1.7 million euros for the LinkedIn of craft businesses

The Berlin start-up Electry becomes Power Us and raises 1.7 million euros in a financing round.

A LinkedIn for professionals is how founder Julian Lindinger describes his vision for the Electry platform. The Berlin start-up is now not only getting a new name - Power Us - but also 1.7 million euros in a financing round, as reported by Handelsblatt . Investors include the incubator Y Combinator from the USA, which Power Us joined back in 2019. Other investors include HV Capital and business angels such as Maximilian Viessmann from the group of the same name and Neal O'Mara from Dropbox as well as the founders of Flixbus and Personio.

Power Us has a database of 20,000 specialists that companies can access for a monthly fee. The start-up wants to use the investors' money to attract both new companies and new specialists. Maximilian Viessmann sees a gap in the market into which Power Us fits: "We know from our more than 30,000 partner craft businesses that the biggest obstacle to growth is the lack of skilled personnel." A first step would be to know where to look for the right skilled workers. With Power Us, Viessmann wants to "make the skilled trades attractive again".

The start-up currently has 14 employees; the founders do not disclose turnover and profit figures. Power Us also wants to support skilled workers in the next steps of their career and "increase transparency on the market so that employees know what is fair and whether they have a better chance," says Lindinger.