Flexwise grew in popularity, the development team focused on cost-efficient scaling and feature expansion, helping the client meet end-users’ growing expectations.

This article discussed top HR startups that successfully found their market niche and can serve as benchmarks for new entrants.

While HR functions continue drifting, opportunities emerge constantly. HR tech startups strive when they can quickly provide relevant functionality for letting HR departments manage newly assigned responsibilities efficiently.

Besides marketing, two things are important for a product launch to become successful: