Atlanta startup Illoominus picked up $500,000 in pre-seed funding to help it move toward its goal of “lighting the way to a measurably inclusive workplace."
Illoominus developed a human resources platform designed to allow companies to evaluate how they are doing on high-priority goals such as employee experience and diversity, equity and inclusion.
The new funding will help the company grow at a time when CEO and founder Noelle London expects a surge of interest about corporate diversity in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision banning the use of affirmative action in higher education admissions.
“In light of recent news, we're still seeing momentum," London told the Atlanta Business Chronicle. "We're just seeing it happen at different ways, potentially."
The recent funding comes from investors with connections to two Atlanta companies: Mailchimp's former Chief Technology Officer Eric Muntz and former Jamba Juice CEO James D. White, who recently published a book titled "Anti-Racist Leadership: How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race-Conscious World."
Vitalize Angels and Atlanta’s Gray Ventures also contributed to the funding round. Illoominus also participated in Techstars Atlanta 2022 accelerator class.
About Illoominus
The impetus for the company came from London’s experience leading HR tech partnerships at a large consulting firm. She noticed that lofty human resources goals were not necessarily aligned with the corporate systems needed to support them and that information was fragmented.
“People were solving pieces of the puzzle ... How do I bring more women into my organization, they might be looking at things like pay equity,” London said. “They really weren't getting that holistic picture of what was happening across the entire employee journey.”
London and her team designed Illoominus to rectify that.
“We map out the entire employee journey, and we help an organization to understand where to invest their efforts because they're really getting the whole story,” London said. That allows companies to measure whether they are meeting their targets and getting return on investment in their HR initiatives.
Human resources workersare frequently burnt out and the roles face high turnover, London said. Illoominus is designed to create a culture of shared responsibility for HR goals across an organization so that the burden is not one person or department.
“Every single week when something hits a news headline, it's essentially an HR problem to solve,” London said. “It feels like HR’s desk is constantly on fire.”
Illoominus' path for growth
London is focused on sustainable growth for Illoominus. The startup has eight employees, though not all of those are full-time. The company is mostly remote and is a member at hometown co-working company Switchyards.
London estimates the company will to hire three additional employees in sales and data engineering over the next year or so.
The company already has customers among Atlanta companies like telecommunications giant Cox Communications and Greenlight Financial Technology, a banking and investing app for kids and teens.
"There's a big void for us to fill and to continue filling within this space," London said. "We don't … think that the job of an HR leader is going to get any easier anytime soon.”
This article has been corrected to reflect the correct spelling of the company name.
