Bizimply was founded in 2014 by Gerard Forde and Norman Hewson with a simple mission: get managers back out on the shop floor instead of stuck behind a laptop. After running the Nude café chain in Dublin, they had seen just how messy scheduling, timesheets and day to day operations could get.
They knew there had to be a better way.
Their first products were the Bizimply Time Station for clocking in and out and a basic scheduling tool that quickly grabbed the attention of hospitality and retail teams.
They also attracted some well known early backers, including Bono from U2 and legendary tech entrepreneur Ray Nolan, who both believed in what the team was building.
Not long after launching, Bizimply picked up the prestigious Web Summit Award and suddenly the company was on the map. By the end of 2015 the Dublin team had grown to ten people all focused on making life easier for frontline businesses.
Things really started to heat up in 2016. Riding the buzz from our Web Summit win, we closed our Series A with Causeway Capital and 500 Startups, giving us the fuel to properly kick on and build out the team. We opened a development office in Krakow, and that crew quickly became a huge part of our growth story.
Around the same time, we began expanding in the UK, bringing on brilliant brands like Costa Coffee. Tech veteran Conor Shaw joined us as CEO to help shape the next chapter, and by the end of 2017 we’d grown to more than thirty people.
The next few years were really exciting. We opened offices in the UK and Poland, and the team grew to more than fifty people.
We also rolled out some brilliant new products on the Bizimply platform, including our Bizimply HR offering, which has since become a huge part of how customers use Bizimply day to day.
2020 started well and then suddenly Covid hit, and overnight restaurants and retail stores across the UK and Ireland were forced into prolonged closures. It was scary for us, this was the bread and butter of our business. We held our breath, prayed a little, and hung in there with our customers. Our Customer Success team was incredible, helping people navigate those choppy waters.
And then, almost as quickly, the world seemed to move on. Bizimply came out the other side stronger than ever, especially as customers started adopting technology faster than at any point before.
The next few years were really exciting. We passed 100,000 employees on the platform, opened another office in Cairo, and introduced some brilliant new products like Bizimply Connect.
So here we are today, more than sixty people on the team, thousands of happy customers, and genuinely excited for the future. We’re now stepping into the new world of AI, and Bizimply has jumped in with both feet.
The possibilities are incredible, from forecasting staffing needs using our data, to helping companies surface trends across every corner of their HR and operations.
We’re buzzing for what’s ahead, and with Emily Kane joining as CTO this year, we’ve got the vision and the leadership to push things forward in a big way.
Our leadership team is passionate about people, building great products, and making a real difference to how frontline teams work every day.
