Bloomberg Beta is an early-stage venture capital firm with $375M under management, capitalized solely by Bloomberg. The fund exists to expand Bloomberg’s horizons by investing in companies built by extraordinary founders that make business work better, with a focus on machine intelligence.

Bloomberg Beta

Homebrew is a hands-on, founder-friendly seed-stage fund created by Hunter Walk and Satya Patel to invest in the ''bottom-up economy.'' Homebrew has adopted the Diversity Term Sheet Rider.

Homebrew

Designer Fund invests in tech startups that are design leaders including Stripe, Gusto, and Omada Health. Designer Fund specializes in helping design products and scales design teams through their professional development programs Bridge and Designer Founder Guild. Their community includes exceptional designer founders and design leaders from companies like Apple, Facebook, Google, Airbnb, Pinterest, and Dropbox.

Designer Fund

Higher Ground Labs is building an ecosystem for progressive political technology. The company provides capital, assistance, programming, and mentorship to talented individuals and early-stage companies that are building the next generation of progressive political technology that can help win campaigns. Founded in 2017, the company is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, United States.

Higher Ground Labs

The Slack Fund is an investment fund to support slack teams building products that enable more productive workplaces.

Slack Fund

E14 Fund are an investment fund focused on taking the biggest ideas hatched at MIT, deploying them to the real world, and scaling them for greatest impact.  At the E14 Fund, they help bring technologies out of the lab and into the world. Their network of advisors—investors, industry experts, and entrepreneurs—help their companies take prototypes to scale and raise further investment.  The E14 Fund supports companies across diverse fields—from biotechnology and smart cities to consumer electronics and manufacturing. They are a bridge that builds entrepreneurs from MIT and creates the paths to connect them with investors and industry experts who can help them scale. They believe diversity and inclusion are the seeds of innovation. Half of their companies have a female founder, and more than half have founders are from outside the United States.

The E14 Fund

Gaingels is a venture investment syndicate in service of the LGBT+ community and its allies, investing in companies with LGBT+ founders and C-suite leaders at all stages of growth, as well as in more established companies resolved on building more inclusive teams, with a global portfolio of 130+ companies and $70M in deployed investment capital to date.  The Gaingels network also actively supports its portfolio in identifying and recruiting diverse talent to their C-suite and board leadership teams and fosters a vibrant global community of industry leaders, investors, operators, and entrepreneurs who share a common goal for positive social change through business and successful investments.

Gaingels

Gatheround

Gatheround is a team bonding and community engagement platform for people-focused organizations seeking to build relationships and strengthen teams in an era of disconnection and distraction.  We make it simple and effortless to bring people together online in a way that’s both wildly fun and deeply meaningful.

Gatheround (formerly Icebreaker) is an employee engagement platform for distributed teams. Gatheround offers features such as messaging, audio and video chat (one-on-one and group conversations), team building activity templates, and workshops in an attempt to improve team culture and connection. The co-founders, Alexander McCormmach, Lisa Conn, and Perry Rosenstein, are ex-employees of platforms such as Facebook and Hustle.

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

Remote Work Infrastructure

Gatheround (formerly Icebreaker) is an employee engagement platform for distributed teams. Gatheround offers features such as messaging, audio and video chat (one-on-one and group conversations), team building activity templates, and workshops in an attempt to improve team culture and connection. The co-founders, Alexander McCormmach, Lisa Conn, and Perry Rosenstein, are ex-employees of platforms such as Facebook and Hustle.The platform operates a subscription model with a freemium tier (up to 40 participants) and paid plans starting at USD 95 per month per group (up to 200 participants).Key customers and partnershipsThe company currently serves around 260,000 users, with a customer base that includes 28 Fortune 500 companies and more than 700 educational institutions. Companies such as Asana, Coinbase, Fiverr, Westfield, and DigitalOcean are signed up to the platform.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/29038">November 2023 </a>, Gatheround secured USD 8 million in a Series A funding round led by Slack Fund, with the participation of other investors. The proceeds are aimed at expanding and developing Gatheround's platform and its features, further enhancing its capabilities and content.

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

<div>
 
 Gatheround, a platform focused on engaging employees across various locations, has successfully raised USD 8 million in Series A funding. The funding round was led by Slack Fund, and saw participation from numerous entities including E14 Fund, Gaingels, Homebrew, Bloomberg Beta, Higher Ground Labs, and Designer Fund.
 This considerable investment will be primarily used to extend and further develop Gatheround's platform and its associated features. This effort is intended to improve the platform's services and content to meet the increasing need for advanced tools for workplace culture and meetings.
 
</div>

Gatheround

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless