Led · Series A · Mar 2024

Harness Wealth is a digital platform focused on financial, tax, and estate planning that connects clients with a roster of vetted advisors and advisory firms. Its product suite includes Harness for Advisors, which bundles advanced software, an in-house concierge team, practice-management tools, lead generation, and a professional community to streamline tax advisory practices. Clients access personalized tax and financial advice through a user-friendly portal with document sharing, payments, onboarding, and access to pre-vetted estate and financial advisors. The company says it has onboarded thousands of clients onto its new portal and expects that figure to triple this year. Harness targets the $10B+ tax advisory market and the $50B+ financial advisor segments, and monetizes via fees from both advisors and clients for software and services. After the recent raise, the company is focused on product enhancements and building insights around tax data while describing itself as well-capitalized. Harness Wealth is a New York–based startup that offers a platform bringing family-office–style services to individuals with complex financial pictures. It matches clients with independent registered investment advisors and connects them to teams across verticals — tax, estate and investment planning — to replicate the multidisciplinary access of a family office. Harness charges an ongoing revenue share, collecting part of the fees advisers on its platform charge to align incentives with long-term client success. The company employs 22 people and is not yet profitable. Part of its new capital will be used to build a captive tax business, Harness Tax, to address time-sensitive tax planning around IPOs, SPACs, remote work and cryptocurrencies. Founders David Snider and Katie Prentke English drew on experience at Bain, Compass and Nutmeg and have grown a customer base that includes employees of Coinbase, UiPath, PayPal, Snowflake, DoorDash, Amazon and partners at venture firms. Harness Wealth offers a hybrid digital-human platform that builds personalized balance sheets and matches clients to a curated set of top tax, financial, and legal advisors via proprietary technology and comprehensive needs assessments. The company targets accomplished individuals with $250K–$10M in investable assets and cites a U.S. addressable market of 20M households that spend $80B annually on financial, tax and legal professional services. Its adviser diligence process collects 40+ attributes per advisor and 100+ attributes per firm to ensure tailored recommendations. The business model takes a minority percentage of an adviser’s standard fee for referred clients. Harness Wealth is developing additional client tools and technology to enhance the digital experience and is working to onboard users from its waitlist. Financially, the company recently closed a $4M Seed round to support product and growth initiatives.

Led · Series B · Jul 2022

HireArt operates a platform that sources, screens and employs W2 contractors for employers, offering features like curated shortlists, interview scheduling and workforce management tools (pay changes, expense approvals, reports). The company began in 2012 as an assessment firm and pivoted in 2017 to both source and employ workers on clients' behalf. HireArt serves customers including Meta, Carta, Zoox and Via and targets a fragmented U.S. staffing market it estimates at roughly $500 billion. The startup has an 82-person headcount and plans to more than double that within the next year, using new capital for product development. Financially, HireArt previously raised $2M in 2017, grew 70% year-over-year after that raise and reached profitability with around 30 employees, but is not currently profitable and expects to reach profitability by the end of 2023. HireArt is a Y Combinator-backed recruiting platform that screens job applicants by having candidates complete work-sample tasks and optional video responses so employers can assess real skills rather than resumes. Employers can review curated applicant feeds themselves or outsource review to HireArt's small team of graders who score submissions using an internal rubric; higher-touch recruiting services are available under its full-service offering. Until today the company operated a contingency model charging a 10% success fee of the first-year salary, and it has launched a lower-priced $595/month tier that provides a curated feed and an optional account manager but does not include scheduling, salary negotiation or other full recruiting services. HireArt reports roughly 70,000 candidate applications and nearly 300 employer customers, including Airbnb, Cisco, eBay, Gap and Facebook. The business has been growing at about 20% month-over-month according to co-founder Nicholas Sedlet, and the lower-priced plan is intended to broaden adoption among companies that want curated candidates without full headhunting. The company competes with video-interview and recruiting services such as HireVue, VidCruiter, Interview Rocket and Take the Interview.

Participated · Seed · Dec 2015

Staffly operates an online retail staffing service that sources, vets and employs temporary workers for independent retailers, handling interviews, paperwork, timesheets and payments on behalf of employers. Businesses search the platform or app for matches and communicate with workers via text; workers who accept a block of hours are obligated to fulfill it. The platform includes mutual ratings so employees and employers build reputations over time. The founders, husband-and-wife Bjorn and Marissa Ovick, used an initial seed to build and test the program in San Francisco and have hired a senior recruiter to validate hiring processes. The company currently serves several hundred staffers and about a hundred retailers in its inaugural San Francisco market, and hires roughly 10% of applicants while maintaining a healthy candidate pipeline. Staffly plans to improve the platform and processes, enter a second market next, and then expand cautiously to multiple cities. Staffly operates a digital temp-agency for independent retailers, acting as the employer of record by hiring, vetting, training and employing staff on W-2 contracts while handling payroll, paperwork and compliance. Retailers post shift offers on the website; employees receive a text to accept, supervisors approve hours, and Staffly processes payments. The platform includes a one-to-five star rating system so employees and retailers build reputations, and staff can set availability. The company is piloting in San Francisco with 50 retailers and 150 staffers; pilot employees are making $13/hour. The founders, Bjorn and Marissa Ovick, hired a consultant to develop the software and have taken in $800,000 in seed financing so far. The startup launched in San Francisco and positions itself to expand to other cities facing retail staffing and retention challenges.