AirTree leads Series B for Australia consulting marketplace

Several unnamed existing investors also participated in the round. It comes nearly two years after the company raised A$4.1 million in Series A funding, led by Frontier Ventures, which primarily focuses on internet services businesses in Southeast Asia and Russia.

Expert360 was founded in 2012 by Bridget Loudon and Emily Yue, who previously worked as management consultants at Bain & Company. They recognized that certain companies lacked the ability to bring in external consultants to work on projects at short notice, while a growing number of freelance experts wanted more flexibility as to how and with whom they worked.

The Expert360 marketplace now has more than 15,000 vetted consultants across 90 countries who are available for project-based work in areas such as finance, sales and marketing, human resources, and operations. The company claims that, since the Series A round, it has added 10,000 consultants and more than 500 clients, while its team has quadrupled in size and annual revenue has increased 1,000%.

“We’re on a mission to transform the way people connect for and execute project work. Achieving that goal requires capital investment to develop a world class platform and grow a community of innovative clients and top independent talent. For that reason, we decided it was time to accelerate that development with fresh capital,” Loudon said in a statement.

AirTree closed its second fund last September at A$250 million ($188 million), the largest independent venture capital vehicle ever raised in Australia. It is divided into two tranches of equal size: an early-stage fund that backs early-stage start-ups at the seed, Series A and Series B stages; and an opportunity vehicle that will back more mature companies.

Expert360 falls into AirTree’s longstanding sweet spot of marketplaces and software-as-a-service (SaaS). However, the latest fund is also targeting start-ups that focus on machine learning, augmented reality (AR) and the internet-of-things.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Early-stage
• Technology
• Advisory
• Australia
• Venture
• TMT
• AirTree Ventures