MOVE Guides – a UK-based SaaS platform startup aimed at dramatically simplifying the process of someone moving their lives to an international city for work – has previously raised £400,000 funding. Last year it launched a public beta aimed at the international relocation market, worth more than $40 billion annually but currently dominated by lumbering offline companies. Today it’s announced a further $1.8 million in seed funding from Notion Capital and NEA to accelerate expansion of its SaaS solution and scale up.
They say their clients on the platform have now completed thousands of employee moves with an employee satisfaction rating of 99%, across 80 cities on six continents.
Brynne Herbert, founder and CEO of MOVE Guides, herself an American expat in London, says the experience of the team inside Notion – coming from MessageLabs and Workday – will “bring exactly the expertise that we now need to accelerate growth.”
In addition to Notion Capital and NEA, a number of angels also participated, including serial entrepreneur and investor Sherry Coutu CBE (SV2UK), Tom Hulme (IDEO), Sean Park (Anthemis Group), Dale Murray CBE (Omega Logic) and Kevin Eyres (LinkedIn).
Jos White, partner at Notion Capital, which is focused on enterprise startups, says MOVE Guides “takes advantage of three of the biggest trends in the technology industry — cloud computing, mobile and internationalisation” and has potential to disrupt the industry “and build a very big business.” Patrick Chung, Partner at NEA, calls MOVE Guides “a next-generation relocation service.”
MOVE Guides was borne out of Herbert’s own issues moving internationally as an expat investment banker and founded during her MBA at London Business School.
TechStars has a competitor in the shape of Moveline which does domestic removals in the US. Cartus, a ‘traditional’ relocation management companies like (owned by Realogy with Century 21 and Coldwell Banker), is a public company.