Meet The Org, a startup that maps out corporate power players. It just raised $8.5 million led by Sequoia Capital and is exploring news and job postings next.

• The Org, a startup that wants to map out companies' org charts, just nabbed $8.5 million in funding.
• The round was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Balderton and Founders Fund.
• As its database grows, The Org's co-founders Christian Wylonis and Andreas Jarbøl are focused on launching a premium offering for professional users like recruiters, salespeople, and journalists.
• The startup is also exploring job posting functionality and building out its news feed.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Corporate titles are vague — organizational charts even moreso.

The Org wants to draw it all out, and it just nabbed $8.5 million to grow its corporate structure database platform.

"If you go on LinkedIn, for example, and you search for Airbnb employees, you're going to get a list of like 20,000 people," Christian Wylonis, co-founder and CEO of The Org told Business Insider. 

"It's really hard to understand what role they have and how senior they are, and where they sit in the structure," Wylonis said.

Using publicly available information like press releases and company websites, as well as crowdsourced and self-reported titles, the startup can map out a company's leadership hierarchy from the CEO all the way down to junior employees.

The Org currently has 16,000 companies in the database. By the end of 2020, it hopes to have 100,000.

While the majority of The Org's data is currently sourced from automated feeds of publicly available information, the portion of data coming from users is growing, Wylonis said.

For the crowdsourced information, a user must register with a valid company email to place themselves and others on a company's chart.

Co-headquartered in New York and Copenhagen, The Org was founded by Wylonis and CTO Andreas Jarbøl. The Series A round was led by Sequoia Capital (Airbnb, Klarna, Stripe), with participation from Balderton (Depop, GoCardless, Revolut) and Founders Fund (Affirm, Palantir, Oscar).

An alternative to LinkedIn searching

The Org is free to use, and registration only requires a corporate email if a user wants to contribute to a company's chart. Otherwise, anyone can register and browse various org charts and related news feeds on the site.

In 2020, Wylonis is focused on launching a premium product aimed at recruiters, sales people, journalists, and other professional users. That's how The Org, which is currently pre-revenue, will make money, Wylonis said.

And while not all companies want their org charts distributed publicly, Wylonis said that there are certain benefits to The Org's platform versus one like LinkedIn, which is harder to verify and control.

"Of course there are a few companies, say Apple and bigger companies like that, that aren't super thrilled about their org chart being publicly available," Wylonis said. 

"But 99% of companies actually really like our concept because they get more control over their team information on The Org than they get on LinkedIn."

And the more reliable the data, the more valuable it is to recruiters and salespeople. 

"They're interested in understanding the decision-making hierarchy, and they're also interested in executive changes," said Wylonis.

A human resources software salesperson, for example, would be interested to know if a company hires a new head of HR, who may be looking for new software or systems.

Jobs, news, and a premium product

Beyond a premium product, Wylonis said, the startup is focused on two more product growth areas: jobs and news. 

"Jobs is clearly something that we're interested in doing, it's very natural," said Wylonis. The Org will be exploring ways for companies to post open positions for free on the site.

News, another focus area, would primarily cover executive changes across the startup landscape, especially those that wouldn't necessarily be covered by larger news organizations, Wylonis said.  

While The Org currently does have some news content, it's 2020 hiring will include more staff to create and monitor content.

SEE ALSO: Silicon Valley and Wall Street are betting you'll want to travel now, pay later. Here are 10 ways startups, banks, and airlines are tapping in to millennial wanderlust.

SEE ALSO: Here's how 44 insiders at powerful banks, buzzy startups, and big investors are thinking about financial innovation — and why the term 'fintech' may be on its last legs

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: WeWork went from a $47 billion valuation to a failed IPO. Here's how the company makes money.

Visit dearJulius.com to get free premium content for all of your lifestyle needs.