After nearly two decades building toy giant Zuru, Anna Mowbray is betting AI can disrupt recruitment. Her startup Zeil is now targeting Australia as the first step in a global expansion.
Anna Mowbray, co-founder of toy giant Zuru, has founded an AI-powered recruitment platform she hopes will rival recruitment giants Seek and LinkedIn.
Zuru may not be a household name, but the toy company has helped make the Mowbrays New Zealand’s wealthiest family, with their fortune estimated at NZ$20 billion. Anna Mowbray spent nearly 20 years building the company, much of that time as COO. Three years ago, however, she stepped down from the enterprise.
Since then she has been making an unusual transition – from a titan of toys to tech startup founder.
Challenging the ‘big dogs’
Mowbray has been working to build Zeil, an AI-powered platform for job seekers and recruiters that she hopes can rival Seek and, eventually, global champions like Indeed and LinkedIn.
“These big dogs have done this for so long, they’re not investing into R&D, they’ve really just got this network effect of candidates which they’ve been relying on to hold their position,” Mowbray said. “Insurgents are always looking at how they can innovate… so for me, how do I do something wildly different that’s a little bit provocative?”
So far, Mowbray has funded Zeil herself, with no venture capital investors. Mowbray does not discuss the terms under which she exited Zuru, but the National Business Review reports she is the wealthiest woman living in New Zealand. (Airwallex co-founder Lucy Liu actually tops the list, though she hasn’t lived in the country since moving to Melbourne to study commerce at university.)
Zeil’s first product, Job Seeker, is what Mowbray describes as the “Tinder for jobs”. Users upload their CV and are served relevant job ads, swiping right to apply. The platform will remain focused on New Zealand.
Taking Zeil global
For its expansion into Australia and other markets, Zeil is betting instead on TalentSeeker, its AI-powered recruitment tool.
Recruiters specify the role and skills they are looking for, and the platform searches for suitable candidates and produces a shortlist of matches.
“Marketplaces are a slow burn, they take a lot longer to build because you’re heavily reliant on building that network effect,” Mowbray said. “That’s what we’ve been able to build now in New Zealand, but three years for me is far too slow.
“TalentSeeker’s actually got that global applicability. There is no way that we can’t scale that rapidly on a global basis.”
Keyword stuffing on CVs
Recruitment has become distorted by candidates gaming the process by cramming their CVs with relevant keywords, Mowbray contends. Her bet is that TalentSeeker can surface candidates with relevant skills and experience using AI rather than relying on resumes with the right keywords.
Mowbray says TalentSeeker has 800 million profiles to sift through when shortlisting candidates for recruiters. Zeil combines data from its own user base with those supplied by partners, like New Zealand Shores, and aggregated public data.
Zeil says Job Seeker has over 100,000 unique monthly users, with around 200,000 jobs listed by over 18,000 organisations. TalentSeeker, Mowbray said, has been used by over 300 organisations, with searches growing 30 per cent month on month.
Mowbray would not say how much money she’s put into the business, but said it has roughly 25 staff and that she’s not “completely anti” VC funding.
“In the next five years I’d love to be in at least 10 markets,” she said. “One of my goals is to build another unicorn from New Zealand with New Zealand talent.”
Sucker for punishment
Nick and Mat Mowbray moved to China to start Zuru in 2003, with Anna joining in 2005 – though she would eventually earn the title of co-founder alongside her role as COO. Anna lived in China for more than 15 years during her time leading the company, returning to New Zealand in 2020.
Outside of Zeil, she has become heavily involved in sports, becoming a co-owner in Auckland FC and striking a preliminary deal in September to privatise New Zealand’s elite netball competition.
“I’m a sucker for punishment, I actually just love the energy of building,” Mowbray said of her decision to step away from Zuru. “My growth had almost stagnated a little bit. Part of the reason that I then chose to go into tech is it was probably my greatest weakness.”
“We built this organisation that was based around consumer goods and physical products, and I’d never had to really get under the hood on the technical side. It was a really interesting transition for me to choose something that was such an unknown. I just wanted to stretch my growth.”
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