Employee Relocation Startup Move Guides Scores $8.2 Million Series A

Move Guides, a London startup that offers ‘talent mobility’ software in the cloud to help companies manage the relocation of their employees, has raised an $8.2 million Series A round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Existing investor Notion Capital also participated, along with individual investors Andy Leaver (ex-VP EMEA and APAC, Workday) and David Windley (ex-CHRO Yahoo!).

A classic Software-as-a-Service enterprise play, Move Guides aims to disrupt incumbents, such as Cartus and SIRVA, for companies who would normally outsource their employee relocation needs, as well as be suitable for those who run their talent mobility programs in-house.

It’s cloud-based solution, dubbed Talent Mobility Cloud, brings together companies, employees and global vendors (shipping, real estate, immigration, tax and more) all into a single platform, helping to solve an increasing paint-point for HR departments in which more and more employees are becoming mobile — requiring the moving of talent around the world for new jobs, relocations, projects and “expatriate assignments,” according to the company.

A whopping $150 billion is cited as the amount spent annually by companies moving talent, a process that can be overly complex, time-consuming, and of course costly. By moving the associated talent mobility software to the cloud and consolidating the relocation process, Move Guides says it’s able to significantly reduce those costs. As a I said, this has the hall mark of classic SaaS disruption.

Cue a statement from NEA partner Ravi Viswanathan: “The shift from on-premise to cloud in enterprise software has long been a core focus for NEA, with investments in category-defining companies like Salesforce.com, WebEx and Workday. Talent mobility management is a large and growing market that’s ripe for disruption, and we’re excited to partner with Move Guides as they seize that opportunity and deliver a mobility solution that enables companies to be more efficient, reduce costs, and increase employee satisfaction.”

Prior to today’s fresh funding, Move Guides had raised just over $2.4 million, including a $1.8 million round from both NEA and Notion Capital, along with a number of angels investors, including serial entrepreneur and investor Sherry Coutu, Tom Hulme, Sean Park, Dale Murray and Kevin Eyres.

In addition to new funding, the company is announcing it’s expanding to Hong Kong, and has hired Alex Wood as VP, Global Sales (ex-Complinet and Workshare).