FlairMakers raises £500k led by SFC Capital and Massimiliano Savarese
This article covers FlairMakers, an hrtech startup that has raised £500,000 in a pre-seed funding round to accelerate product and technology development and expand its network of venue partners in the UK. The funding aims to develop platform infrastructure to standardise training, compliance, contracting and payments, supporting hospitality venues and freelance professionals in the UK to access flexible, scalable staffing.
FlairMakers, an hrtech startup, has raised £500,000 in a pre-seed funding round to accelerate product and technology development and grow its network of venue partners in the UK. The platform connects hospitality businesses with vetted freelance professionals and aims to standardise the operational layers—training, compliance, contracting and payments—that currently limit flexible working in the sector.
Why it matters
Hospitality employs around 3.6 million people in the UK and sits alongside a broader shift toward freelance and portfolio careers. The Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed counts 2.046 million UK freelancers in the top three occupational skill groups, and surveys suggest 83% of hospitality employees value flexible hours even as only about a third of frontline employers offer that flexibility. Those gaps leave experienced hospitality professionals working informally through word of mouth and messaging apps rather than through systems designed to scale, which can constrain both worker choice and operational reliability for venues.
A platform that standardises identity checks, vetting, compliance and payments could make flexible staffing easier for larger operators while giving professionals the legal and financial infrastructure to stitch together multiple income streams.
Inside the product
FlairMakers markets itself as a talent-as-a-service platform for hospitality, matching venues with freelance staff from frontline roles to senior consultants. The company handles training, compliance, contracts, payments and quality control. It is already live in the UK and Romania and was named Hospitality, Tourism & Events StartUp of the Year at the 2026 London UK StartUp Awards.
The product narrative focuses on treating flexible hospitality work as an infrastructure problem rather than a pure matching problem: the aim is to let venues book vetted freelancers the same way they hire permanent staff, so a booking can carry the necessary legal and operational assurances.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by SFC Capital and included participation from angel investors, including existing backers of the company. The £500,000 will be used to develop the platform’s core infrastructure and expand FlairMakers’ venue footprint in the UK.
In the announcement, Adam Beveridge, Investor at SFC Capital, said:
The best pre-seed investments back shifts already underway, and hospitality's move to portfolio careers is exactly that. FlairMakers is the first team we've seen treating it as an infrastructure problem, not a staffing one. Raluca and Alexis have the right backgrounds to tackle this issue, and we look forward to being on the journey with them.
In the announcement, Massimiliano Savarese, Angel investor, said:
I've seen this shift in other industries throughout my career in human capital: true professionals moving to portfolio careers, businesses needing flexible access to vetted talent. Hospitality is next. Most platforms stop at matching; FlairMakers went further and built the full infrastructure: training, compliance, payments and quality to actually own it. That's why I backed them from day one.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
- Explore our list of hrtech venture capital firms in the UK
- Browse our directory of hrtech angel investors in the UK
Founder perspective
The founders position FlairMakers as solving the operational friction that prevents venues from hiring freelancers at scale.
In the announcement, Raluca Epureanu, Co-founder & CEO at FlairMakers, said:
Hospitality has always assumed there are two ways to work: employment or agencies. There is a third, and the industry's best professionals are already living it, the same sommelier working shifts across three venues, teaching wine-tasting classes and consulting on wine lists. One skill set, several income streams. Nobody built the system that makes that work, so it runs on WhatsApp groups and favours. We are building it. The industry keeps asking how to get people back. The answer is to stop asking them to fit a model they've already rejected.
In the announcement, Alexis Sikorsky, Co-founder & CTO at FlairMakers, said:
I have built infrastructure for a regulated industry before, and the lesson transfers. Nobody adopts flexible talent at scale until the boring parts are solved: identity, vetting, compliance, contracting, cross-border payment. A hotel group will not book a freelancer the way it hires a permanent employee until the platform carries that weight for them. This round funds exactly that layer, so a venue in London and a venue in Bucharest run on the same rails.
Epureanu brings 20 years’ hospitality experience across 30 countries and ran the regional events division for Marriott International in Asia Pacific, overseeing 750 hotels and a workforce of 175,000. Sikorsky is a serial entrepreneur who previously built and exited a banking software business in a nine-figure transaction and is the author of Cashing Out.
The bigger picture
FlairMakers’ approach sits at the intersection of the gig economy and HR infrastructure. The company is part of a broader wave of startups offering more regulated, platform-based ways for professionals to bundle work across employers while giving businesses reliable access to experienced talent. If the product delivers on compliance, payments and quality controls at scale, it could influence how hospitality operators schedule frontline staff and how seasoned professionals structure multi-venue careers.
For the UK and wider European ecosystem, the deal is a reminder that HR problems in labour-intensive sectors remain attractive opportunities for early-stage investment. The challenge will be translating pilot deployments and award recognition into margin-proof, operational products that hospitality buyers trust.
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