Bloomington tech startup lands funding
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (Inside INdiana Business) — A Bloomington-based startup has received funding from the Community Ideation Fund at Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures. OurSafeQ, which had developed a platform to help businesses create and manage lines of people using virtual tickets, plans to use the $20,000 award to further product development and grow its sales and marketing operations.
OurSafeQ’s technology allows users to utilize their mobile browsers to scan a QR code to join a line and view a real-time count of how many people are ahead of them. The company was founded in 2020 and Director of Business Operations Steve Brisuda says the goal was to address concerns related to COVID-19 by helping people social distance while waiting in lines.
“We are very excited about the Elevate Ventures Community Ideation Fund investment,” Brisuda said in a news release. “The funding will help us make virtual queueing the norm by jumpstarting our sales and marketing efforts, thereby allowing small and medium businesses to improve the experience for their customers by eliminating lines and waiting.”
The company says it believes virtual queuing will continue beyond the pandemic “due to people’s dislike of waiting.”
“What initially attracted me to OurSafeQ was that even though the company was formed out of the pandemic, it has much wider applicability,” said Cy Megnin, an entrepreneur-in-residence for Elevate Ventures. “During the last 18 months, the world has seen wide adoption of technologies some of which will simply change the way we live our lives. I believe this is one of those areas.”
OurSafeQ did not specify whether any new jobs would be added with the investment.