OEN Member NewsPDC partner Elevate Capital announces investments in RFPIO and Goumikids
The first cohort of investments includes:
Blendoor: Founded by Stephanie Lampkin, an African American entrepreneur. Blendoor is a blind recruiting app that hides a candidate’s name and photo to circumvent unconscious bias. In just a few months since beta launch, Blendoor has attracted over 250 companies, 5,000+ candidates and has been features in Forbes, NPR, and Fast Company. The team of Stanford and MIT graduates hold over 30 years combined experience at companies spanning Microsoft, Netscape, Simply Hired, and BCG. Blendoor is based in Silicon Valley, but plans to establish a presence in Portland Oregon. Blendoor received funding from Elevate Inclusive Fund.
Goumikids: Co-founded by Lilli Yeo, an Asian American entrepreneur and former veteran employee at Nike. Goumikids is a kids apparel company with deep roots in social mission and sustainability. It makes mitts, boots, hats, jamms and preemies. Ten percent of all proceeds, and 100% of proceeds from goumigiving go directly to support efforts that protect children and invest in improving the lives of girls globally including girls rescued from human trafficking and orphaned children. Goumikids is based in the Oregon Technology Business Center (OTBC) accelerator in Beaverton, Oregon. Goumikids received funding from Elevate Inclusive Fund.
Hubb: Founded by Allison Magyar, a serial woman entrepreneur. Hubb brings order to the chaos of content management for meetings and conferences via automation and helps reduce costs of managing events for large corporation via its cloud based software. Founded by veteran event management professionals, Hubb is based in Vancouver, Washington, but hires a number of employees who live in Portland, Oregon. Hubb received funding from Elevate Inclusive Fund.
I.T. Aire: Co-founded by Jason Patz, a disabled veteran. I.T. Aire specializes in providing the world’s most reliable and energy efficient Data-Center Cooling Systems. The company also holds key utility patents protecting popular data-center cooling techniques, which are licensed to data-centers for use in accomplishing their energy efficiency initiatives. ITAire is based in Portland, Oregon. I.T. Aire received funding from both Elevate Inclusive Fund and Elevate Capital Fund.
RFPIO: Founded by Ganesh Shankar, an Indian American entrepreneur. RFPIO’s cloud-based Request for Proposals (RFP) software is a response management solution that eliminates the friction often associated with responding to RFPs and significantly reduces cost of managing the RFP process for businesses. RFPIO is based in Beaverton, Oregon. RFPIO received funding from both Elevate Inclusive Fund and Elevate Capital Fund.
Versi: Co-founded by Jorge Guzman, a Hispanic American entrepreneur. Versi is a Yelp-like mobile app that allows businesses, nonprofit organizations and government agencies to expose their products, services, programs and community resources to the growing Latino market. Versi is based in Portland, Oregon. Versi received funding from Elevate Inclusive Fund.
Source: www.pdc.us
