VentureSouq (VSQ) is a MENA-based venture capital fund manager with a global portfolio. VSQ manages thematic funds, with a current focus on FinTech and ClimateTech.

VentureSouq

They believe that today, communities need support to build their own solutions, not someone to come build or sell a solution. They believe entrepreneurs come in all forms, and that it is too hard for entrepreneurs that don’t fit the standard mold.  They believe in strong values, and that true victory is one dogged with stories of adulation, not stories of discrimination. They are creating a new kind of firm; thoughtful capital: a community of friends and limited partners that steer time, resources & capital to those companies that we want to win.

Tres Monos Capital

Global Market Enterprise is a technology innovation, formulation, and global investment company.

Global Market Enterprise

Cordelia Capital LLC recognizes the dedication a business deserves. Founded and based in Chicago, IL, Cordelia Capital offers business owners a stable succession by providing capital up-front to successfully exit their business

Cordelia Capital

Swae

Swae is a platform that organizations deploy internally in order to open up and increase transparency in the decision making process, include more voices in order to raise the quality, intelligence, and legitimacy of decisions. Swae leverages AI to help people augment their writing and build better quality proposals to contribute so that their insights can be better understood and their contributions are more than just noise.  Swae includes collaboration, debate, and voting features to help users add their expertise and substance to proposals, to point out flaws and risks, to improve the content, and de-risking the idea/make it more decision-ready. The points of engagement act as signals for determining an idea’s merit.    Managers/administrators can configure workflows, set metrics and thresholds to allow the ideas with the most traction to organically bubble up to a review, feasibility study or decision. Most who have used the platform use the review process to accept/reject an idea and provide public reasoning why. The reasoning they provide helps reinforce users' trust in the process and system, so they continue contributing ideas for the long term. Swae's platform provides management with a pipeline of coherent, well-articulated bottom-up proposals, to help them make more informed strategy, policy, product, HR and resource allocation decisions, helping them leverage the collective intelligence that resides inside their organization.

Swae is a Canadian SaaS platform that uses a proprietary AI-backed process that converts stakeholder suggestions and feedback into structured actionable proposals to drive innovation and organizational improvement.

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

Remote Work Infrastructure

Closing seed round enables Swae to expand its scalable innovation and decision-making platform

Swae is a Canadian SaaS platform that uses a proprietary AI-backed process that converts stakeholder suggestions and feedback into structured actionable proposals to drive innovation and organizational improvement.The platform offers a range of features to facilitate idea management, remote collaboration, employee, customer, and citizen engagement, equitable decision making, and remote meetings. The platform also features analytics that monitor sentiment, gamification capabilities, and an AI editor, which algorithmically refines, derisk, and debias ideas using language augmentation and evidence suggestion.Swae uses chats, polls, activity feeds, templated missions and guided ideation to source suggestions and feedback from users. It helps decision makers through voting tools, reviews, guided metrics, and a return on investment calculator.The company offers a 30-day free trial for up to 100 users, with two paid plans with custom pricing.Key customers and partnershipsAs of January 2022, the platform is used by over 30,000 employees globally, including employees of Etihad Airways, the United Nations, Bosch, and LifeLabs.Funding and financialsIn January 2022, Swae <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/7675">raised</a> CAD 750,000 (~USD 591,000) in a seed funding round led by William Eisenman (former head of engineering, Netflix) and his son Eugene Eisenman. The funds were earmarked to expand Swae’s tech stack, improve product features and integrations, explore AI-related development opportunities, and expand its presence in the UK and the US market.

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

Swae

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