Maryland-based Retrium secured a $400K investment to advance its cloud platform

Silver Spring, Md.-based Retrium, developer of a platform for software development teams to use in retrospective meetings, has secured a $400,000 investment from the University System of Maryland’s (USM) Maryland Momentum Fund.

The investment is part of a $1.6 million funding round led by the Baltimore-based fund, with participation from members of the Maryland-based angel investment group Dingman Center Angels, a collective run by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). Retrium’s SaaS-based cloud platform is aimed at increasing engagement for agile software development teams as they learn from their past during meetings and try to make improvements.

“Retrium enables development teams to be more effective and for each team member to feel empowered as they address new features, security fixes or the removal of coding errors,” Momentum Fund Advisory Board Member Ron Gula said in a statement.

Retrium features guided facilitation, a toolbox of activities, real-time collaboration, and more on its platform. Users have the opportunity to brainstorm their ideas, group them together with others, and them come up with action plans to execute and track progress.

The startup was founded in 2015 by UMCP computer science graduates David Horowitz, and Ryan Detweiler. Horowitz acts as the startup’s CEO, while Detweiler is the company’s CTO. Contactually Cofounder Zvi Band, and now Compass general manager of CRM since Contactually was recently acquired by the company, has been acting as an advisor to Retrium since its inception in 2015. As it plans to scale, the startup is also looking for a remote customer success manager to join its team.

The USM Momentum Fund, a $25 million early-stage investment fund, was launched in 2017 by USM to cultivate new tech ventures that are created by faculty, students and graduates from any of the 12 USM institutions. Individual investments range from $50,000 to $500,000 per company with at least a one-to-one match requirement for additional investments from outside investors. Since its inception, USM has already made a $10 million commitment and is currently working with the joint initiative created by the University of Maryland, Baltimore and UMCP, UM Ventures, to reach more investors for additional funds.