Participated · Equity · May 2023

Qualifi provides an audio-based, on-demand asynchronous phone interview platform that lets recruiters send, share, and track interviews at scale. The product is designed to speed up hiring, mitigate bias, and preserve a human touch while enabling recruiters to interview hundreds of candidates in minutes. The company was founded in 2019 by Darrian Mikell, Devyn Mikell, DeSean Prentice, and Keenan Jaenicke and is based in Indianapolis, IN. Its founding team are alums of the Techstars Anywhere Class of ’21. Qualifi recently raised growth funding and intends to use the proceeds to expand operations and further develop the platform. Qualifi provides an audio-based platform that enables recruiters to phone-screen multiple candidates simultaneously using pre-recorded questions over a standard phone call. Because there’s no need for scheduling or phone tag, recruiters can vet seven times more candidates per day on average. The platform captures rich, actionable data to help recruiters make better, less biased hiring decisions and integrates with more than 30 top Applicant Tracking Systems. Companies across industries — from small businesses to Fortune 500 enterprises in healthcare, call centers, warehouse, logistics, construction and hospitality — used the platform to qualify tens of thousands of candidates in 2021. Led by CEO Darrian Mikell and based in Indianapolis, Qualifi plans to use new funding to add AI, ML and NLP capabilities and to expand go-to-market efforts with additional marketing and sales resources. Founded in 2019 by Darrian Mikell, Qualifi provides a platform that enables recruiters to create one-way interview experiences using audio and voice over standard phone calls. The product is designed to eliminate scheduling, reduce communication times with candidates, and capture data to help recruiters scale screening efforts. The company completed accelerator programs including Be Nimble’s Pitch Pardi and TechStars Anywhere as part of its early growth. Qualifi plans to use recent funding to grow its business through sales and marketing and to further optimize the platform. The team emphasizes phone-based audio responses to streamline early-stage recruiting workflows.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2022

Aja Labs is a materials innovation company creating biomaterial hair fibers from plant material and commercializing consumer products under the Nourie brand. Its first product line includes patent-pending hair extensions with a time-release function that delivers a nutrient complex over time during wear. The company is moving from development toward commercialization and intends to use the new funding to accelerate that transition. Aja Labs was founded in 2020 and is based in Raleigh, NC. The founding team includes CEO and Founder Osahon Ojeaga and Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder Dr. Mary Moore, a materials and polymer engineer. The company raised a seed round in January 2022 to support product development and market launch.

Participated · Series A · May 2022

Civic Eagle builds Enview, a legislative intelligence and collaboration platform that leverages state and federal legislation to support government relations and advocacy work. Its software keeps users automatically updated on fast-moving legislation and enables collaboration across stakeholder teams. Customers named in the article include Comcast, Google, Common Cause, and The Center for Secure and Modern Election. Since bringing Enview to market in 2019, 100+ organizations and 2,000+ users have tracked and influenced 50,000+ bills. The company emphasizes a design-first, social-impact-driven approach and is led by an all-Black founding team that includes CEO Damola Ogundipe and COO Yemi Adewunmi. The new funding is intended to expand public policy data innovation, accelerate product development, and scale sales and marketing efforts.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2021

Shop Latinx began as an Instagram account and has grown into a curated marketplace focused on Latinx brands and consumers. The platform features over 600 products from more than 30 brands and serves a community of over 100,000 highly engaged fans. Shop Latinx emphasizes cultural curation, storytelling, and trend forecasting across fashion and beauty categories. The company employs four full-time staff across product development and marketing. Recent operating momentum includes a 226% sales increase from Q2 to Q3 and a 278% increase in the most recent month. With its roots in championing underrepresented creators, the company plans to expand both online and offline through experiential commerce, events, new brand and product launches, and large retail partnerships.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2021

Sugar offers a two-part product: a mobile app for residents and a web-based dashboard for building owners and managers that enables community engagement, keyless entry, rent payment and maintenance requests. The platform integrates with existing hardware and software stacks and can plug into keyless-entry hardware to enable digital keys, which the company cites as a primary adoption driver. Sugar sells the consumer app directly to building owners and managers and provides management dashboards to monitor engagement metrics and online ratings. The startup has clients across residential communities, real estate investment groups, Airbnb rentals, hotels and other residential properties, and has rollouts within portfolios that together manage over 655 properties and 150,000 active doors in 22 states. Prior to the seed close the company reported consistent month-over-month growth and achieved six-figure ARR four months after launch. Sugar has grown its team from two employees last year to nine full-time employees and plans key hires in engineering and sales with the new capital.