Fort Wayne startup closes pre-seed funding round

FORT WAYNE, Ind. (Inside INdiana Business) — A Fort Wayne-based startup that focuses on reducing the effects of biases in the workplace has secured $270,000 in pre-seed funding. STRE.ME says the funding will allow it to concentrate on onboarding key customers as it prepares for another funding round to boost its sales model.

The pre-seed round was led by Techstars and Indianapolis-based Elevate Ventures. Elevate says STRE.ME has developed a web application platform to provide personalized and confidential insights for managing biases.

“As business leaders, we understand how important employee engagement and team dynamics are to building healthy organizations, especially when implicit biases silently influence the way we make decisions, behave, and communicate,” Jack Patton, co-founder and chief executive officer of STRE.ME, said in a news release. “Closing this round of funding helps fulfill our mission of creating cultures of awareness and accountability.”

Dan Meek, entrepreneur-in-residence for Elevate Ventures in Northeast Indiana, says the platform makes it easy for leaders to deliver awareness and accountability for their organizations. In 2019, STRE.ME also received funding from Elevate’s Community Ideation Fund.