Bristol, England-based tech startup Deazy hires ex-Zoopla exec Chris Dawson to grow its developer marketplace platform

Deazy, a Bristol, England-based marketplace platform for developers, today announced the appointment of Chris Dawson as its new Chief Product Officer (CPO) to support the ambitious growth plans the company has for 2022 and beyond. The announcement follows a recent £5million ($6.8million) Series A funding round led by Puma Private Equity.

Dawson joins Deazy from real estate company Zoopla, where he was Head of Product. He has worked in tech since 1998, gaining extensive experience in product roles, working on B2C and B2B solutions in travel, fintech, e-commerce, entertainment, and more, for organizations including the BBC, GSK, John Lewis, and Expedia.

“Any enterprise knows there are major challenges with capacity and capability, and Deazy is perfectly positioned to help them meet those challenges,” said Chris Dawson, CPO, Deazy. “It looked to me like a wonderful opportunity. The intersection of industries – agencies, marketplaces, platforms – in which I have worked extensively make it a great fit.”

Deazy connects enterprises, VC-backed scale-ups, and Europe’s biggest agencies with high-quality development teams handpicked to provide broad technical expertise and greater capacity and flexibility.
It has experienced rapid growth over the past two years, and Dawson’s role at Deazy will involve putting in place the product frameworks to ready it for further growth, particularly with the enterprise market. He is aiming to grow and build the Deazy proposition, make it even more appealing to customers and serve a wider range of industries and geographies than it is currently.

“When it comes to improving a product and instilling a focus on products within an organization, Chris is one of the best in the business,” said Andy Peddar, CEO, Deazy. “His track record at companies such as Zoopla, Expedia, and the BBC make him ideally suited to Deazy as we complete our transition to a platform-based business. We have a massive window of opportunity for growth over the coming years, and Chris is the ideal CPO to ensure our platform can support and manage that growth.”

Deazy is about to complete its transition to enable a platform-based experience. Once complete, every interaction will be managed via the Deazy platform, delivering greater efficiency and scalability.

“I want to grow our product team significantly, implement greater product structure and ensure the adoption of our product increases exponentially,” continued Chris Dawson, Deazy. “Nearshore development services mostly cater to the freelance market, but we believe using development teams offers better capacity, greater technical expertise and more flexibility. The gig economy can be detrimental to overall quality and growth and provide less investment in companies, so our platform is also better for local economies.”

Deazy recently closed a Series A funding round of £5million ($6.8million) through investment from Puma Private Equity. It plans to use this funding to scale its commercial teams to accelerate growth, double down on its platform vision and further build out its development teams.

Founded in 2018 by Andy Peddar, Deazy connects companies to software developers. In 2021 alone, Deazy grew by 2.5-fold amid increasing demand for developers globally following the pandemic.