The Purpose of Organisations: Mentessa Selected as One of Five Finalists for Unleash World Startup Award

• Mentessa, the platform that connects organizations for learning and collaboration based on skills, has been chosen as one of five finalists for Unleash World Startup Award
• The female-led startup Mentessa will be attending the world’s most influential Human Resources Conference in Paris from 12-13 October
• Mentessa closed a 1M€ seed round led by Eleven Ventures earlier this year and has recently been endorsed by NASDAQ for creating equal opportunities for everyone in the workplace
• Mentessa bootstrapped its first year on the market, posting significant traction with public companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Linde, and OTPbank.
• Building on its traction, the European start-up is planning its international expansion to the US market with a SaaS Business model

MUNICH, 12th October 2022

Mentessa, the platform that connects organizations for learning and collaboration based on skills, has been chosen as one of five finalists for Unleash World Startup Award. The female-led startup Mentessa will be attending the world’s most influential Human Resources Conference in Paris from 12-13 October.

The Munich-based startup is rethinking organisations from teams and tasks towards networks of people with talents, flipping the paradigm of collaboration – from process to purpose, and from “one-to-many” communication to peer-to-peer exchange. On its mission to remove barriers to diversity and collaboration for everyone in the workplace, Mentessa takes a unique approach to social, without media: building a community with no content, ensuring authentic data, and inclusive collaboration across organizational boundaries.

Founded in 2019 by Tina Ruseva and Andrey Andreev, the German start-up closed its first VC round in February, raising 1M€ from Eleven Ventures. Next to media mentions in influential regional publications like the New Work Stories Podcast by XING, deutsche-startups.de or Startup Valley, the startup has been endorsed by NASDAQ for creating equal opportunities in the workplace.

After securing a number of customers such as Deutsche Telekom, Linde, or OTPbank, spanning across several countries, the European startup is planning its international expansion to the US market with a SaaS Business model. More than 5000 people use Mentessa in different organizations and communities to find a mentor, advance their career, or share their experience.

Tina Ruseva, CEO and Founder at Mentessa, said, “Work is really not about checking boxes, running processes, or climbing the hierarchy ladder. The purpose of organizations is to bring people together so they can solve meaningful problems, better and faster, learn from each other, grow, innovate, and create new opportunities.”

Andrey Andreev, CTO and Co-founder, said, “Today’s organization requires every skill, every strength, every experience. As innovation happens at the intersection of different disciplines, removing information silos and barriers to collaboration are the only way to tap into the collective intelligence of the most intelligent species on Earth – us, and solve the global challenges ahead.”

About Mentessa 

Mentessa is a software company based in Munich on the mission to remove barriers to diversity and collaboration for everyone in the workplace. Founded in 2019, in 2020 the company launched a new kind of platform empowering people at work to find & share skills with their community, rather than simply communicating with each other. Taking on Slack as a market leader for decentralized collaboration, the diverse team of the female-led company is committed to creating a new way of people collaboration – inclusive, purpose-driven, and sustainable: “Where the future works”. In 2021 Mentessa was endorsed by NASDAQ for supporting the SDG agenda and creating equal opportunities for everyone in the workplace.

About Unleash World Startup Award

UNLEASH World Startup Award provides cutting-edge companies with the opportunity to showcase in front of a 4000-strong HR audience with upwards of €12 billion of combined visitor budgets for HR, learning and recruitment technology. The top startups are determined in a digital competition across each of four major content areas: HR Tech & Transformation, Talent & Recruitment, Learning and Skills, and Work Zen (EX, Culture, Wellbeing). The highest-rated finalists from each competition will compete live on the Influencers Stage in Paris on October 12th. The winner will receive a package worth €150,000 and investment by Startup Award partner, Acadian Ventures.