Deborah Gladney and Angela Muhwezi-Hall, two sisters who founded an innovative career development platform called QuickHire, have raised more than $1 million in funding for the startup. They are the first Black women in the state of Kansas to ever achieve this.

To be exact, the startup actually raised $1.41 million in a seed round led by MATH Venture Partners, which was also participated in by a number of venture capital firms. The duo said they particularly looked for investors who have shown support for minority and underserved founders.

Muhwezi-Hall, who previously worked as a career and educational advisor at Volunteers of America, first thought of the idea of creating a platform that would connect job seekers to blue-collar service industry jobs in 2017 when she saw how complicated the application system was.” People in the blue-collar industry have faced decades of neglect and career stifling and unfair pay,” Gladney told AfroTech

She and her sister then began looking for a solution to help non-college students in their career development. Ultimately in April 2021, they launched QuickHire which helps the service industry hire and retain workers while allowing job seekers to discover career opportunities that are suitable for them. Since then, the platform has been thriving, especially during the pandemic, with over 60 paying clients and nearly 12,000 job seekers.

“It took a global pandemic for everybody else to realize it when people didn’t want to leave their house or when they needed people to deliver their groceries. Blue-collar workers kept the wheels turning and made it even more clear these type of roles that are the backbone of this country,” Gladney continued.

Moreover, the new funding would help the company expand its reach nationwide and improve its technologies to gain larger clients.