Prelude, a rapidly growing recruiting operations platform created to create an effective and delightful hiring process, has been acquired by Calendly, the modern scheduling tool for high-performing teams and individuals. This is Calendly's first acquisition.
Before the deal, Prelude had only raised $2.4 million from investors, including Sam and Jack Altman, Fuel Capital, Elad Gil, and others. It previously went by the less cryptic name "Interview Schedule." Although the deal's financial details are not being made public, Prelude claims to have "hundreds" of clients, including One Media, Duolingo, Cloudflare, and Samsara.
The acquisition sheds light on some interesting trends and developments.
With this acquisition, hiring managers and recruiting teams will be able to schedule better interviews for both candidates and interviewers, which will ultimately help the best SMB and enterprise businesses meet their talent acquisition objectives. With the addition of Prelude, Calendly can move more quickly toward its goal of becoming the one-stop shop for external scheduling for business teams and organizations.
Tope Awotona, the founder and CEO of Calendly, claimed that the company has been shifting its focus in recent years away from individual customers and toward enterprise users. As a result, the company is currently in the process of expanding its product line.
According to Awotona, this might be the company's first acquisition and effort to create features that appeal to a particular use case, but it is not likely to be the last.
This does not mean that Calendly is going on an acquisition spree, according to Awotona, who also noted that some features would be developed in-house. He said it made sense to take up Prelude and eventually merge the automation software into Calendly because the software was created as a full package by the company and its people, making it far more difficult and time-consuming to duplicate.
Prelude's decision to sell itself is part of a larger corporate software industry consolidation trend. In software, the distinction between features and platforms is frequently made. While features may be necessary or desirable, they may ultimately find their positions precarious or weakened if competing services combine them with other features or if they are too dependent on too many other services to function as intended.
Prelude will be used for its enterprise clients, which already utilize Calendly's single scheduling platform for several departments. By altering how businesses approach their hiring tactics, a more profound interview scheduling solution that interfaces with applicant tracking systems (ATS) would eliminate the friction within the candidate experience. Modernizing all candidate touchpoints—from communications and preparation to scheduling and logistics to interviewing—is also a part of this.
About Calendly
Calendly removes the back and forth with scheduling, assisting individuals, teams, and organizations in automating the meeting lifecycle. By integrating with essential tools to automate scheduling procedures, Calendly's cloud-based platform adds a new layer to the current digital technology stack. This layer also improves customer satisfaction and delivers meaningful, quantifiable data to help businesses achieve better results. Today, Calendly is used by over 10 million users in 116 countries to streamline meetings, improve teamwork, and advance business.
About Prelude
Prelude is a platform for interview schedules that streamline the hiring process. It streamlines the most laborious components of interview scheduling, freeing up resources to concentrate on top priorities. By connecting with their current systems and procedures, the platform gives recruiting coordinators a boost and puts an end to the dreadful game of Calendar Tetris. The business was established in 2017 and had its main office in San Francisco, California.
