While most tech unicorns burn through investor cash, TFY (Transformify Ltd) built a $502 million workforce platform on pure profit and gives a chunk of it away.
In a startup world obsessed with funding rounds and valuations, Lilia Stoyanov did something almost unthinkable. She built a global technology company from scratch, never took a single dollar from venture capital, turned profitable in just three years, and then used those profits to give free software to charities and NGOs around the world.
That company is TFY (Transformify Ltd) globally, and it is now one of the UK’s most closely watched businesses on the path to unicorn status.
From a Simple Problem to a Global Platform
The origin story is not complicated, which is partly what makes it so powerful.
“The majority of the independent contractors are not accountants,” Stoyanov explained in a recent interview with the Daily Express. “They don’t have a finance background. They are developers, fashion models, janitors, etc. But as an independent contractor, you need to issue an invoice.”
That observation that millions of independent workers were being treated like businesses without any of the tools or support to operate like one became the founding logic of TFY. Since launching in London in 2015, the platform has grown into an all-in-one workforce management suite that helps companies hire, manage, and pay talent across 184 countries.
It is less a single app and more a suite of interconnected solutions. Companies can use TFY’s AI-powered Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to find the right talent, its Contractor-of-Record services to handle local compliance and contracts, and its built-in global contractor payroll infrastructure to pay anyone, anywhere, including in cryptocurrency. Pricing is usage-based, with no fixed fees, meaning businesses pay only for what they actually use.
The Numbers Are Hard to Ignore
Three years after launch, TFY turned profitable. It has stayed that way ever since.
Revenue grew from $6.8 million (€5.9M) in 2021 to $29.8 million (€25.9M) in 2024. That is more than a fourfold increase in three years, achieved with a team of fewer than 20 people. In some years, the company has posted 600% revenue and profit growth. In 2024 alone, profit grew by 90%.
That performance earned TFY a ranking of #284 on the Financial Times FT1000: Europe’s Fastest-Growing Companies 2026 and a spot among Tech Funding News’s list of the UK’s Next Unicorns, the ten businesses most likely to cross the £1 billion valuation mark. TFY is currently valued at $502 million according to Tech Funding News.
What makes those figures remarkable is the context. Every other company on that soonicorn list raised significant external capital, Series B rounds, private equity buyouts, and hundreds of millions in VC funding. TFY built the same trajectory without any of it.
The year-end recognition did not stop there. CEO Lilia Stoyanov was named AI Entrepreneur of the Year at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards, often called the “Grammys of Entrepreneurship.” TFY also took home the Technology Partner of the Year award at the British Recruitment Awards and was named one of the UK’s Fast Growth 50 companies.
What TFY Actually Does for Mid-Sized Businesses
For companies with 250 to 5,000 employees, managing an international contractor workforce is a persistent operational headache. Hiring in one country, compliance in another, payments in a third. Three platforms, three contracts, three sets of problems.
TFY collapses that complexity into a single platform.
As an Agent on Record (AOR) distinct from the Employer of Record model, which serves full-time employees, TFY steps in as the legal manager of independent contractor relationships. That means handling onboarding, local compliance, contracts, billing, and payments end-to-end. Contractors never need to know how to structure an invoice or navigate local tax obligations. TFY handles it.
Payments reach contractors across the globe through integrations with licensed payment providers worldwide. Critically for businesses operating in digital asset environments, TFY also supports cryptocurrency payments, enabled through its partnership with CoinsPaid, an enterprise crypto payment provider. Only seven countries globally fall outside the platform’s payment reach, as they are restricted as per international legislation.
For enterprise buyers, TFY integrates with existing HR, finance, and workforce management systems via OpenAPI, making it a complement to the tools already in place rather than a replacement.
“Our clients enjoy access to a global talent pool that offers flexibility, advanced skills and entrepreneurial mindsets,” Stoyanov told Sifted. “TFY fully automates onboarding, compliance, billing and payments.”
International investment firm Exante, which has partnered with TFY since 2020, put it simply: “Recruiting from the global talent pool can be tricky business with differing local labour laws and customs, but Transformify makes it a breeze to secure and retain top talent, which allows us to focus on our core business.”
The AI That Sees Beyond the Job Title
TFY’s Applicant Tracking System is not a standard CV filter. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, TFY received a grant from Innovate UK specifically to develop an AI algorithm built around a different problem: helping people understand which of their skills translate across industries.
When entire sectors collapsed overnight, workers with deep competencies in customer management, communication, logistics, operations were being overlooked because recruiters saw “flight attendant” or “hotel staff” and moved on. TFY’s AI was built to bridge that gap.
“It helps people to be seen and navigate their careers,” Stoyanov explained.
Importantly, the platform’s philosophy is one of inclusion rather than elimination. No candidates are ever filtered out. Instead, the AI identifies open roles that match a candidate’s transferable skills and prompts recruiters to consider them, turning a missed opportunity into a match.
The ATS also automates routine steps: pre-screening, shortlisting, communication workflows, and predictive hiring. It already integrates directly with ChatGPT and continues to evolve with AI capabilities at the core.
A Bootstrapped Unicorn Founded by a Woman
In a sector where female-founded companies receive a fraction of the venture capital that flows to male-led startups, TFY’s story carries an additional dimension.
Stoyanov did not just found a company that became a near-unicorn; she did it without the funding infrastructure that most founders of her scale had access to. She bootstrapped. She stayed profitable. So she scaled through a flat organisational structure, a performance-based 20% referral programme, and a team of independent contractors who are, by design, entrepreneurs themselves.
“Our hierarchy is almost flat; everyone on our team is encouraged to share any idea that comes to mind,” she told Sifted.
That model saved TFY millions in marketing costs while creating a team culture built on ownership and accountability. The people running the platform are also the people it was built to serve.
Giving Back Is Built Into the Business Model
Here is where TFY diverges from almost every technology company of its size and growth trajectory.
Rather than treating social responsibility as a communications exercise, TFY built it into how the platform works.
Through its “Give Back to Society” programme, TFY offers completely free access to the core functionality of its AI-powered ATS to charities, NGOs, and early-stage startups. No cost. No catch. The organisations that arguably need recruitment technology the most, those operating in sectors with declining donations, rising costs, and urgent hiring needs, get access to enterprise-grade tools at zero cost.
“I believe that profitable businesses should give back to society, as success brings joy and satisfaction only if it is shared,” Stoyanov told Charity Today.
The initiative also extends to early-stage tech startups in markets where funding is limited, but ambition is not. For a seed-stage company, having the right team is often the difference between survival and failure. TFY removes one of the barriers to building that team.
Beyond the ATS programme, TFY runs Rebuild Lives, which creates remote job opportunities in war zones and post-war communities, connecting displaced workers with global employers. Part of TFY’s own IT team has been based in Ukraine since before the war. This is not a CSR initiative designed for a press release. It is how the company thinks about what workforce management is actually for.
“A business needs to be more than money,” Stoyanov told the Daily Express.
Why Africa Is TFY’s Next Big Focus
TFY already operates across Africa in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, and beyond, but for Stoyanov, the continent is not a new market to enter. It is one the company identified at its founding and has been building toward ever since.
“I see Africa booming,” she said. “For two reasons: it is a young population, and increasingly it is a very well-educated population.”
The logic is grounded in real hiring patterns. A significant number of UK employers already hire contractors from Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa. Many UK universities have active alumni networks in those countries. Time zones align with British working hours. English is the working language. The demand was always there.
What TFY sees in Africa mirrors what companies like Stripe saw when they made early bets on the continent: a population growth trajectory unlike anywhere else in the world, a fintech-first financial culture, and a generation of talent that is globally competitive and increasingly accessible.
For founders across Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra, Stoyanov has a direct message: the playbook TFY used is repeatable. “If we can grow globally and be profitable in just three years, everyone else can follow.”
And with AI now cutting time-to-market by an estimated 70%, she believes founders in Africa have structural advantages today that TFY did not have in 2015.
The Bigger Picture
TFY is not the loudest company in the workforce technology space. It does not have a story built on funding announcements or high-profile acquisitions. What it has is a decade of disciplined execution, a product that solves a real problem for real businesses across 184 countries, a social mission funded by actual profits, and a founder who built a near-unicorn without ever needing to impress a VC.
For mid-sized companies and enterprises looking to hire, manage, and pay independent contractors across borders, including in crypto, TFY is the infrastructure that makes it simple.
For displaced workers in some of the world’s most difficult places, TFY is a connection to the global economy.
That is a rare combination. And it is only possible because the company decided, from the beginning, that growth without purpose was not growth worth having.
Transformify (TFY) operates in 184 countries and offers Contractor-of-Record services, AI-powered Applicant Tracking, and global payment solutions, including cryptocurrency. Free ATS access is available for qualifying NGOs, charities, and early-stage startups. Learn more at transformify.org
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ExploreLast updated: June 11, 2026
