Systema

QED Investors is an investment firm that supports high-growth companies and businesses. The firm typically provides a combination of both capital and capability. But common to all the firm's partnerships is a shared conviction that information plays a decisive role in the success of the company, a mutual desire for a high degree of direct engagement, and a shared enthusiasm for experimentation and learning.

QED Investors

Mouro Capital is a venture capital firm backing entrepreneurs who are shaping the future of financial services. With $400 million in assets under management and supported by Banco Santander, Mouro invests across the fintech value chain in early to growth stage start-ups across Europe, North America and Latin America.

Mouro Capital

Counterpart Ventures is a life cycle VC fund, focused on investing in authentic relationships and built on implicit trust with its founders. It invests in B2B SaaS, mobility, and marketplace technologies that target nontrivial problems or fill missing gaps in large markets.  The company was founded in 2018 and is based in San Francisco, California.

Counterpart Ventures

Davidovs Venture Collective is a VC firm based on a community of 99+ founders (including 4 active unicorn founders), operators, and angel investors. They are engineers with a lot of experience running startups and being value-added investors. DVC invests small entry checks from the rolling fund and follows up with bigger sums along the way. DVC pools together its collective network, expertise, and resources to help its portfolio companies. DVC's investment focus is quite broad, but DVC prefers partnering with experienced and repeat founders.

Davidovs Venture Collective

SystemaNova Funds Early-Stage Startups in the Climate, Fintech, and Healthtech Sectors.

Systema nova

Octopus Ventures is a venture capital firm that offers support to companies at various stages of their journey, from idea conception to IPO. They allocate over £200 million annually to invest in sectors such as health, fintech, deep tech, consumer, and B2B software, with a focus on making a positive impact. Their experienced team assists portfolio companies in scaling rapidly. Octopus Ventures' investment philosophy extends beyond monetary support, involving time, energy, and focus to work closely with founders for success. Notable companies they have backed include ManyPets, Cazoo, Depop, Elvie, and WaveOptics. Their operations span London and New York, with a network of partners in the U.S. and Asia.

Octopus Ventures

Remofirst

Remofirst is a platform to manage their international HR and help them to hire remote employees. They offer global payroll and compliance services for remote teams. They hire employees around the world without the hassle of setting up a local entity in every country.

<div>Remofirst is an employer of record (EOR) service provider that enables businesses to build remote teams in over 180 countries by providing onboarding, payroll, benefits, taxes, and local compliance services without the need to establish a local entity. Its EoR services can also aid businesses during M&amp;A activities, simplifying team onboarding once the transaction closes.The company also supports businesses with forming compensation plans, offering insurance (health, dental and vision), and handling equity and bonus payments.&nbsp;</div>

Distributed workforces require new solutions for office operations, HR, payment, and more.

Remote Work Infrastructure

HR Tech Startup Remofirst Names Masha Sutherlin as Director of Business Operations

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 Remofirst is an employer of record (EOR) service provider that enables businesses to build remote teams in over 180 countries by providing onboarding, payroll, benefits, taxes, and local compliance services without the need to establish a local entity. Its EoR services can also aid businesses during M&amp;A activities, simplifying team onboarding once the transaction closes.The company also supports businesses with forming compensation plans, offering insurance (health, dental and vision), and handling equity and bonus payments.&nbsp;
 
 
 The company generates revenue via monthly subscriptions per user, priced at USD 199 (for EoR services) and USD 25 (for contractors). Notably, the company&rsquo;s pricing is hundreds of dollars cheaper than competitors such as Deel and Rippling. The company attributes this to partnerships with in-country legal experts, as opposed to the more costly alternative of setting up entities outright.
 
 
 Key customers and partnerships
 
 
 As of March 2024, the company had &lsquo;thousands&rsquo; of customers, including Microsoft, BCG and Mastercard, among others.
 
 
 The company enables enterprises to find global talent via its Talent Marketplace (partnerships with global talent agencies).
 
 
 Funding and financials
 
 
 In March 2024, the company raised USD 25 million in Series A in its latest funding round led by European VC firm Octopus Ventures. Funds were earmarked to expand its presence in international markets, such as the UK. At the time, the company noted that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) has grown 10x since it raised its USD 14.1 million seed round in September 2022.
 
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ActivTrak is a cloud-based productivity monitoring software provider. The platform offers data and analytics which can be used to detect workplace productivity gaps. The platform collects data from employee activity logs and computer screenshots, although it does not log keystrokes or record video of a user’s screen. ActivTrak also facilitates a range of tasks for admins such as blocking websites, flagging suspicious activities, IP address connections, and monitoring web, and app traffic.Other features offered include productivity reports and coaching, headcount and workload management and personal insights. In November 2023, the company added capabilities to measure the usage of AI tools, automatically detecting and classifying the use of such tools and websites to help organizations manage and improve AI adoption across the workforce.Activtrak generates revenue via monthly subscriptions (USD 10 and USD 17) per user, and custom pricing for larger enterprises.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, over 9,500 enterprises used ActivTrak’s platform, notably including Allstate, asembia and Nobu. ActivTrak closed 2023 with a 40% growth in its customer base (adding ~2,200 customers).Funding and financialsIn November 2020, ActivTrak raised USD 50 million in a Series B round led by Sapphire Ventures. Sapphire Ventures CEO and managing director joined ActivTrak’s board as part of the deal. The new proceeds were earmarked for scaling global sales and marketing campaigns, expansion of its platform using AI driven analytics, and improving integration with its technology partners.

ActivTrak

inFeedo is a people predictive analytics company based in India. The Y Combinator-backed startup founded in 2013 is currently focused on “Amber” (launched in 2016), an AI-enabled bot that helps manage employee engagement, predict attrition, and get a pulse on company culture in real time. The company also offers AI-driven exit surveys and analytics to improve retention.Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, over 700,000 users across 250 organizations utilized inFeedo’s platform. Notable clients included GE Healthcare, Puma, Tata Group, and Lenovo.Funding and financialsIn its latest funding round (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9099">March 2022</a>) inFeedo raised USD 12 million in Series A funding led by Jungle Ventures, reportedly tripling its valuation from less than 18 months ago. The fresh funds will be used for its second employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) buyback for all employees and its go-to-market activities in North America. Further, the company claims it has achieved annual revenue of USD 1.6 million as of November 2020.

inFeedo

Donut provides solutions to keep employees engaged with casual conversations. Its first product, Intros, makes connections between teammates via Slack to emulate quick meetups and in-person introductions at work, which are now virtual.Donut’s new product, Watercooler, launched in October 2020. It attempts to reinvent the micro-interactions between employees at the office watercooler online. The product will integrate with Slack, where a newly-designated channel for Watercooler will be created. The product will post questions automatically within the customers’ desired frequency and pre-selected topics.The company uses a freemium subscription model with paid plans starting at approximately USD 2 per user per month.Key customers and partnershipsThe company claims it has supported four million connections (one million since the Covid-19 pandemic) across its 12,000 customers, including companies such as Okta, Zapier, Slack, The New York Times, and Invision.Funding and financialsDonut announced a USD 12 million funding round led by Accel, along with its new product, Watercooler. The USD 12 million raised was accumulated over multiple rounds before the Covid-19 pandemic, with proceeds earmarked for product development.

Donut

Matter is an employee feedback platform founded by Brett Hellman. Hellman was the founder of messaging app “Hall”, which was founded in 2011 and later sold to Atlassian for USD 20 million in 2015.Matter uses 360-degree feedback to evaluate skills in employees which are linked to career success. The platform links skills such as influence, inclusiveness, empathy, resourcefulness, and multitasking to evaluations. Matter is currently available in beta.

Matter

Mesh is a Y Combinator-backed company that allows employees to set goals, track tasks, share feedback, and engage in one-on-ones. The company also offers an AI coach (Mesh Maven) to help employees stay in line with their key objectives, improve the quality of feedback provided and summarize 1:1s. Mesh also offers nudges and surveys to improve employee engagement alongside relevant analytics.The company generates revenue via monthly subscriptions per user, priced at USD 4 (Base) and USD 7 (Premium).&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of April 2024, the company served over 100+ enterprises, including NTT Data, Grant Thornton and Groww. The platform also offers integrations with third-party software such as Gmail, Microsoft Teams and Slack, among others.Funding and financialsIn its most recent funding round (<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9768">April 2022</a>) Mesh raised USD 11 million in Series A funding led by RTP Global. The fresh funds were earmarked to expand its global footprint across the US and APAC regions. In line with this, the company planned to expand its headcount across the engineering and sales departments.

Mesh

Companies offering tools to infer employee morale (through surveys and quick assessments) and productivity, including functions for goal setting, review, and feedback.

Companies that offer the entire spectrum of HR tools including payroll processing benefits, onboarding, compliance, analytics, scheduling etc

Companies providing either standalone or combined payroll and benefits services to businesses.

EoR - Companies that assist businesses in hiring distributed teams globally in compliance with foreign labor laws. EoRs become the legal employer of offshore employees. Solutions include payroll, benefits, and taxes.

PEO - Companies that offer similar services to EoRs but establish a co-employment arrangement with businesses and do not become the legal employer.

Companies offering tools such as chatbots, surveys, games, and other activities to infer, assess and improve employee morale and sentiment.

Companies that provide a centralized space for employees to access internal and external resources, enterprise applications, and enable workers to communicate across departments, and stay up to date on organizational announcements.

Solutions in this industry hub are predominantly offered under a B2B SaaS model

Employee and performance management solutions use AI/Ml to infer engagement insights and sentiment analysis

Offers tools for companies to hire contractors globally, and conduct employee and performance management

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 Remofirst, a service provider specialising in employer of record services, has received a substantial injection of capital to the tune of USD 25 million in a Series A funding round. This funding round was spearheaded by Octopus Ventures, a European VC firm, and saw contributions from QED, Mouro Capital, and Counterpart Ventures.
 The aim of the funding is to enable Remofirst to increase its international market presence. A major part of this will be undertaking efforts to enhance its presence in the UK market.
 Remofirst offers a unique service where it facilitates the employment of its clients' workers in as many as 180 countries, and this service doesn't require the client to establish any local entities. This proposition makes it a cost-effective alternative to its competitors – Deel and Rippling.
 Providing a full suite of hiring services, Remofirst manages everything from payroll to taxes to employment regulations and compliance. Its impressive roster of clients includes Zocdoc, World Health Organization, and Mastercard, managing their international hires flawlessly. 
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Remofirst

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