Techstars is a global platform that provides investment and innovation. Through the Techstars Worldwide Entrepreneur Network, founders and their teams connect with other entrepreneurs, experts, mentors, alumni, investors, community leaders, and corporate partners who will help their companies grow. Techstars operates four divisions: Techstars Mentorship-Driven Accelerator Program supercharges success and Techstars Startup Programs inspire, educate, and connect entrepreneurs. Techstars Venture Capital Fund invests in innovative and disruptive companies. Techstars Corporate Innovation Partnerships help brands create products and services. Techstars' accelerator portfolio includes more than 1,000 companies with a market cap of $8.1 billion.

Techstars

Virginia Venture Partners is a family of seed-stage investment funds placing near-equity and equity investments in Virginia-based technology, life science, and cleantech companies. Virginia Venture Partners invests in companies with a high potential for achieving rapid growth and generating significant economic returns for entrepreneurs, co-investors, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. CIT’s family of funds includes: GAP Fund I is a vintage 2004 fund fully invested in a broad array of seed-stage technology companies. Portfolio. GAP BioLife Fund is a seed fund investing exclusively in life science companies. GAP Tech Fund is a seed fund investing in IT and technology companies.

Virginia Venture Partners

Founded in 2005, True Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology startups. With more than $3.8 billion under management, True provides seed and Series A financing to entrepreneurs in some of today's growing markets.  With more than 40 team members including special advisors, operations professionals, and founders-turned-investors, True represents one of the largest and most experienced teams dedicated to the ecosystem.  The True team believes creativity flourishes when founders are supported fully and empowered to pursue brave ideas. To that end, the True Platform offers programs that inspire professional and personal growth. To date, True has helped more than 350 companies launch and scale their businesses, creating over 85,000 jobs worldwide.  True was awarded Venture Firm of the Year by the National Venture Capital Association in 2018. To learn more, visit www.trueventures.com.

True Ventures

Alumni Ventures Group provides high-quality, diversified venture portfolios to individual investors who previously haven't had access to VC. It helps accredited alums from top entrepreneurial schools invest together in the ventures of fellow alums. The firm backs companies with an alumni connection and an institutional lead investor with expertise in the space. AVG also offers focused funds that allow any accredited investor access to a venture portfolio, diversified by type, sector, stage, and geography. Beth Obermiller, Michael Madden, and Mike Collins co-founded the firm in Manchester, New Hampshire in 2013.

Alumni Ventures

HearstLab is an early-stage venture fund focused on women-led startups innovating across the enterprise technology, data analytics, health, fintech, transportation and media spaces. To date, HearstLab has invested in over 56 companies at the Seed and Series A stages, with four successful exits. The firm often participates as a co-investor and in follow-on rounds.  HearstLab is a venture arm of the Hearst Corporation (''Hearst'') and provides one year of services in addition to cash investments. With access to Hearst's resources across 360+ businesses, HearstLab’s breadth of services includes providing assistance with commercial deals, privacy and security, legal services, marketing support and raising capital. Portfolio companies also benefit from the strategic guidance and resource support of HearstLab Scouts, women leaders across Hearst who share their networks and expertise. HearstLab has a full-time dedicated team assisting with UI/UX, DevOps engineering, data security, data science, brand storytelling, financial modeling and business development.

HearstLab

An early-stage venture capital firm investing in tech driven companies led by underrepresented founders.

High Street Equity Partners

Happied

We spend over 1/3 of our lives at work, and you deserve to be happy there. Only 15% of employees report being engaged, and unhappy employees cost the global economy $8.8 trillion. Happied’s digital tool suite helps remote and distributed teams around the world thrive and connect by streamlining the organization of virtual and in-person team engagement. With Happied, HR leaders can effortlessly set up engaging virtual team breaks through our Mingle tool, which seamlessly integrates with Slack. When it’s time to get together in person, Happied simplifies the planning of  team retreats and offsites, saving our customers time, money, and stress while increasing company productivity and profitability.

Happied helps companies ideate, plan, and execute in-person and remote/hybrid employee engagement events, such as employee resource group (ERG) events, team building and wellness events, and holiday parties. It also provides companies with a dedicated event planner that handles tasks such as RSVP management, venue and vendor booking, and event logistics.&nbsp;

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

Remote Work Infrastructure

Event tech startup Happied just raised $1.6M to build out its development team

Happied helps companies ideate, plan, and execute in-person and remote/hybrid employee engagement events, such as employee resource group (ERG) events, team building and wellness events, and holiday parties. It also provides companies with a dedicated event planner that handles tasks such as RSVP management, venue and vendor booking, and event logistics.&nbsp;Key customers and partnershipsAs of July 2022, the company has 180+ customers including the likes of Google, Disney, Twitter, and Deloitte.Funding and financialsIn<a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/11848"> July 2022</a>, the company raised USD 1.6 million in funding from HearstLabs. Funds were earmarked to develop its platform, add new event offerings, and grow its database of engagement feedback.

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

Happied

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