Techstart Ventures is a first-cheque investor for extraordinary founders pursuing uncapped global opportunities.

Techstart Ventures

Equity Gap is a group of private individuals set up to invest in and support emerging and growing businesses. The group are particularly interested in assisting young companies that have achieved the SMART award and businesses that have gone through a pre investment commercialisation process. They will consider other high growth companies but they must demonstrate a strong market and a clear investment exit strategy. Companies that Equity Gap invest in will be provided with ongoing business expertise and continuing support. Funding will typically be between £20,000 and £500,000. Where possible this will all be from Equity Gap, however they may work with other syndicates and Scottish Enterprise Co-Investment Fund to achieve the required funds. They meet once per month in central Edinburgh. At the meetings they usually have 2 presentations from companies, discuss current investments and review plans that they have received and circulated in the past month.

Equity Gap

Scottish Enterprise is Scotland's main economic development agency and a non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government. The firm wants to stimulate Scotland’s economic ambition – creating an innovative, high-wage and highly productive economy with a competitive, international market presence and a focus on high value opportunities. Scottish Enterprise partners with the public and private sectors to identify and exploit the best opportunities to deliver a significant, lasting effect on the Scottish economy.

Scottish Enterprise

NoBa Capital is a high-conviction, hands-on investor to early-stage companies. Our mission is to positively impact 10 million workers by investing in ambitious start-ups changing the Future of Work. Our portfolio companies deliver worker centric solutions that make this possible. Whether its through providing access to work opportunities, improving career development, enhancing diversity and inclusion, providing financial stability, supporting wellbeing, or fostering flexibility, they all add up to positive impact for workers and improved value for employers.

NoBa Capital

Trickle

Trickle is a place where people may be entirely free and honest. Knowing what's going on is the only way to make things better. Trickle provides a forum for your employees to openly communicate concerns, challenges, and suggestions, as well as a location for them to feel valued and recognized for their contributions.

Trickle is an employee engagement platform that enables organizations to gather real-time feedback and insights from their workforce. The platform features tools for capturing employee sentiment, suggestions, and concerns through various channels including anonymous feedback options. Its core functionality includes Smart Prioritisation, which surfaces the top five most important issues raised by employees, and features like "How Was Your Day?" that track employee morale through emoji-based responses. The platform also offers Flares, an anonymous whistleblowing tool, and MoodSense for pulse surveys to measure employee sentiment on specific topics. The system is designed to streamline workplace communication and promote a culture of transparency and continuous improvement.

changing partnership for us!

Take Charge of Employee Engagement

A Collaborative Approach to Employee Voice & Continuous Improvement

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

Remote Work Infrastructure

Trickle in £1m bid to boost employee wellbeing

Trickle is a comprehensive employee engagement platform designed to enhance communication, foster collaboration, and drive continuous improvement within organizations. At its core, the platform offers a suite of innovative features that empower employees to share ideas, provide feedback, and voice their concerns seamlessly.
The 'Smart Prioritisation' feature delivers real-time updates on the top five issues that resonate most with employees, enabling leaders to maintain a laser-sharp focus on critical matters. By intelligently prioritizing tasks, this system streamlines workflows and boosts overall productivity.
Trickle's 'Raise a Trickle' feature allows employees to initiate conversations, spark innovation, or offer thoughtful feedback, either openly or anonymously, at various organizational levels. The most resonant 'Trickles' automatically rise to the top, capturing leadership's attention and promoting a sense of collective action and continuous improvement.
The platform's 'Anonymity' feature ensures that all voices are heard equally, empowering employees to engage on their own terms. With smart safety protocols in place, the anonymity feature prevents misuse while fostering a culture of transparency and accountability.
The 'Flares' feature is an anonymous whistleblowing tool that provides a secure channel for employees to raise confidential matters, further promoting a culture of transparency and prompt resolution of potential issues.
Trickle's 'How Was Your Day?' feature serves as a barometer for an organization's team spirit, allowing employees to reflect on their day's emotional journey while providing leaders with real-time insights into the organization's overall morale.
The 'MoodSense' feature, an anonymous pulse survey tool, enables organizations to gather valuable insights into the 'emotional climate' within the workplace, facilitating proactive engagement opportunities and addressing issues affecting employee satisfaction.
Trickle's 'Shout Abouts' feature enables sharing company news, recognizing team wins, and fostering a strong sense of community, contributing to a positive workplace culture and establishing a sense of belonging.
In November 2022, Trickle entered into a partnership with CGI, a leading IT and business consulting services firm, to offer its employee engagement platform to CGI's customers, initially focusing on the UK healthcare sector.

Trickle is an employee engagement platform that enables organizations to gather real-time feedback and insights from their workforce. The platform features tools for capturing employee sentiment, suggestions, and concerns through various channels including anonymous feedback options. Its core functionality includes Smart Prioritisation, which surfaces the top five most important issues raised by employees, and features like "How Was Your Day?" that track employee morale through emoji-based responses. The platform also offers Flares, an anonymous whistleblowing tool, and MoodSense for pulse surveys to measure employee sentiment on specific topics. The system is designed to streamline workplace communication and promote a culture of transparency and continuous improvement.Key customers and partnershipsTrickle integrates with Microsoft Teams and Slack, allowing users to receive notifications and access the platform directly through these communication tools. The platform is scalable and serves organizations ranging from small teams to enterprises with over 10,000 employees. The service offers single sign-on capabilities and can integrate with various communication platforms.

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

Trickle, a Scottish tech platform focused on improving workplace productivity, has raised GBP 1 million in a funding round led by Equity Gap. Other participants in the round include NoBa Capital and Scottish Enterprise. The investment will be used to expand the team, drive growth in the private sector, and enhance the platform's features. Trickle's platform allows team members to provide anonymous feedback, leading to valuable insights and improved engagement.

Trickle

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