A Chicago startup helping organizations find ways to recycle unused items that could be useful to others has raised its first round of funding.
Rheaply, founded in 2015 by CEO Garry Cooper, raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by Chicago-based Hyde Park Angels, with participation from Concentric Equity Partners, M25, Techstars Ventures, and individual angel investor Walter A. Winshall.
Cooper said the funding will be used to add to its team, hiring for engineering, product development and marketing roles. Rheaply currently employs 10 people.
Cooper started the foundation for Rheaply while completing a PhD in neuroscience at Northwestern University by developing a system for university labs to swap and sell unused lab equipment to each other.
Now the startup, which is a Techstars Chicago 2018 alum, offers its service in a subscription model to businesses and organizations across industries, including tech, government, retail and healthcare. Rheaply allows clients to sell, rent and donate items they no longer need. When a monetary transaction takes place, Rheaply takes a small transaction fee.
“Our vision is to make every resource visible,” Cooper said. “If people know about things available, they are going to make better buying decisions and they’re going to waste less.”
Through Rheaply, entities are recycling items like office furniture and tech equipment. Rheaply has about 20 enterprise clients that account for more than 5,000 individual users. About 75 percent of the startup’s clients are in Chicagoland.
The startup said it has helped its clients divert over 14.5 metric tons of waste and produce $1.3 million in cost savings over 10,000 transactions.
“Being resourceful is not necessarily a push for sustainability," Cooper said. “But being resourceful is the best business practice. This is what you should have been doing whether there’s climate change or not.”
