Despite the recent slowdown in tech hiring, the industry is known as a go-to for people looking to find high-paying and rewarding jobs. However, these jobs often favor white men and leave people of color on the sidelines. Seattle-based Included wants to change the industry for the better by making it more diverse, and it recently secured new funding to do so.
On Thursday, Included announced that it closed a seed round totaling $3.5 million. The round was led by Bellevue-based VC firm Trilogy Equity Partners and also included participation from Flying Fish Partners, Alumni Ventures and SignalFire. Along with the funding news, the HR startup also announced that over the last year it witnessed a 400 percent growth in annual revenue.
With the latest seed round, the company’s total venture funding now stands at $5.4 million, according to Crunchbase.
Included develops HR tools that can analyze a company’s hiring initiatives and provide DEI insights and actionable steps that the company can take to further diversify its workforce. Included’s platform can also analyze things such as pay compensation and employee life cycle. Its tool not only works post-hiring, but it can also help recruiters find more diverse candidates.
“Traditional HR software was not designed with DEI in mind, making it difficult for companies to spot and support employees who statistically tend to slip through the cracks,” Raghu Gollamudi, co-founder and CEO of Included, said in a statement. “Rapid technology advancements have allowed us to course-correct and provide companies with modern tools for today’s workforce. Our customers understand that DEI opportunities are essential to delight and retain diverse talent and we’ve made it easy to get it done.”
With the new funding, Included plans to scale its engineering team. The company will also pump more resources into other departments in order to help more companies manage and improve their DEI efforts.
