Victoria startup Certn has closed a USD $4.5 million seed round led by San Francisco’s Tribe Capital.
Named one of Techcouver’s 10 Homegrown B.C. Startups to Watch in 2020, Certn enables its clients to make key decisions with people data.
Certn has over 1,000 clients and provides fast, compliant, affordable background checks to employers, contractors, property managers and the gig economy. Using AI and proprietary technology, the company is able to assess applicants’ faster and more accurately than traditional models.
Tribe Capital is an early-stage fund led by Arjun Sethi, Jonathan Hsu, Ted Maidenberg, Jake Ellowitz, Alex Chee and Brendan Moore.
Sethi, a general partner at Tribe Capital, will join the Certn board.
“We’re excited to lead the seed round for Certn. We have been impressed by what the team accomplished so far in a short period of time and in such a capital-efficient way. We’re excited to join the board with industry legends like Steve Cadigan, and we look forward to supporting the team’s vision to make the background check process painless. Certn is another example of our focus on investing in leading companies using data to solve complex problems,” shared Sethi.
Certn was co-founded by Andrew McLeod, Evan Dalton and Owen Madrick, and raised a $975,000 seed round in 2019 that included Atrium Ventures, Panache Ventures, Hello Ventures, and iNovia Capital.
When asked about the round McLeod said, “We’re thrilled to have the support of such strong operators and investors to help support Certn’s global growth. The funding will be used to expand Certn into key geographies and to continue to bring on the world’s best employers.”
Evan Dalton says, “Today’s background checks simply don’t work, and we know why. They lack the fundamentals of ID verification, access to compressive data and an efficient global view of risk-relevant data., We are developing the technology to access criminal records, verify education and employment faster and do so in a way that’s more affordable than ever before.”
Other investors in the round include Moxxie Ventures, an early-stage firm founded by Katie Jacobs Stanton, Farooq Abbasi of Preface Ventures, and Ryan Hoover and Vedika Jain of Weekend Fund. Notable angels include Elizabeth Bailey Weil, Moshe Lifschitz, Ramsey Chapin, Varadh Jain and Heston Berkman.