Stimulus raised a $2.5M seed round to grow its relationship intelligence platform

Anyone who’s bought something in the past few years knows the supply chain space has been volatile.

Philly’s Stimulus aims to ease that burden for purchasing companies. To grow its own capabilities further, the SaaS platform maker just raised a $2.5 million seed round.

The round was led by Black Ops VC with participation from Genius Guild, Morgan Stanley, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, REFASHIOND Ventures, Bronze Valley, The BFM Fund, Plain Sight Capital, Penn Medicine — Wharton Fund for Health and angel investors. The funding will go toward further developing the Stimulus Relationship Intelligence Platform and hiring for three teams, founder Tiffanie Stanard said.

It follows an early 2021 investment from Gabriel Investments, Campus Apartments’ David Adelman and Ben Franklin Technology Partners Board Member Osagie Imasogie, as well as other angel investors.

“We met the investors in our seed round through our founder network and our current investors making a referral,” Stanard told Technical.ly about this latest round. “We have a great group as they really understand the procurement and supply chain space.”

Expect hiring for Stimulus’ engineering, data and sales teams, the founder said, adding two to four people total.

This year has brought several wins for the 2017-founded SaaS company, which is headquartered at University City’s CIC. After being accepted into Morgan Stanley’s Multicultural Innovation Lab last summer, the company added Alec Senese to its team as the director of sales and business development. Stanard also joined the second cohort of Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual and gener8tor’s Black Founder Accelerator last month, which came with a $100,000 cash infusion.

“It has a concierge approach,” Stanard said of the program. “Their team is very hands on with helping with specific goals like hiring, customer intros and media opportunities.”

Along with some new hires, the seed round will go toward growth in expanding partnerships with companies looking to build better relationships with their suppliers and diversify their supply chain, Stanard said. Stimulus’ platform combines data insights, relationship-building tools and a “proprietary score” to help companies make sourcing and purchasing choices. Along with the goal of saving money and streamlining the supply chain, Stimulus also aims for its customers to fulfill location-based DEI criteria in its suppliers and help them find available contractors.

“Tiffanie’s subject matter expertise after spending years around the problem was really clear from the start,” said James Norman, general partner at Black Ops VC, in a statement. “Stimulus is an elegant solution that has a user experience designed specifically for the workflow of enterprise procurement teams. The hole in the market was clear to our team, so we were more than excited to get behind the platform and Tiffanie.”

The year-old Wharton Fund for Health also recently invested in Fabric Health, which brings healthcare services to laundromats.