HR tech startup Truvelop just raised a $700,000 seed round

Baltimore’s Truvelop has closed a seed round for $700,000.

The Locust Point-based startup makes technology for workforce talent evaluation and development. This seed round will help it scale and grow its sales force along with investing in improving its tech.

Truvelop’s signature product tracks observations and feedback about employees’ performance, along with a proprietary coaching engine delivering specific recommendations to managers, all toward the goal of increasing retention, engagement and team member performance. The company ranked #3 on Technical.ly’s RealLIST Startups for 2020.

CEO Lisa First-Willis told Technical.ly she hopes to double the company’s size with hiring in 2022.

“We have a customer retention rate of over 90%,” said First-Willis, who was VP of human resources at Baltimore mobile advertising darling Millennial Media and owned an HR consulting business before cofounding Truvelop. “Our customers are renewing because our technology is making an impact in their companies. At a time when it’s so important to create an engaging, welcoming, employee experience to ensure employees feel valued and recognized for their contributions.”

The seed round was led by Greg Moran and Ira Grossman, founders of of Evergreen Mountain Equity Partners. The duo will also sit on Truvelop’s board of directors. Moran brings experience as founder and former CEO of the exited digital hiring solutions company Outmatch. Grossman brings knowledge from being president and COO of Signal Path, a company creating software in the clinical research space, and from her time as part of the the founding team and COO of PeopleAnswers.

“We are excited to partner with Greg and Ira with their extensive industry knowledge in HR tech, connections and proven experience scaling companies,” First-Willis said in the press release. “Their partnership puts us in an amazing position as we enter 2022 to continue growing the business, supporting our customers and offering a truly unique and best-in-breed performance development solution.”

Donte Kirby is a 2020-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation.