Bristol specialist software firm Deazy, named as one of the UK’s fastest-growing tech businesses for the past two years, is poised for more rapid expansion after making a strategic acquisition.
The takeover of Geektastic adds technical assessments to its offering, giving it a powerful platform to demonstrate the skills and quality of its developer community to potential customers.
Launched in 2016 with a mission to make development easy, Deazy provides customisable, peer-reviewed technical assessments that generate deep insight to allow enterprises to quickly identify the best developers.
It works with enterprises such as the RAC to help address the problem of accelerating digital delivery by bringing the best global development talent to a challenge.
Last year it was ranked at number 40 in Deloitte’s 2023 UK Technology Fast 50 league table, having achieved revenue growth of 750% over the past four years.
It made its debut in the rankings the previous year when it landed in 13th slot following expansion of 2,615%.
Developers are selected from Deazy’s curated community of 85 global development partners and managed by their highly experienced, in-house product and delivery experts, who provide the support and resources to guarantee success.
London-based Geektastic is the only technical assessment platform to offer a fully managed human review process to provide deeper insights into candidates’ coding skills.
It uses a network of expert peer reviewers made up of 300 of the world’s greatest technical minds from companies such as Google, Amazon and Accenture.
Known as the Ubergeeks, they streamline assessment processes, reduce time to hire, free up valuable internal resources from the recruitment process and increase the likelihood of hiring the best developers.
Deazy CEO Andy Peddar said: “We’ve worked with Geektastic since 2022 and saw such positive returns that it made perfect sense to bring them into the Deazy family.
“We always aim to make digital delivery easier for our clients by giving them access to the best developers and full product delivery teams, and Geektastic helps us achieve that.
“We know how good our developers and teams are, but we can now be 100% transparent about that quality and communicate that to clients.”
He said the move meant Deazy could also now take ownership of vetting and quality within its community from a holistic perspective, vetting for code quality and soft skills, such as communication, cultural fit, and the ability to work in a team.
Geektastic’s customisable platform allows customers to build their code challenges and review guidelines integrated into their HR Platforms for streamlined recruitment.
Andy added: “Every single tech leader in an enterprise will be only too aware of the challenges in finding the right talent to deliver their product roadmaps and projects quickly and effectively.
“I have seen so many digital projects in the past struggle due to a poor cultural fit or a lack of soft skills in delivery teams, and that type of vetting will be an integral part of our proposition later in 2024.
“It’s a better customer experience and removes a potential barrier for people using Deazy’s services.”
As part of the acquisition, Geektastic co-founder and CEO Rick Brownlow joins Deazy as vetting and quality lead, bringing his experience, know-how and approach to the firm.
One of his primary objectives will be to integrate the measurement of soft skills and cultural fit into the assessments:
Rick said: “Our methodology and proposition are a wonderful fit with Deazy. Enterprises have an almost insatiable need for high-calibre experts in software engineering, machine learning AI and data engineering to complement the gaps in their teams, but some perceive working with external developers as risky.
“We remove that risk entirely and will be expanding the offering to include soft skills and cultural fit assessments later this year.”
Financial details of the acquisition have not been disclosed.
