Montréal-based temp staff management platform Workstaff has raised a $1.6-million CAD seed round to help fund its ongoing plans to expand in the US.
The round, which closed in March, was led by Normand Bélisle, the former president of Québecor Digital, with participation from the provincially funded Investissement Québec via their Impulsion PME program and Anges Québec. Workstaff was also a part of the latest cohort of Creative Destruction Lab, a startup mentorship program based at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, in the supply chain stream.
Workstaff CEO Nick Dauchez said in an interview with BetaKit that the funding will primarily be used to expand the Workstaff team and bolster its entrance into the $186-billion USD staffing and recruiting market, an effort that began last year.
“We’re coming for [Europe] soon.”
Nick Dauchez
CEO of Workstaff
Bélisle was Dauchez’s choice to lead the round because of his stature in the Québec community. Bélisle is on the board of directors of two charities: Centraide (known in English as the United Way), which works to alleviate poverty in Montréal, and Fondation Noël au printemps, a Québec-based charity that assists sick and disabled children. He was also instrumental in helping Dauchez “unblock” the rest of the round by assisting in bringing on Investissement Québec and Anges Québec. Bélisle is presently on Workstaff’s advisory board.
Dauchez said the company also has its eye on Europe. Workstaff already supports European currencies and has some clients in France and the United Kingdom (UK).
“We’re coming for them soon,” Dauchez said, adding that, for now, the seed funding will be primarily funnelled to the US.
Additionally, Dauchez said Workstaff wants to innovate on existing offerings by expanding on the marketplace dynamics of the platform to better serve the company’s three main stakeholders: clients, staffing agencies, and staff. Dauchez’s vision is to do this by enabling clients to be able to book staff across multiple different staffing agencies using the Workstaff platform.
Dauchez previously co-founded online advertising service Redux Media, which was acquired by TC Media in 2012.
Workstaff was established in 2019 and officially launched in 2022 by brothers Nick and Pascal Dauchez, together with David Marquis, to address temporary staffing challenges in Montréal and Toronto. The company’s platform currently helps staffing agencies co-ordinate, schedule, and pay temporary staff.
Dauchez told BetaKit that the company currently has over 45,000 temporary staff on its platform through the mobile app and shift-booking service. Two notable clients Dauchez highlighted were the Montreal Alouettes organization and the Québec City winter festival Carnaval de Québec.
Before enrolling in the Creative Destruction Lab, Workstaff was previously a part of the District 3 Innovation Hub hosted at Concordia University. Dauchez said both programs were helpful, but that the Creative Destruction Lab was more rigorous.
