Participated · Equity · Jun 2020

Give InKind operates a platform that makes it easier for family and friends to coordinate meals and other necessities for people in need. The company has established partnerships with hospitals and is being offered to patients through multiple touchpoints, beginning with Multicare across nine hospitals and 250 clinics. It has expanded nationwide with agreements in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Missouri. Over the past year Give InKind says it tripled its user base and increased revenue tenfold, and it currently has 10 employees. The new funding will support the launch of paid consumer and enterprise features, and the company has joined the Blackbaud Social Good Startup program and graduated the Female Founders Alliance Ready Set Raise program. Give InKind operates a social giving platform that streamlines donations of meals and other aid between friends, family members and recipients going through difficult life situations. Demand surged during the pandemic, with the company reporting 40% week-over-week growth earlier this year and revenue doubling since January. More than 200 hospitals and healthcare facilities began using the platform to coordinate meal donations. The company generates revenue from affiliate fees and is exploring B2B offerings. Proceeds from the recent raise will fund integrated meal delivery ordering and a new way to send digital gift cards, and will support team and marketing growth. Give InKind employs 20 people and graduated from the Female Founders Alliance Ready Set Raise accelerator. Give InKind provides a central profile for people in hardship to receive coordinated help beyond cash—wishlists, merchant links (Instacart, Uber), recurring gifts, deliveries, and an in-app calendar for scheduling in-person support. The site is primarily affiliate-driven today: helpers are routed to merchant sites to complete transactions, though the company is experimenting with some on-site purchases. Product usage is heavily skewed toward coordination—about 90% of pages are set up by someone other than the beneficiary, and roughly 70% of actions are calendar signups or people committing to do tasks; the calendar is the most used feature. The company bootstrapped for three years, found product–market fit, and reports ~20% month-over-month growth. Roadmap items include adding locally run service providers (which requires more manual work) and doubling down on organic growth plus marketing to scale. Founder Laura Malcolm built the product from personal experience, positioning Give InKind as a complementary alternative to pure cash platforms like GoFundMe.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2018

Ganaz builds a workforce stack tailored to agricultural workers who often lack documentation and bank accounts, using SMS/WhatsApp for payments and offline-capable tablets for onboarding and basic training. The platform centralizes worker records and employer-facing interfaces while acting as an intermediary for text alerts and communications. Ganaz plans to issue a payroll Mastercard later this year to let workers avoid check-cashing fees and to capture a share of card transaction fees, and it intends to automate remittances through integrated partnerships. The company emphasizes low-tech, accessible UX (SMS, WhatsApp, simple web apps for sensitive flows) and has designated itself a public benefit corporation to prioritize mission-aligned decisions. Operational traction includes 75 employers signed and roughly 175,000 workers on the platform; Ganaz reports that both ARR and user count approximately tripled year over year. Near-term priorities are rapid expansion, aggressive roadmap execution, and solidifying its position in the U.S. and Mexico before broader expansion. Ganaz builds a platform that helps agriculture and manufacturing employers communicate with large numbers of workers via text from a central dashboard. The product includes onboarding tools, worker-retention features and a service that will let workers receive payment through a dedicated debit card. The startup plans to offer a built-in remittance feature so workers can send earnings abroad. Ganaz targets blue-collar industries and seasonal foreign laborers who are relatively new to technology and are underserved by mainstream SaaS. The company graduated from the Seattle Techstars program last year after pivoting from an earlier Glassdoor-like concept. CEO Hannah Freeman previously ran partnerships at Fair Trade USA; Ganaz has seven employees and is hiring engineering talent. The company has raised $3.3 million to date. Ganaz operates a platform that lets farmers post job listings, communicate directly with seasonal workers, and send urgent messages while translating communications into workers’ native languages. The product reduces reliance on intermediaries by enabling direct employer-worker connections and claims reach to hundreds of seasonal farm workers. The company was co-founded by Hannah Freeman and Sri Artham in spring 2017 and is headquartered in Seattle, serving farms up and down the West Coast. Ganaz graduated from the Techstars Seattle accelerator earlier this year and received seed funding as part of that program. With the latest financing, the company plans to at least double its five-person team and recruit diverse, customer-facing hires who are close to the communities they serve. To date Ganaz has raised close to $2.35 million.

Participated · Seed · Aug 2018

Factal monitors breaking news using a blend of artificial intelligence and experienced journalists to identify and verify events ranging from severe weather to mass shootings. It sends proximity-mapped, customized alerts and provides real-time collaboration features for corporate clients across physical security, global risk intelligence, continuity of operations, emergency management, supply chain management, and executive protection. The company also offers free, unlimited access to more than 80 non-governmental organizations that provide disaster relief, humanitarian aid, and human rights assistance. Factal has more than doubled revenue and client count over the last year and is profitable and cash-flow positive. The startup has grown to 28 employees and opened a London office to provide around-the-clock coverage. For 2021 and beyond, Factal plans to develop easier-to-use desktop and mobile tools aimed at companies beyond the Fortune 500 that do not have dedicated security teams. Factal was founded by members of the former Breaking News team to provide real-time, verified incident alerts and geo-located news specifically for corporate users. The service combines human editors with machine-learning “signal detection” that ingests social media and news outlets to verify and geo-locate incidents ranging from wildfires to shootings. The product targets corporate customers who can set custom notifications based on facility and asset locations; more than 30 Fortune 500 companies participated in its beta. Factal plans to launch its paid subscription service in September after more than a year of beta testing and did not disclose pricing. With fresh funding the company intends to hire more editors around the world and explore potential consumer and platform uses of its technology. The team emphasizes speed and verification to help organizations protect employees and assets in a media environment prone to misinformation.