Freelance management app Lystable closes £8m Series A led by Valar Ventures

Freelance collaboration app Lystable has raised $10m (£8m) in Series A funding in a round led by US venture capital firm Valar Ventures.

New investors Glynn Capital and Wilmont Ventures also contributed, alongside existing investors SciFi VC (formerly HVF investments), Kindred Capital and Goldcrest Capital.

Lystable, founded in London in 2014 and now headquartered in San Francisco, allows employers to streamline their arrangements with freelancers by storing personnel profiles and assigning work on its app.

The investment brings the firm’s total funding to $25m (£20m) and will be used to launch a “major new product” later this year, as well expanding its team in the US, according to the firm’s founder and CEO Peter Johnston.

James Fitzgerald, founding partner of Valar Ventures, said Lystable’s streamlining service is “at the heart of a seismic shift in how people work”.

“The concept of having a single, full-time employer is increasingly a thing of the past,” he said. “As the freelancer economy grows, companies of all sizes need an efficient and streamlined way to manage their growing army of freelancers.”

Valar Ventures was co-founded by Peter Thiel, the prominent US businessman who also co-founded Paypal.

Lystable’s clients include Google, Airbnb, The Economist and The NY Daily News, it says.

Eric Scott, a SciFi VC partner who is joining Lystable’s board of directors, described the freelance economy as the “new normal”.

“Companies at the forefront of this trend are scrapping their spreadsheets and their antiquated Freelance Management Systems,” he said, “and opting for Lystable’s freelancer collaboration app to do the job, because it’s so much more efficient and easier to use.”