LandBot, no-code chatbot builder for small business
Barcelona-based LandBot has developed a no-code software tool that lets small businesses build chatbots for their websites to improve the customer experience.  The software is an easy to use drag-and-drop style tool that could be a viable alternative for webforms from companies like TypeForm.
 
They have 2,200 customers worldwide, with 90% of the customers coming from outside the company’s HQ in Spain, and 50,000 users of its chatbot builder.  Things could get interesting if customers start using the ready made survey and forms templates for chatbots instead of webforms, but traditional competition is also there from other chatbot builders like ManyChat.

Landbot just did an $8 million Series A led by the Spanish-Israeli VC firm Swanlaab.
 
HiPeople, HR tech firm automating the reference check process
Berlin-based HiPeople offers a solution for automated reference checks to streamline that part of the hiring process.  They aspire to build this out into a candidate analytics platform to provide rich data and insights on each candidate for “data-driven” hiring with a $3M seed financing.
 
HiPeople says that by using their tool, companies get “verified, in-depth reference checks they can trust” and on average can collect 2x the amount of references in 50% of the time.  US-based Xref and Crosschq are direct competitors for automating reference checks.
 
Remote work has made finding the right people even harder.  HiPeople is billing its products as a way to enable better quality hiring decisions faster.

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