African gig start-up, Meaningful Gigs secures $6M in seed to connect designers in Africa with remote jobs in the West

Meaningful gigs a gig start-up that matches the right gig workers with the right company, serving as a go-to-market for freelance designers in Africa who target western multinationals has secured $6 million in seed funding to accelerate its growth by signing more designers to its platform.

Stage 2 Capital led the funding round with participation from Rethink Education, Authentic Ventures, Reach Capital, Marla Blow, Xavi Band, and Michelle Perry.

Ronnie Quasi Coleman, CEO and Co-Founder of Meaningful Gigs said “We are thinking about how we can tell more dimensional merchants across the continent that we exist, so that we can help them make five to seven times more locally, creating more referral programs to help the continent at large.”

The start-up will embark on an aggressive marketing plan to get at least 100 corporates on board in the next year, with 40 (17 being major enterprises) currently using its platform.

“The flip side of this is just letting top-tier people like more brands know that we exist because every company needs creative and every company is struggling to hire talent right now, and they don’t even know that a world full of talent waits,” Coleman said.

Reacting to the round, Mandy Cole, partner Stage 2 Capital said “With a shortage of highly skilled talent and a growing need for diverse thinking, especially in creative, marketing and product, Meaningful Gigs is solving a major problem by connecting talented African designers with companies to create an in-class design. to provide the best.”

“We have been impressed by the Meaningful Gigs team’s focus in providing the best design experiences for our clients while providing amazing tools for our designers; we are excited to support their journey to become the destination for diverse design talent.” He added.

Coleman co-founded the startup with Stephanie Nchemja-Banton (COO) and Max Farago (CTO) in 2018, in a quest to create a platform that will offer more and well-paying gigs to individuals looking for non-traditional work opportunities and those entering the new labor market in Africa, as well as help companies source talent outside the general pool.

“The three of us have been friends for the last 10 years and we are part of the same creative community. One day, we came across this startling statistic which said that by 2050 the number of youth entering the workforce in Africa will exceed all youth entering the workforce in the rest of the world. And we thought it was crazy. It impressed us that we could build a business around it. And personally, it resonated with me because I grew up in Ghana,” Coleman said.

Coleman has been in the creative and tech industry over the past decade. Before founding Meaningful Gigs, he co-founded another organization, together with Nchemja-Bantan, that helped creatives earn “a sustainable living.” He also previously served as Director of Business Development at StayTouch; A hotel management platform.

Nachemja-Bantan, on the other hand, has had a long career in education, having previously held several positions including director of teaching and learning at One World Education. The third co-founder, Farago, is a veteran data engineer who switched from law to technology a few years ago. Before joining Coleman and Nchemja-Bintan to launch Meaningful Gigs, he was VP of Engineering at Deep Root Analytics.

Meaningful Gigs also plans to provide ongoing training to the designers signed up on its platform – to ensure they are exposed to the latest knowledge, trends, and technologies in motion with the fast-growing digital world.

“What we have seen is that for anyone to be successful in this ever-evolving digital landscape it is not enough to go into a job – you have to be able to learn skills on the job. And so, we are the number one remote for creatives. We want to create a jobs and skills market, where we will teach people new skills. We are mixing jobs with education,” said Nachemja-Bantan.

To sign up on the platform, designers go through a vetting process that includes test projects. Meaningful Gigs has already matched “thousands” of these designers from “more than a dozen” countries in Africa with clients.

The startup is harnessing the potential of the rapidly growing gig economy that has disrupted the traditional work setup. The Internet and new technologies have allowed people to earn a living remotely and companies to work with untapped talent. The sector’s growth is now expected to reach $455 billion by 2023, doubling in value in 2018 and a 17% CAGR.

“We want to be the number one remote job marketplace in the world. We want to create 100,000 jobs by 2028. And to achieve this, we are focusing on customer empathy and understanding exactly what they need.” need a lot [seed round] Creating the best experience for them is going to cost money. We want to make working with African designers 10 times better than working with anyone else. We want to invest in building that relationship so they don’t want to go anywhere else,” Coleman said.