Written by Alex Bredeen
BT invests £30 million into Fuel Ventures portfolio company Distributed
An enormous announcement coming out of Fuel Ventures portfolio company Distributed today. BT announces a £30 million strategic investment and partnership with Distributed, a start-up providing on-demand Elastic Teams™️ to its customers. The elastic workforce model allows BT to accelerate its plans for digital transformation by rapidly bringing together distributed product and development teams, enabling it to build high-quality software faster and more efficiently.
The Distributed investment, which is the first of its kind for BT, secures a board seat and a stake in the business. BT has committed £10 million of this investment up front for work delivered over two years, but is forecast to invest £30 million over a three-year period.
For BT to provide high-quality products and services to its customers, a diverse pool of tech talent with a variety of skills is needed. With the number of advertised tech jobs 42% higher than pre-pandemic levels, finding the right people for the job has become more vital than ever. To be a company that can offer tech professionals the opportunity to work on transformational projects remotely and for varied durations is key to getting the best people on-board and accelerating delivery of BT’s ambitions.
Distributed’s Elastic Teams offer the ability to source and deploy highly skilled, globally dispersed tech talent at both scale and speed.
Harmeen Mehta, Chief Digital and Innovation Officer, BT Digital said “At BT, we want technologies like data, AI and cloud to change the way we live. We need to be innovative, fearless and customer obsessed to drive change. Our investment in cutting-edge start-ups like Distributed will help us extend our internal pool of talent, accelerate our transformation and allow us to champion disruptive companies re-thinking the way we approach work”.
Mark Murphy, Director of HR, Technology Units at BT will be taking the board seat at Distributed with Meg Blight, Start-Up Growth Director at BT joining as an observer. Mark said, “We’re excited to be working so closely with Distributed; their unique platform offering of an elastic workforce to create products of the future is closely aligned with our mission of building an agile and innovative digital company. People and culture are two of the most important things to us when it comes to growth and this partnership creates another avenue for us to attract great talent.”
Callum, CEO of Distributed stated: This partnership represents a huge milestone in the use of on-demand talent within the Enterprise and demonstrates BT’s strategic foresight and commitment to providing the very best outcomes for their customers. This partnership will allow BT to engage the very best talent the world has to offer and will supercharge our mission to deliver independent careers with more benefits than permanent employment through Distributed’s Elastic Team platform.