Y Combinator is a startup accelerator that invests in a large number of startups twice a year. It created a new model for funding startups. Twice a year, the company invests a small amount of money ($150k) in a large number of startups. The startup accelerator works intensively with the companies for three months, to get them into the best possible shape and refine their pitch to investors. Each cycle culminates in Demo Day when the startups present their companies to a carefully selected, invite-only audience.

Y Combinator

Gradient is a seed fund that focuses on supporting founders in the artificial intelligence sector. The firm collaborates closely with innovators to integrate AI into various business processes and drive technological advancements. Gradient aims to foster disruptive ideas that can redefine industries and enhance operational capabilities.

Gradient

AltaIR Capital manages funds that invest in the world's most promising companies with disruptive ideas and great return potential. They invest in early and growth stage startup companies in various sectors. Its portfolio companies represent key players of the startup industry, top incubator graduates, and promising teams.

AltaIR Capital

Soma Capital is a fund built by founders for founders that focuses on software. It has invested seed in startups now worth over $60 billion combined including Cruise, Rappi, Ironclad, Human Interest, Razorpay, Rippling, and Lambda School among others (20 unicorns) It was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Soma Capital

Elysium Venture Capital is an investment management group focused on global technology opportunities. Utilizing a wide range of industry experience, the firm seeks partnerships with exceptional management teams to commercialize innovative technologies, accelerate growth and create long term value across the world.

Elysium Venture Capital

Polymath Capital is a venture capital firm that invests in pre-seed and seed stage companies with an emphasis on community, longevity, and financial democratization. As an operator-led firm, we partner with ambitious founders to build the next generation of market-changing companies.

Polymath Capital

Threshold is an early-stage venture capital firm that focuses on a high-conviction investment strategy. The firm partners with entrepreneurs to build innovative consumer, enterprise, and healthcare technology companies.

Threshold

GFC is a globally oriented, stage agnostic venture capital firm that empowers gifted entrepreneurs. The firm seeks to invest in companies that operate within the internet, retail, financial software, media, communication, and information technology sectors. It was founded by Oliver Samwer in 2013 and is based in Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

Global Founders Capital

AMINO Capital is a global venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, with investment theme of data moat and network effect.  With over $1 billion in capital under management, Amino has funded hundreds of companies in seed-to-growth stages across Consumer, PLG SaaS, Frontier Tech, and Web3, including 35 successful exits, around 20 unicorns and over 35 companies which are valued over $100M, such as Chime, Webflow, Rippling, Grail, Weee, Replit, Turing, Dfinity, OmiseGo, Oasis Labs, Instawork, Wetravel, AIFI.io, Wyze, Writesonic, D-Matrix and Beacons.ai.

Amino Capital

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

Operator Partners invests in early-stage technology companies and founders. The firm was founded in 2020 and is headquartered in New York, United States.

Operator Partners

MVP Ventures was founded in 2020 with the realization that a rethought model for venture investing could unlock significantly greater returns. With the help of its proprietary data-driven sourcing engine and value-add focus, the firm invests as the 2nd-largest check into early-stage deep tech teams building differentiated and defensible technology across software and hardware — with no ownership restrictions.

MVP Ventures

Portage Ventures is a global fintech-focused venture capital investor. The firm makes early-stage investments in promising Canadian financial tech companies that have potential for global impact.

Portage Ventures

Workday Ventures is the strategic investment arm of Workday focused on identifying, investing, and partners with early to growth-stage companies. The company helps accelerate innovation and connects the next generation of enterprise technology companies with Workday’s customers, partners, and employees.

Workday Ventures

Clocktower Technology Ventures invests in the insurance, payments, personal finance, lending, credit, and asset management sectors. The firm’s expertise investing across financial services and its related ecosystem of global institutional allocators, policymakers, and hedge fund managers have created a community that offers a distinct value-add to portfolio companies. Since launching, Clocktower Technology Ventures has invested in 96 fintech companies in North America, Europe, and Latin America. It was founded in 2015 and headquartered in Santa Monica, California.

Clocktower Technology Ventures

Benepass

Benepass is a benefits administration platform that helps companies manage and distribute employee perks and benefits. Through deep investments into the company's financial technology infrastructure, Benepass has made it easy for employers to offer global benefits that are personalized to every employee. The Benepass platform offers employees four different ways to spend their benefit dollars globally: card, mobile wallet, reimbursements, and a marketplace.

Benepass consolidates multiple employee benefits, primarily tax-advantaged accounts, as well as company perks and stipends, related to physical and mental wellness, professional development, and meals, onto a single platform. In addition to a Benepass Visa card to be used for their benefits, employees also receive access to a web portal and mobile app to track spending, check balances, and request reimbursements.

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

Remote Work Infrastructure

Benepass revolutionises employee perks with $20m funding influx

Benepass consolidates multiple employee benefits, primarily tax-advantaged accounts, as well as company perks and stipends, related to physical and mental wellness, professional development, and meals, onto a single platform. In addition to a Benepass Visa card to be used for their benefits, employees also receive access to a web portal and mobile app to track spending, check balances, and request reimbursements.In 2024, the company rolled out Benebot, an in-app GenAI-powered chatbot which aids employees manage their benefits and increase benefit usage. Users can also receive answers on a company’s specific benefit policies alongside spending suggestions.The platform charges a subscription fee and interchange revenue on transactions initiated through the Benepass card.Funding and financialsIn <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/26204">January 2024</a>, Benepass raised USD 20 million in a funding round led by Portage and Clocktower Technology Ventures. Funds were earmarked for growth initiatives, including expanding partnerships and developing new platform features.

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>
 Benefits management platform, Benepass has raised $20 million in a funding round with investors including Portage and Clocktower Technology Ventures. The funding will be used to further growth initiatives such as developing new platform features, expanding partnerships, and using GenAI for employee benefits insight.
 The firm revealed that over 85% of employees use the benefits offered by the Benepass platform, highlighting its commitment to providing personalized, flexible benefit solutions to enhance employee satisfaction and retention.
</div>

Benepass

About EDGE

Contact Us

Resources

Area of Focus

Technology Research Made Effortless