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HrTech startup: Skillvue
- Can you tell us about yourself and your role?
Hello, I am Nicolo Mazzocchi, CEO and co-founder of Skillvue.
- When was Skillvue founded?
Skillvue was founded in 2021.
- Give us a brief introduction to your company and its mission
Skillvue (formerly known as Algo AI) is a Milan-based startup, currently employing 13 people.
Our mission is to help companies adopt a skills-based approach to recruitment, internal mobility, and talent development.
We use our proprietary AI technology to quickly and objectively analyze both candidates' and employees' skills.
By doing so, we enable companies to identify high-potential talent and create effective development paths, optimizing HR processes for more sustainable growth in today's challenging labor market.
- What is your company's North Star metric?
Our North Star metric is centered around two key performance indicators: annual recurring revenue (ARR) and ticket size.
Together, these metrics allow us to measure our company’s financial health, client satisfaction, and the effectiveness of our go-to-market strategy.
Focusing on ARR and ticket size gives us a clear path for sustainable growth.
- How did your company get started, and what inspired its creation?
My co-founder, Simone, and I have known each other for over a decade, and we initially crossed professional paths while working on our own separate ventures—mine in the entertainment industry, his in education and training.
We both encountered hiring challenges, especially in assessing soft skills, motivation, and cultural fit. Traditional skills assessments were slow, expensive, and not scalable.
We saw a market need for a faster, more objective way to assess talent.
So, we teamed up with a technical team and researchers in Occupational Psychology to create a scalable, AI-powered solution. Skillvue was born to address these issues, helping companies move toward a skills-based organization, which became increasingly important after the labor market disruptions caused by the pandemic.
- What HR solutions does Skillvue offer, and how do you AI-power these solutions?
Our platform caters to three key HR verticals: recruitment, talent development, and internal mobility.
Companies can choose from our Skill Test Library to create customized assessments for candidates and employees.
The tests take around 15 minutes to complete and can be taken on any device.
After completion, Skillvue’s AI analyzes the answers and provides a skill compatibility score and ratings on a Likert scale, enabling HR teams to make more informed decisions about hiring and talent development.
AI allows us to offer these assessments at scale, without compromising on depth or quality.
- Please provide key dates in Skillvue's journey (e.g., founding date, product launches, major milestones).
- 2021: Founding of the company and the initial team.
- 2022: Product fine-tuning and launch to select companies.
- 2023: Product-market fit studies and go-to-market tests.
- September 2024: Completion of a €2.5M pre-seed funding round and rebranding from Algo AI to Skillvue.
- What is your vision for the future of HR tech and AI? What are your company's upcoming goals?
We aim to contribute meaningfully to the development of human-centered, inclusive, and fair HR technology. We see AI as a tool to assist humans, not replace them, especially in key areas like recruitment and talent development where human judgment is crucial. Our immediate goals are to expand in Italy and across Europe, strengthen our team, and continuously improve the quality of our technology.
- What is your strategic approach to AI technology? Developing proprietary models in-house versus integrating external AI solutions?
We have always developed proprietary AI models in-house, rather than relying on external solutions. This approach gives us more control over the performance, scalability, and ethical standards of our AI systems.
- What were the biggest challenges in integrating AI into your products, and how did you address them? Buy vs Build?
The biggest challenge was adapting the Behavioral Event Interview (BEI) methodology to AI-based text analysis. We needed to standardize how we asked candidates and employees questions, and then train our AI to identify key behavioral drivers in their responses. This allowed us to create a scalable system that could provide objective skill assessments. Building our own solution was key to achieving the depth and specificity we needed.
- How does your company ensure its AI systems are unbiased and ethical?
We collaborate closely with occupational psychologists and researchers to maintain the quality of our technology. Our technical team worked diligently to build a robust dataset for training our AI, and we recently hired a Senior AI Psychometrician to further improve the objectivity and quality of our assessments.
- What feedback have you received from clients about your solution(s), and how has it shaped your product going forward?
Our clients appreciate the objectivity our solution brings to HR decision-making, along with the time and cost savings. They also love the innovative user experience, which has helped improve employer branding and retention efforts. Another key benefit is the shared visibility of skills across HR departments, allowing for more synergy in talent processes.
- Can you share a success story or case study that highlights the impact of your technology on a client?
One of our notable clients, Carrefour, used Skillvue to standardize recruitment processes by setting up filter questions and conducting both soft and hard skills assessments. This not only streamlined their recruitment but also informed their learning and development initiatives, allowing them to create personalized training paths for employees.
- What key milestones has your company achieved so far? (e.g., funding rounds, partnerships, customer acquisition)
Our biggest recent milestone was closing our €2.5M pre-seed round in September 2024. Looking ahead, we want to reach €1M in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2024 and continue expanding our client portfolio.
Skillvue is poised to play a leading role in transforming HR processes, making them more skills-focused, objective, and scalable with the help of AI.
- Can you show us your product demo?
Skillvue - Product Demo
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And there you have it! Keep an eye on Skillvue's social media pages for updates on the latest milestones and innovations in the job search experience.
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