Bulgarian startup Estel Technologies has secured €270K in pre-seed funding to expand its AI-native sales platform for the global tech staffing industry. The round was led by Vitosha Ventures, with participation from Austrian angel investor Kerem Basak, founder and CEO of FB Consulting.
The company is building an AI-powered platform designed to help tech staffing firms identify genuine hiring demand, prioritize high-potential sales opportunities, and reduce time spent on outdated or duplicate job listings. According to Estel, recruiters and staffing sales teams often rely on multiple disconnected tools, while a significant share of job openings become obsolete before outreach begins, creating billions in lost productivity across the industry.
Rethinking sales for the tech talent industry
Founded by Bogdan Stavrev, Ivo Michorov, and Yusuf Berki, Estel combines founders’ experience in staffing, workforce management, and AI. Stavrev previously served as VP of Digital Products at one of the world’s largest staffing organizations, while Michorov led Google’s global extended workforce program and Berki has spent 15 years developing AI and machine learning systems across HR tech, healthcare, and finance.
At the core of the platform is Estel’s proprietary Demand Confidence Score (DCS), which analyzes daily market signals to verify active hiring demand, rank opportunities, and match them with prospective buyers. The company says the platform is designed to replace the fragmented sales workflow with a single workspace covering demand verification, lead prioritization, and outreach.
“Tech staffing hasn’t had its Salesforce moment yet, everyone’s still stitching together tools and guessing which leads are real and worth their time. We built Estel because sales teams should spend their time selling and not wasting half their days in research,” said Bogdan Stavrev, CEO and co-founder of Estel Technologies.
The platform is already live across the UK, DACH region, Poland, and Bulgaria. Estel currently serves three enterprise customers and has reached €24K in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The startup plans to increase ARR twentyfold by mid-2027 while preparing for a seed funding round and expansion into the US market.
Among the investors is Kerem Basak, whose company FB Consulting was already using Estel before participating in the financing round.
“I used Estel before I invested in it. As someone who’s spent a decade in tech talent, I don’t say that lightly—most tools in this space overpromise. This one actually changed how my team works,” Basak said.
The newly raised capital will be used to further develop Estel’s demand verification, scoring, and matching algorithms, while accelerating customer acquisition across key European markets. According to Max Gurvits, partner at Vitosha Ventures, the investment reflects the founders’ deep understanding of the staffing industry and the market opportunity for AI-driven sales infrastructure.