The Spanish startup called Arbolus connects businesses with experts. The main proposition of Arbolus’ is to build an infrastructure that is used as an expert network connecting subject matter experts (SMEs) with clients that are looking for an insight into an industry, product, or company. Established by two former AlphaSights managers, Will Leeming and Sam Glasswell, Arbolus is progressing as a budding expert network provider.
Having the right information gives you a competitive edge but the typical means of engaging with experts through one-hour calls alone is failing to deliver value. We want to index the world’s human knowledge and make that widely searchable for the first time" said Sam Glasswell, Co-founder at Arbolus.
The Spanish company has been in the headlines in the past after acquiring Waterside, another expert network, and then wrapped up its $16 million series A funding led by Element Ventures. Arbolus is based in Barcelona but also has offices in New York and London. The expert network is not a virgin territory as other players like proSapient and Tegus are quite similar to Arbolus. In the following, we shall take a good look at this startup.
Arbolus originated as a two-way solution for the common lack of SMEs in the industry and a reliable platform where specialists are appropriately compensated for their knowledge. In a literal sense, Arbolus is based on a belief that “Knowledge is power”.
This startup is the brainchild of two AlphaSights alumni named Sam Glasswell and Will Leeming who wanted to harness the power of independent consulting work. Glasswell is a former business and finance expert and Leeming is an equally skilled market intelligence expert.
Arbolus origin story starts with Sam Glasswell who is now the co-founder and co-CEO. In 2008, Glasswell got a bachelor's at the University of Leeds with 1st class dissertation on corporate governance. After completing honors, Glasswell went to IESE Business School in Barcelona and got an MBA that opened a path towards his professional interest which was entrepreneurship. According to Glasswell, while he did his MBA, he worked hard in Finance and Data.
Sam Glasswell, CEO and co-founder of Arbolus said, “The traditional knowledge sharing model lacks innovation and is too expensive to scale. At Arbolus we are building a platform that goes beyond this framework and gives professionals more autonomy. Our goal is to make the offline knowledge of the world accessible to a much larger group of customers in a digital way. We want to index humanity's knowledge and make it searchable at scale for the first time."
Glasswell has always been a pro at professional networking and this ability allowed him to co-found VentureRing in 2015. Glasswell developed VentureRing’s business model program through an MBA Incubator Program. The service was used as a networking platform where startups could be introduced to a multitude of investors to secure seamless financing. After a year of being involved with VentureRing, Glasswell joined the UK-based global professional services firm, Genpact.
At Genpact, Glasswell’s tasks were handling global relationships and P&L responsibility for some of the biggest clients in different life sciences verticals. Within 2 years of his time at Genpact, Glasswell saw a missed opportunity to improve disparate relationship data. In 2018, the idea of creating a reliable marketplace to empower independent consultants came into Glasswell’s mind. At that point, he had already met his future co-founder with whom he would establish CollectiveiQ.
“We are bringing innovation to the ways companies are working with external experts by using groundbreaking technology to, not just build expertise within organizations, but deliver it in ways that are digestible, searchable, and, most importantly, usable for the months and years ahead across different departments,” explained Glasswell.
Will Leeming turned out to be the perfect partner in business Glasswell could have found for his new brainchild in 2017. Leeming is a Winchester college alumnus with a background in Economics (Micro & Macro), Statistics, etc. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Bristol. In 2004, Leeming started his career as a corporate finance information officer at a UK-based law firm named Clifford Chance.
After spending 2 years at Clifford Chance, Leeming ended up as an Assistant in The Economist Intelligence Unit a.k.a The EIU in London for a summer internship. His vast knowledge and professional expertise made Leeming a manager at AlphaSights, one of the “big five” in the expert networks industry. Leeming became acquainted with Sam Glasswell at AlphaSights where Leeming got the role of VP of Innovation & Data Strategy.
“Typical means of engaging with experts through one-hour calls alone is failing to deliver value. These interviews are usually held by a single department and their findings end up lost in PowerPoint presentations or reports,” said Arbolus co-founder Sam Glasswell.
The duo collaborated on scaling AlphaSights, an expert agency before establishing Arbolus where they figured out that knowledge was getting wasted in the traditional expert networks. The reason for this loss was not obtaining knowledge the right way. As a way to solve it, they started Arbolus, a company based in Barcelona to attract global talents and have all the benefits of being in the European Union.
Sam Glasswell, CEO and co-founder of Arbolus, said in a statement: These interviews are usually held by a single department and their findings end up lost in PowerPoint presentations or reports. Therefore, companies are only building up a short-term view. We are bringing innovation to the ways companies are working with external experts by using groundbreaking technology to, not just build expertise within organizations, but deliver it in ways that are digestible, searchable, and, most importantly, usable for the months and years ahead across different departments.”
In a future where outside experts are going to be used more by professional entities and companies, Arbolus has a chance to be quite successful. Since the gig economy is also helping the knowledge economy to expand, the quick rise in Arbolus revenue is completely justified. Companies are paying fees to use their software and make the most of their matching algorithm and toolset.
The intelligent platform of Arbolus is made to make human expert knowledge digitally accessible in an offline mode. This is achieved by technical innovations such as complex machine learning and language processing capabilities. According to Arbolus’ team, the company is utilizing next-gen disrupting tech to offer a way to gather information and enable industry professionals to source it by various methods.
Arbolus is ideal for both companies who wish to gain information from expert engagements as well as experts who wish to share their knowledge for appropriate compensation. This platform uses intelligent matching which finds the best professional for your needs efficiently. This is an artificial intelligence-powered relationship engine whose job is to process the business’ requirements and match them with a suitable professional by using machine learning algorithms.
Glasswell said “In Barcelona, we have an awesome office, our own space, a great team it’s certainly a beautiful city, and we’re able to attract top talent. I mean, people will move from anywhere in the world to go to Barcelona. It’s probably been one of the biggest success factors for us so far. Does the EU factor, help? Yes, I mean the fact that is in the EU in the trading bloc of the union does help… and we thought we’d just be able to build a much more culturally diverse team in the long run.”
Let’s take a look at the platform features as shared by Arbolus:
The Arbolus platform is capable of handling calls with industry professionals and even reading transcripts from previous calls. The build of the Arbolus platform allows you to engage and re-engage with professionals directly.
The launch feature can be used to create projects meant to improve focus on priorities and build trusted connections who are professionals.
Professional expert sourcing allows Arbolus users to find their best match. The leading matching engine is capable of bringing together advisors to businesses.
Collaborating on the Arbolus platform simultaneously is easy because it allows one to centralize their ongoing consultations with an end-to-end solution. Built-in engagement tools conveniently make professional connections whenever one uses this platform.
Saeed Amidi, CEO & Founder at Plug and Play, says: “When we first met Arbolus, we immediately knew that their solution was a game-changer. Sam and Will have 20 years of combined experience in the expert interview industry so they knew clients' pains and what processes needed to be improved. We decided to support Arbolus’ goal to create the most agile platform in freelance collaboration and are amazed by the milestones achieved by Will and Sam so far. We are looking forward to enhancing their effort by creating the right synergies with our global network.
The expert networks industry is not undersized as it expands up to $1.9 billion and is typically recognized as a professional service for the financial industry. Every market participant such as startups, corporations, consultancies, hedge funds, and even private equity could be a client of Arbolus. Instead of looking for an SME on LinkedIn for publicly available contact information, clients can use the Arbolus platform for convenience.
The future of the gig economy and work is inclining toward professional collaborations made on an expert network platform like Arbolus. The experts around the world are responsible for plugging the gaps of knowledge that are required by various businesses to research, analyze, plan, and expand in their relevant industries. Since 2019, has seen a 7x year-on-year growth with opening offices in places like New York and Barcelona.
The enterprise knowledge approach followed at Arbolus allows it to use natural language processing to serve as its platform’s backbone. In its first two years, this early-stage venture has made quite a bold impression within the expert knowledge-sharing industry. As of now, Sam Glasswell, who is currently the CEO said that Arbolus is currently working with 80 different customers like KPMG, UiPath, and some other Big Four firms.
Mark Pearson, a managing partner from Fuel Ventures, added: “Arbolus have done amazing things in its first 24 months and it’s a testament to the entrepreneurial ambition of Sam and Will backed up by their experience of helping to scale a $1 billion company in their former lives We want to foster the innovation and disruption Arbolous is bringing to an old-fashioned industry and be the leaders in connecting the dots between the expert used and the information they provide.”
As Arbolus is not the only expert networking platform in the global market, we have described 3 of its direct competitors below:
This is a machine learning research platform based in London, England, and co-founded by Margo Polishchuk who started the business in 2017. Users of this platform receive strategy consultations, interview transcripts, and other business-related intelligence solutions for a cost. proSapient has a yearly revenue of $7 million with around 60 employees.
AlphaSights is a private company whose co-CEO is Max Cartellieri. It offers consultation services as mentioned earlier. There are a total of 1,000 employees working for this independent company. Both the co-founders of Arbolus i.e. Sam Glasswell and Will Leeming used to work at this company and have scaled it up to $1 billion.
Alber Sebag’s Guidepoint is an on-demand consulting company that works similarly to Arbolus since 2003. It is headquartered in New York and has up to 1,000 employees who provide private/direct conversations, data insights, and even surveys for businesses.
Having the right information gives you a competitive edge but the typical means of engaging with experts through one-hour calls alone is failing to deliver value." Sam Glasswell, Co-founder at Arbolus.
According to Oddup’s research, Arbolus is not only increasing the overall efficiency of expert networks around the world but also contributing to the gig economy worldwide. The best thing about Arbolus is that it is not only a professional network platform but also facilitates fee payments for advisors who get to use a multitude of professional tools and technologies. The financial overview of Arbolus shows that it has raised a total of $24.4 million since inception from various venture firms during its 2 funding rounds announced in the recent past.
The newly-joined investors are Element Ventures, Fuel Ventures, and also Silicon Valley Bank. After spending hours in research, Oddup’s team has valued Arbolus and given it a score of 51.62. The score is kept low because the company has a long way to go. Its last and post-money valuation after last month’s Series A round is $115 million and $130 million respectively. Arbolus has a total of 4 investors among which 3 are lead investors.
Having the right information gives you a competitive edge but the typical means of engaging with experts through one-hour calls alone is failing to deliver value." Sam Glasswell, Co-founder at Arbolus.
According to our researcher’s estimate, the company has a strong approach and equally skilled leadership to make it a leading expert network platform. All that remains to be seen is how the Arbolus team paves its way to success in the future.
The seed funding round of Arbolus wrapped up in two phases and each time the leading investor turned out to be Fuel Ventures. Fuel Ventures is a well-known technology fund that invests in FinTech platforms, SaaS companies, and even marketplaces. The first seed round was announced in June 2019 when the company had just entered the market. Arbolus ended up raising $3.4 million this time.
Having the right information gives you a competitive edge but the typical means of engaging with experts through one-hour calls alone is failing to deliver value." Sam Glasswell, Co-founder at Arbolus.
The second installment of the Arbolus seed funding round took place in March 2021 when the company saw a significant increase in users (both experts and professional entities). This time around, Fuel Ventures led the financing round by raising $6 million with an addition of Plug and Play, one of the most active venture funds in Silicon Valley. Before 2021, Arbolus grew more than its expectations thanks to the co-founders' strategic planning. According to the company, the revenue grew 3 times its value after this.
Having the right information gives you a competitive edge but the typical means of engaging with experts through one-hour calls alone is failing to deliver value." Sam Glasswell, Co-founder at Arbolus.
The series A funding of Arbolus was completed recently with the participation of 3 different venture funds. This round was led by Element Ventures which is a FinTech-centric VC as it backs tech driving companies in B2B verticals. Arbolus has also received two partner investors, Mark Pearson (Fuel Ventures) and Steve Gibson (Element Ventures) during this round who have joined the early-stage venture’s board. Silicon Valley Bank handled the debt facility and made equity investments too.
Steve Gibson from Element Ventures added: “Arbolus is successfully disrupting one of the largest remaining analog markets. The early client validation has been nothing short of exceptional. The vision, credibility, expertise, and passion provided by founders Sam and Will were compelling from our first meeting.”
Ever since Arbolus received finance from notable investors as mentioned above, the company has expanded aggressively. A total of 100 employees from Zoom, Monzo, Amazon, etc have been on board. In the previous year, the co-founders Leeming and Glasswell chose Pau Beltran as the company’s new CTO who brings 15 years of expertise in machine learning and NLP. Arbolus platform is looking forward to attracting the global talent pool of independent expert networks available in Spain.
New offices have been opened in London, and New York, alongside Barcelona’s headquarters. What Arbolus has achieved is remarkable for any 3-year-old startup. But that is not all as the company is expecting to extend its capabilities in the future and scale up to $100 million in revenue by 2024. Apart from KPMG and UiPath, clients of this platform include HP, PWC, and CPP Investments.
Sam Glasswell, CEO and co-founder of Arbolus said: “The traditional model for knowledge sharing lacks innovation and is cost-prohibitive to scale. At Arbolus we’re building a platform that breaks that framework and gives professionals more autonomy.
As of now, the priority of Arbolus and its team is to expand into the United States where the demand for expert knowledge networks has a much wider customer base.
“The company is also investing in the products that will help enterprise clients harness the value of expert consultations as a precursor to large consulting projects. There are plans to expand our US operations further based on the success to date.”
