Highlights

• Selected for a €500,000 government grant from the Research and Innovation Foundation Cyprus, adding major runway at zero cost to investors.

• Generated €85k in revenue and completed 180 verified placements since launch, proving clear product-market fit in hospitality.

• Built a talent pool of 11,500+ pre-screened candidates and onboarded 90+ business locations, including Ocean Basket, Columbia Restaurants, and Thanos Hotels.

• Transitioned to recurring subscription revenue in January 2026, with annual, quarterly, and enterprise contracts already secured.

• Led by founders combining a proven 8-figure exit (Bolt franchise shareholder) with senior engineering and leadership roles including Arrival (unicorn) and Qogita (Series B).

Overview

The AI Hiring Agent for Hospitality and Beyond

You run a hotel at the start of peak season and you are short of waiters, two front-desk staff, and a sous chef. Your team has spent weeks posting vacancies, chasing agencies, screening CVs manually, and coordinating interviews. Half the applicants never show up. The ones who do are often unqualified. You are burning money on overtime, stretching your existing staff, and risking poor guest experiences at the worst possible time.

Cleedee exists to make that process obsolete.

Cleedee is a hospitality-native hiring platform that combines a two-sided marketplace, automation, and matching infrastructure into one end-to-end recruitment system. We help hospitality businesses source, screen, and match candidates in days rather than weeks, at a fraction of the cost of traditional agencies.

For independent restaurants, cafés, and boutique hotels, we offer an Automated Marketplace that delivers ready-to-hire shortlists of pre-screened candidates. For hotel groups and restaurant chains, we provide a dedicated Enterprise Applicant Tracking System (ATS) built for high-volume hospitality hiring.

Since launching in Cyprus in January 2025, we have onboarded 90+ business locations, built a talent pool of 11,500+ candidates, and completed 180 verified placements. Clients include Ocean Basket, Thanos Hotels, and Columbia Restaurants. In January 2026, we transitioned to a recurring subscription model and have already secured annual, quarterly, and enterprise contracts.

The Problem

Hospitality Hiring is Broken, Manual, and Expensive

Hospitality managers spend up to 15% of their working time acting as recruiters. They're not just filtering CVs. They're posting on job boards, chasing no-shows, covering double shifts because positions stay unfilled, and losing revenue every day a role stays open.

The alternatives don't solve the problem. Traditional recruitment agencies are slow and expensive. Job boards flood inboxes with unqualified applications and no screening. Generic applicant tracking systems are built for white-collar hiring and ignore the specific needs of hospitality.

On the other side, job seekers are equally frustrated. They apply blindly without knowing the salary, the culture, or even whether the role is still open. Fragmented sourcing through scattered online listings exposes them to scams, poor transparency, and mismatched expectations.

The result is a chronically understaffed industry losing revenue to a problem that technology should have solved years ago.

Hospitality spends billions on recruitment every year. Most of it is wasted.

The Solution

An End-to-End Recruitment Platform

Cleedee unifies hospitality recruitment in a single end-to-end platform built for high-volume hiring. Its core engine automates the full recruitment workflow, from job posting and candidate sourcing to screening, matching, communication, interviews, and offers, helping businesses hire faster and more efficiently. Built on proprietary data and hospitality-specific workflows, Cleedee replaces fragmented tools with one system designed to scale.

For SMEs, we offer an Automated Marketplace. We source and screen candidates instantly, delivering a curated shortlist so owners can hire faster without the hassle of chasing applicants or coordinating interviews.

For Enterprises, we deliver a hospitality-specific, self-service ATS alongside our candidate pool. A dedicated system licensed to larger organisations that uses our matching and automation engine to streamline vetting workflows and internal communication, allowing HR teams to manage thousands of applicants efficiently across multiple brands and locations.

For candidates, we bring transparency to a chaotic job market. Job seekers see real salaries, tips, working conditions, and whether a role is still open, details that job boards almost never disclose. They apply once, get matched to relevant opportunities, and stay informed at every step of the application process.

How it Works

Cleedee powers hospitality hiring through a single workflow that takes businesses from candidate sourcing to offer, with delivery tailored to both SMEs and enterprise operators.

1. Smart Candidate Sourcing

Candidates enter through targeted campaigns and Cleedee’s jobseeker app. After completing a conversational screening flow, they are matched to relevant roles and can apply directly in the app.

2. Job Creation and Applicant Intake

Businesses manage hiring through Cleedee’s business portal using hospitality-specific workflows. SMEs create transparent job openings with key details. Large enterprise clients can also direct applicants from their own channels into branded career pages and screening flows.

3. Intelligent Matching and Recommendations

Cleedee matches candidates to roles based on their profile, job requirements, and key factors like skills, availability and location, helping businesses focus on the best-fit applicants. The system also improves over time through hiring outcomes and candidate behaviour.

4. Candidate Management, Interviews, and Offers

Businesses receive shortlisted, pre-screened candidates in one central workspace. Teams can manage hiring stages, coordinate interviews, and send digital offers, while enterprise clients can handle hiring across departments and locations at scale.

One engine. Two products. Every hospitality business from the corner cafe to the hotel chain.

Market Opportunity

A €3.1B European Problem

The European hospitality recruitment market represents a €3.1B+ opportunity, driven by high turnover, seasonal demand spikes, and continued reliance on manual, outdated hiring methods.

Pilot Markets (Cyprus, Greece, Austria)

• TAM: ~€440M (≈147,000 hospitality venues × ~€2,980 blended annual recruitment spend across agencies, job boards, and HR tools)

• SAM: ~€92M (≈31,000 establishments with 10+ employees and recurring hiring needs)

• SOM: €2.85M (960 accounts × €2,980 annually, representing ~3% of SAM)

These markets are highly seasonal but complementary. Cyprus and Greece peak in summer, while Austria peaks in winter, creating year-round demand. Early data shows strong overlap, with workers moving between these markets across seasons. Cleedee can serve the same talent pool across regions, building a cross-border circulation network that strengthens supply and matching over time.

Phase 2 expands into major tourism economies with opposite seasonality, including Spain, Portugal, and Italy. This increases the SAM to €240M+ across 80,000+ businesses, while further reinforcing cross-market talent mobility across Southern and Central Europe.

Hospitality workers share strong overlap with retail roles, creating a natural path to expand into adjacent verticals and significantly increase total market size.

Business Model

How We Make Money

Cleedee operates a dual-revenue model built around two distinct products, each serving a different customer segment.

Recruitment-as-a-Service (Marketplace)

Independent restaurants, cafés, and boutique hotels pay through flexible access packages (monthly, quarterly, or annual) to tap into our pre-screened candidate pool. This gives SMEs instant access to pre-screened talent without complex contracts or agency fees.

Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): ~€220/month

Enterprise SaaS (Subscription)

Hotel groups and restaurant chains pay a recurring annual subscription fee for our full ATS platform. This includes branded career portals, automated vetting workflows, internal communication tools, and access to our candidate pool.

Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): ~€650/month

Across both segments, we target a blended ARPA of ~€2,980 per year, reflecting an SME-heavy customer mix with higher-value enterprise contracts.

Traction and Achievements

90 business locations. 180 hires. Time to hire sliced from weeks to days.

Proven Product-Market Fit in Year 1

Since our soft launch in January 2025, Cleedee has generated €85k in total revenue and built a commercially active platform in the Cyprus hospitality market.

• 90+ business locations onboarded

• 11,500+ pre-screened candidates in our talent pool

• 1,230 algorithmic matches processed

• 180 verified placements completed

In January 2026, we began transitioning new and existing businesses to upfront subscription packages.

In Q1 of 2026, we have secured:

• 3 annual access packs at €1,800 each

• 4 quarterly access packs at €800 each

• 10+ monthly access packs at ~€240 each

• 1 Enterprise Lite contract with a Medium sized hospitality group (120+ employees) valued at €5,000/year

• Extra 20 placements equivalent to €9,000 as part of the old success fee model

Cleedee is also a certified innovative company and licensed recruitment agency, and has been selected for €500,000 in equity-free funding from the Research and Innovation Foundation Cyprus.

Named clients include:

• Ocean Basket (31 Cleedee hires across 10+ locations in 11 months)

• Columbia Restaurants (9 Cleedee hires in the last 3 months)

With Cleedee, we have dramatically reduced our time-to-hire. We now connect with the right talent faster than ever.

Elena Demetriou - HR Manager - Ocean Basket

We no longer waste time sifting through irrelevant CVs. Cleedee’s technology handles the entire screening process for us.

George Koulas - HR Manager - Yonik Group

Cleedee’s quick responsiveness and candidate matching have been a game changer for our team at The Agora Hotel.

Kasper Schyberg - COO - The Agora Hotel

Cleedee gives us agency-level candidate screening, but much faster and far more cost-effectively.

George Chimonides - Owner - Salt & Fire, Cor Gastronomy, Biga Napoletana, o Tatas

Cleedee’s platform has automated the most time-consuming part of HR. Their advanced screening allows us to make immediate, highly targeted hires.

Pavlos Tsangarides - Operations Manager - The Beach House (2026 - New Opening)

Go-To-Market Strategy

How We Grow

Our acquisition strategy combines self-service and sales-led approaches tailored to each customer segment.

• Enterprise clients are acquired through a blend of inbound marketing and proactive sales outreach, targeting large seasonal hospitality groups with 60+ annual hires. We use targeted Meta and Google ads to warm the market before our sales team closes annual recurring contracts.

  • Estimated CAC: ≃€1,500

• SME clients, typically boutique hotels or independent restaurants with 10+ hires per season, are acquired through digital inbound marketing and performance campaigns. Onboarding and conversion are fully self-service. Collaborations with industry chefs, hospitality influencers, and university partnerships drive both brand awareness and candidate supply.

  • Estimated CAC: ≃€400

• Job seekers are acquired through organic content and targeted social media campaigns across Meta, Google, and TikTok, supported by EU-wide partnerships with universities and chef associations.

  • Cost per onboarded qualified candidate: €4

Our Strategic Flywheel

One of our most powerful growth mechanics is the "Land and Expand" loop. Enterprise clients are initially drawn to the platform by our marketplace of pre-screened candidates. Once onboarded, we upsell them to our full recruitment suite, providing an all-in-one talent solution. Candidates who aren't the right fit for a specific enterprise role remain active in our talent pool, growing the network for every business on the platform.

Competition

Bridging the Gap Between Expensive Agencies and Chaos

The hospitality recruitment market is fragmented across four categories, none of which deliver what Cleedee offers.

Traditional agencies (Adecco, Randstad, Morgan & Mallet) provide high-quality, manually vetted candidates but are slow, expensive, and limited by the number of human recruiters they can deploy.

Job boards (Indeed, Hosco, Hotelcareer) are low-cost but offer zero screening. Business owners are overwhelmed by unqualified applications and have no way to maintain an active talent pool.

Generic ATS platforms (Workable, Personio, Teamtailor) provide workflow tools but are designed for white-collar hiring. They don't offer their own candidate marketplace, require businesses to source their own traffic through integrated job boards, and charge expensive per-seat licence fees.

Cleedee combines the screening quality of an agency with the speed and scalability of technology, at a ~80% lower cost, with an active, pre-screened candidate pool built specifically for hospitality.

Why We Stand Out

Built Different from Day One

Experienced founders, commercial focus. Cleedee is led by founders with proven experience in scaling businesses and building complex technology, with a clear focus on solving a real hiring problem and generating revenue early.

Data-driven, proprietary infrastructure. Every candidate interaction, employer action, and hiring outcome strengthens Cleedee’s matching, workflows, and decision-making. This is powered by our own candidate pool, matching logic, and recruitment infrastructure, creating a defensible data advantage as we scale.

One platform, full hiring lifecycle. From candidate acquisition to digital offers, Cleedee replaces fragmented tools with a single platform built for high-volume hospitality hiring.

Niche-first, hospitality-native. By focusing on hospitality first, we have built workflows, data structures, and matching logic around its realities, including seasonality, shift patterns, multi-location operations, visa constraints, and speed.

Cross-border talent mobility. Our expansion strategy connects markets with opposite tourism seasons, enabling year-round talent circulation and strengthening platform liquidity as we scale.

The Team

We combine the commercial drive to scale a marketplace with the technical depth to build complex automation.

Michalis Georgiou, Co-Founder. Experienced operator and 8-figure exit entrepreneur (Bolt franchise shareholder) with over a decade of experience scaling tech-enabled businesses, including Bolt’s growth in Cyprus as a franchise partner and WE53, Europe’s first power bank sharing network in 2 markets.

Dr. Stavros Kasinos, Co-Founder. PhD in Computational Engineering and senior technical leader with experience across research and high-growth technology companies, including Arrival (unicorn) and Qogita (Series B scale-up).

They are supported by Andrea Demetriou (Account Manager, MBA in HR) and Maria Pagdati (Account Manager, Master’s in Hospitality), who strengthen the team with hands-on experience in HR operations, client relationships, and service excellence. As well as Marie Thomas (Legal, IP and Compliance, LL.B LL.M BPTC) overseeing our legal, IP, and compliance frameworks, ensuring Cleedee’s AI operations are fully protected and aligned with European regulations.

Financial Projections

Path to €10M ARR

We have a clear roadmap to scale from our current traction to significant recurring revenue.

• Pilot Phase (Months 1-15): Dominate Cyprus and soft-launch Greece with our SME and hybrid models. Target: €500K ARR.

• Phase 1 (Months 15-36): Expand Greece and launch Austria, leveraging counter-cyclical seasons and targeting 500+ business clients. Target: €2.9M ARR. Like most companies at this stage, this phase is expected to be funded through a subsequent Seed round.

• Phase 2 (Scale): Deploy the Enterprise ATS across Europe, targeting 300+ hotel and restaurant chains while serving 10,000+ SMEs. Target: €10M ARR.

Our tech-enabled model is designed to deliver gross margins exceeding 80% as we scale, consistent with best-in-class vertical SaaS businesses. The low marginal cost of serving additional clients through our AI screening engine means revenue scales significantly faster than headcount.

These are projections, not guarantees. Actual results may vary based on market conditions, execution, and other factors. The full financial model is available in the Documents tab.

The Ask and Use of Funds

Accelerating Product and Expansion

We are raising up to €300K (minimum €50K) at a €1.7M pre-money valuation and 1X liquidation preference through the issuance of investor shares to scale our technology, grow our team, and support our initial European expansion.

The funds will be allocated as follows:

• Sales and Marketing (51%): Hiring Sales Development Representatives, a Marketing Manager, and funding digital advertising campaigns for both B2B client acquisition and B2C candidate sourcing. Includes Account Manager time dedicated to client growth.

• Product Development and Engineering (24%): Expanding our engineering team across mobile and full-stack development to strengthen Cleedee’s core infrastructure, including our matching engine, screening workflows, and AI capabilities, as well as the finalisation of the Enterprise ATS and the launch of new platform modules.

• Platform Operations (14%): Account management, automated communications infrastructure (WhatsApp, SMS), hosting, processing fees, and AI infrastructure costs.

• General and Administrative (11%): Legal, accounting and audit, travel, and office expenses.

This round funds the consolidation of our Cyprus market and the initial expansion into Greece. Cleedee has also been selected for €500,000 in equity-free funding from the Research and Innovation Foundation Cyprus, accelerating our rollout into Austria and deepening our presence in Greece at zero cost to shareholders.

Exit Strategy

We envision multiple high-value exit scenarios driven by our unique position as the "execution layer" for hospitality recruitment. Cleedee is a natural acquisition target for companies looking to own the hiring layer for hospitality.

European Hospitality and Generic Job Boards. Platforms like Hosco, Hotelcareer, and Kariera.gr could acquire Cleedee to upgrade their business model from static listings to premium, verified placements with an active candidate pool.

Hospitality Tech and POS Providers. Companies like Mews, Cloudbeds, Lightspeed, and Toast represent a vertical integration path. These platforms serve thousands of hotels and restaurants and are actively looking to solve their clients' staffing pain points directly within their existing property management systems.

A recent comparable acquisition: Workday acquired Paradox.ai for $1B in June 2025, validating the strategic value of AI-powered hiring automation at scale.

While no exit can be guaranteed and timing will depend on market conditions and company performance, Cleedee is building a defensible platform with multiple plausible paths to investor returns.