Flare hires former Birchbox CTO Liz Crawford to grow out tech and product teams

Sydney-based HR startup Flare has made two key hires, appointing former Birchbox CTO Liz Crawford as CTO and Jim Matheson, former vice president of marketing and growth at hipages, as CMO.

The appointments follow the startup’s closing of a $21 million Series B round in August. Founded in 2015 by Colin Mierowsky, Daniel Cohen, Jan Pacas, Saul Kaplan, and James Windon, Flare has created an all-in-one human resources platform, assisting businesses with everything from onboarding to payroll through to providing employee benefits.

Crawford is returning to Australia after more than a decade in the US, where she cofounded two startups, completed a PhD specialising in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University, and spent more than five years as chief technology officer at subscription box company Birchbox.

Here, Crawford built the company’s engineering, product, and data science functions, growing the product development team from zero to 60 staff, and oversaw the scaling of the Birchbox product and technology from supporting a couple of thousand subscribers to more than a million across six countries.

Crawford said she was attracted to the role at Flare because of the product and the people.

“Having a platform like Flare is incredibly helpful in a startup. One of the things Flare does is make management easier, and this frees up time to concentrate on building your business and team,” she said.

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