The remote working has become a common place for most tech professionals for quite some time now. But when the pandemic made it necessary for everyone else around the world go remote due to the global pandemic, the results were somewhat chaotic. As remote working was normalized, companies of different sizes had to get acquainted with a more hybrid work setup and flexible working model.
Some notable global businesses like Twitter, Shopify, Facebook, and others announced the permanent adoption of a remote-first work model. For traditional companies and many other startups, the switch to a remote-first approach has not been without its challenges. London-based company, Omnipresent is working to reduce the complexities faced when it comes to remote work.
Guenther Eisinger, Co-Founder and co-CEO say “the world of work has changed significantly; we’re currently experiencing a tectonic shift in the way businesses work and hire. We’re helping companies break through barriers of international employment, empowering them to hire anyone, anywhere.’’
The company was co-founded by two ex-business owners Matthew Wilson and Guenther Eisinger back in 2019. Since its establishment, Omnipresent has recorded extraordinary growth and recently received backing from companies like Kinnevik AB and Tencent during its series B funding round. The human resources company has a global presence in over 150 countries already.
Let’s take a closer look at its journey, evolution, and prospects.
Omnipresent originated way before remote working was perceived as a necessity for all industries on a global scale. During a time before COVID-19 forced international businesses to work from thousands of miles apart, the two Omnipresent co-founders faced challenges managing remote working teams. Matthew Wilson, a distinguished physicist from Oxford took to product design at AND Digital back in 2016 after leaving his job as a lead physicist at KAIST.
It did not take him long to find a like-minded entrepreneur and Oxford alumni Jacob Lacombe to co-found a new company from scratch called Vetarak. Lacombe and Wilson’s Vetarak was founded in 2017 as a collaboration platform for data and documents related to pharma supply chain partners. The objective of Vetarak was to use blockchain to improve pharmaceutical manufacturing.
The platform is needed to ensure regulatory compliance, audit processes, and even the manufacturing quality of pharmaceutical manufacturers. As Vetarak was essentially a cloud-based document management service, they followed a remote employment model which was not up to the mark at the time. The increasing issues and feedback from his team made Wilson realize the need for an entity to handle remote employment, payroll, benefits, taxes, compliance, etc.
“Since we founded the business two years ago, the world of work has changed significantly,” says Co-CEO and Co-Founder Matthew Wilson.
The other co-founder of Omnipresent is Guenther Eisinger, Vienna University alumni who have served in the Austrian Special Forces and holds 3 master’s degrees and even a PhD (in natural sciences). Eisinger founded a security and investigations company under his name back in 2012 due to his expertise in risk assessment and conflict management. But Eisinger shut the London-based company down after facing several setbacks caused by remote employment.
Things took a positive turn when both Eisinger and Wilson met at Entrepreneur First which is one of the world’s leading talent investors. Wilson is a Founder-In-Residence while Eisinger joined as Entrepreneur First. The two shared their vision regarding a solution for companies like their previous undertaking that took shape of Omnipresent.
Co-CEO and Co-Founder Matthew Wilson said, “We exist to help growing technology companies employ and pay their globally distributed teams in a quick, cost-effective and compliant way.”
In the words of Guenther Eisinger, the duo was prepped well at Entrepreneur First before Omnipresent launched at the end of 2019. The timing could not have been more accurate for a company like Omnipresent to hit the international market. Their automated tech-focused platform helped several of their clients within the first few months to handle remote workers and their needs in a compliant, affordable, and efficient way.
“We’re now a team of more than 230 talented people distributed across 40+ countries worldwide. We’ve created a culture driven by our values of being ambitious, humble, authentic, and curious. And it’s a culture our people love; 94% of our team would recommend Omnipresent as a great place to work.” said Co-CEO and Co-Founder Matthew Wilson.
What came next was incessant growth and support from various backers who acknowledged the startup’s expertise in making global teams work conveniently. In 2021, Omnipresent re-branded with a new look after 18 months of its launch. The company also got on the list of Europe’s hottest startups by WIRED. Despite having a global presence but the company has no corporate headquarters. Omnipresent functions as a fully remote company.
"Omnipresent is in a stage of hyper-growth, and we're proud to have developed a culture that can scale with us and that truly resonates with our people. Our Series B will not only enable us to grow our team, but also invest in innovative ways to keep our people engaged, fulfilled, and motivated as they shape the future of work." - Matthew Wilson, Co-founder & Co-CEO of Omnipresent.
Omnipresent acts as a global employment partner for its clients. Their platform features client-focused support which includes end-to-end services helping businesses to hire talents globally. OmniPlatform is the company’s exclusive digital platform and also its SaaS product. Using this platform, businesses in more than 160 countries can easily handle processes that start with employee onboarding till their offboarding.
“As former business owners, we had the first-hand experience of what a headache it is to navigate the complexity and bureaucracy of building global teams. Now with the pandemic and the global shift towards remote working, it’s confirmed that we are on the right track,” said Guenther Eisinger and Matthew Wilson, Co-CEOs of Omnipresent.
In order to become the global standard of remote employment, Omnipresent offers a wide range of services that are described as follows:
Onboarding talents from around the world and handling their life cycle can be far too extensive a job to be managed by SMBs or even startups. Omnipresent’s services help counter these problems and set up a global talent team anywhere in the world easily. Onboarding essentials like getting to know the team, familiarizing with tasks and goals can be done efficiently using the OmniPlatform.
One of the most common setbacks faced by businesses trying out global employment scenarios is being limited by global regulatory compliance. If you have no idea about a country’s employment laws and rules then it would be difficult to navigate compliance requirements. But with Omnipresent, a global employer of record (EOR) is active in 160 countries and several regions which makes it the perfect support for international employment challenges.
Handling the payroll of a global team is not possible if one lacks experience. But Omnipresent also provides a reliable global payroll solution that is active in more than 150 countries. With its help, any business can freely hire experts irrespective of where they are based and let Omnipresent make sure that they are paid compliantly.
Managing an international team working remotely for your business is difficult enough but when you include responsibilities like employee benefits and healthcare management then you must take an expert’s help. Omnipresent’s services include global employee benefits and even healthcare management to ensure your team gets what they are entitled to according to the laws applicable.
Omnipresent houses an expert team of friendly representatives who manage the global workforce easily by supporting each and every employee. The company’s international HR solutions help businesses hire, manage, and pay their international employees effectively. As HR outsourcing is quite popular among SMBs and startups that lack their own HR team, Omnipresent’s HR support can help them save time and money.
As security and data protection has become one of the most important concerns, Omnipresent handles client data in a legally compliant way under the rules of the UK’s Data Protection Act 2018 and also the GDPR. OmniPlatform utilizes industry-grade data encryption and anonymization to ensure that all stored data remains secure. Routine checks are made by trusted third-party penetration tests to keep data security as their priority.
Omnipresent website: We believe that your priority should be towards growing your business and accessing the best global talent, not focusing on the admin required to make that possible. We also believe in providing every employee with the tools and support that will make them feel part of the team no matter where they are. Omnipresent gives you more time to do what matters, and less of the boring admin.
As a remote-first company, Omnipresent has come to the scene as a game-changer. With services like international payroll management in a time when COVID-19 has pushed companies to work with several global teams, Omnipresent is providing a clear-cut solution to the problem. According to Omnipresent’s employer survey, around 85% of employers have employed remote/globally-based employees in 2021. After receiving successive financial backing, Omnipresent is moving ahead in the right direction.
Matthew Wilson said “Companies are rapidly embracing this new way of working, however, international employment and tax law, unfortunately, moves at a different speed. When setting up and managing an international team, it is important that remote companies understand how to operate compliantly and the huge risks they could be facing if they aren’t careful.”
As the hybrid working model keeps spreading all over the globe, companies have the opportunity to free themselves from geographical constraints while hiring talents. With services like Omnipresent, it is now feasible to appoint, manage, and pay global teams as a permanent fixture. As of Feb 2022, 5.6 million people have been working remotely from home since 2020 for an average of 35.9 hours weekly. It is evident that these figures are expected to grow further.
According to Matthew Wilson “Intense competition for talent, improving collaboration tools, and an ongoing cultural shift are all contributing to a rapid rise in companies looking to attract a global talent pool.”
In a short period, Omnipresent has partnered with some of the leading employers to help them employ the best talent worldwide and grew its revenue by 25x in 2021. Companies like Ravelin, Juni, Turtl, Freetrade, Sphere, Cube, Attest, Cambrian, Supercede, and Sylvera have chosen Omnipresent as their go-to remote work management partner. To streamline the onboarding process, OmniPlatform has been integrated into 24 popular HR systems including Hibob, Workday, and BambooHR.
Now let us take a look at the existing competitors and peers of Omnipresent who are active in the same sector:
Based in California and headed by co-founder & CEO Job van der Voort is Remote, an HR platform that provides services similar to Omnipresent. It was founded in 2019 and since then, Remote has grown to a team of 100-250 employees with a total of $196 million in funding. To know more about Remote check our insightful article on the startup here (link for Remote Oddup article).
The Irish HR resource platform manages payroll, tax reporting, and talent acquisition for its clients since 2019. The co-founder & CEO Dee Coakley has expanded the company into a 25-member team generating anywhere between $100 and $5 million in annual revenue. As of now, Boundless has been funded twice for a total of $4.2 million.
Founded by Ben Wright in 2014, Velocity Global is a Denver-based competitor of Omnipresent which has around 300 employees. The company was funded last year for the first time by FFL Partners raising $100 million. The estimated annual revenue generated by Wright’s HR platform for global companies is around $250 million.
What brings attention to Omnipresent is not only its multitude of services but a
lso its rate of expansion after being founded in 2019. In a few months, the company managed to grow at least 10x its original size. Though the pandemic situation played an important role in Omnipresent’s development the company also received notable support from investment groups and venture capitalists like Kinnevik AB, Tencent, TrueSight Ventures, Episode 1 Ventures, etc.
“While talent is evenly distributed around the world, for too long, opportunities have not been. I have experienced firsthand the challenge of hiring globally. When I was a CEO attempting to grow a team across different jurisdictions I was dismayed by the baroque complexity and lack of affordable tech-driven solutions,” said Carina Namih, General Partner at Episode 1 Ventures.
Omnipresent has been funded three times since announcing its first-ever seed funding round. The total fund raised by Omnipresent is close to $137.8 million. The most recent funding round announced in March was Series B during which many of the aforementioned participated as investors. Oddup’s analysis shows that the last valuation of Omnipresent is around $600 million and its post-money valuation is close to $720 million (after series B).
But the overall Oddup score for Eisinger and Wilson’s co-founded company is around 61.34 which are neither too encouraging nor too unenthusiastic. The main reason for getting a low Oddup score could be the jump in funding raised during the seed round and the recent Series B. It is important to note that the Oddup score is calculated after hours of research and is based on several algorithmic calculations made by our experts.
In August 2020, Omnipresent announced a seed funding round which was closed by Playfair Capital and Episode 1 Ventures. These two VCs are known to invest in promising early-stage tech companies based in the UK. A total of $2 million was raised with 7 other participating investors in the said funding round. TrueSight Venture, Srin Madipalli (associate of Creative Destruction Lab), Ian Hogarth, Charlie Songhurst (advisor at Bear Robotics), Entrepreneur First, Andrew Goodman, and Akash Gupta also joined this round.
Joe Thornton, who led the deal on behalf of Playfair Capital, said: “Change always has a transaction cost. For business executives, the prospect of shifting from a collocated office to a fully distributed workforce was previously viewed as too risky a change, even though the evidence has long supported the superiority of remote workforces. And then suddenly, earlier this year, the decision was taken for every business executive as the entire knowledge economy globally was forced into remote working due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Last year in January, Omnipresent co-founders called for Series A funding round that raised a total of $15.8 million from 4 participating investors. Playfair Capital’s Joe Thornton and Episode 1’s Carina Namih remained the partner investor during this round. The funds received went into developing infrastructure for building businesses spread all over the globe. Most of the portion of funding also went into hiring global talents.
Carina Namih, General Partner at Episode 1 Ventures said “It comes as no surprise to me that this Series A round is happening hot on the heels of their seed round that we led just 5 months ago. Omnipresent has already become a crucial piece of infrastructure for global teams working across different countries. Their team is passionate about delighting users and their pace of execution has been extraordinary. In just a matter of months, they have exceeded their ambitious targets and have scaled to cover over 150 countries and rolled out a powerful product that clients are evangelical about.”
In the last week of March 2022, the global employment solutions provider managed to close its Series B funding round successfully. This round of investment was led by Kinnevik, a Europe-based growth investor as well as Tencent, the globally renowned technology giant. Omnipresent’s pre-Series B round also recorded the participation of Uncorrelated Ventures. The total amount raised was $120 million which puts the company in an advantageous position to expand its team and range of products/services.
“We have seen the benefits of its platform first-hand; companies are scaling their operations into new markets in ways they simply couldn’t achieve without Omnipresent’s support. The business model is differentiated, and we believe the team they’ve built is uniquely strong and can deliver on the vast market opportunity. We are very excited to partner with them in this next phase of their journey as they continue to scale and forge ahead globally.” said Ola Nordbye, Investment Director at Kinnevik.
Omnipresent is continuously gaining talents, clients, and expertise to help global companies build their own global teams. Currently, their clients are spread across 160 countries and regions. The company itself has hired hundreds of recruits in 2022 and ensured a diversified suite of global employment products. According to Matthew Wilson, the co-founder of Omnipresent, they are focusing on expanding business quickly as their market-leading coverage spans 6 continents now.
“Our vision is to ensure that every company can easily employ their talent of choice, no matter the location. With remote work here to stay worldwide, it’s critical we have the right personnel in place to fuel our own global expansion,” said Guenther Eisinger, Omnipresent Co-founder.
The current priority of the company is the improvement and development of OmniPlatform to provide tech-enabled human resource services. As the company continues to scale up its services to offer an integrated and streamlined global employment solution, Omnipresent’s success is only a matter of time.
“With funding from leading investors, such as Kinnevik and Tencent, we’ll continue scaling our distributed team and developing our service offering to meet the ever-growing demand for global employment,” said Guenther Eisinger, Omnipresent Co-founder.
