Fritz Trott worked as a manager at Rocket Internet. In 2015 he joined Cihan Aksakal, who had founded kaufDA earlier, and Frederik Fahning to start Zenjob in Berlin. Aksakal and Fahning had met at the venture builder Atlantic Labs.
The idea was to make short-term shifts as easy to book as a cab. Staffing agencies were slow and paper-heavy, so Zenjob built an app that matched students and flexible workers with employers within hours.
A seed round of about €3 million in 2016 came from Redalpine, Acton Capital, 500 Startups and Atlantic Labs. A Series A of €8 million followed in 2017 from Acton and Redalpine. In 2018 AXA Venture Partners led a €15 million Series B.
Later came a $50 million growth round led by Aragon and a €45 million round to fund expansion. Zenjob has raised about €107 million in total. Revenue was about €60.4 million in the second pandemic year, a period when demand for temporary staff swung sharply.