LabLabee announced its $3.4m seed round led by Reach Capital, with strategic participation from Cedric Sellin (BA), Mohammed Husamaddin (BA), Classera, e& capital and Brighteye.
Samir, Mahfoud and the rest of the team are building an online platform for hands-on training in telecom networks to help new and experienced engineers acquire and hone operational skills for new technologies like 5G, IoT, cloud computing, amongst others. By helping engineers acquire new skills and upskill in a much more efficient, cheaper, and engaging way, we firmly believe that LabLabee can transform the telco training space.
Initially, we got excited not only because of the passion and expertise that is so evident in Samir and Mahfoud but also because we realised that they are disrupting a market that "nobody is paying attention to". Telco is the foundation that allows the world to connect and share information and it is a space that is undergoing massive transformation. Per Capgemini, the average telco operator will be spending $1b over the next 5 years on the transition to the cloud and ~12% of that is allocated for investment in workforce and change management.
Samir and Mahfoud are the perfect example of the types of founders and companies that we love to back at Brighteye: humble experts in their field operating in an underserved and under-appreciated industry. On top of that, experience with another of our portfolio companies, Hack The Box, taught us valuable lessons, particularly on the true power of verticalized virtual training labs to accelerate learning outcomes. We saw a similar potential in LabLabee when we first met Samir and Mahfoud in the summer of 2022. We built conviction in a heartbeat quickly and we were pleased to lead their pre-seed round. We were lucky to do the round with our friends at Kima (@Alexis) and e& capital. Since then, the team has built a great MVP that has been deployed and that is being used by a few thousands of engineers at Orange Group, Deutsche Telekom, Ooredoo, Axian Group, and others.
Today we're excited and genuinely happy to be welcoming our old friends from Reach Capital (@Enzo and @Esteban) for this new phase of growth. They are bringing extremely valuable knowledge and experience that will help us achieve several key milestones such as establishing a leadership position in the EMEA market, accelerating our expansion into the US market, and broadening our product portfolio with new hands-on training labs including VMware, Red Hat, and Wind River.
Visit LabLabee and read PR releases (Light Reading, CRN & TFN) to learn more about them.
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