A Denver and a Boulder startup are joining forces to make hiring more equitable.
IA Technologies, doing business as interviewIA, acquired Boulder-based Gritly under its IIA Healthcare brand to build an end-to-end internal marketplace of talent, Joe Thurman, CEO of interviewIA and IIA Healthcare, told Colorado Inno.
Founded in 2020, interviewIA is a SaaS interview collaboration platform for hiring teams intended to reduce biases along the interview process. Last year, the startup launched IIA Healthcare, a health care-focused interview platform.
Gritly, which was founded in 2019 and participated in the 2022-23 Techstars Workforce Development Accelerator, began as a boot camp for tech sales roles and has since expanded into a skills-based hiring platform for candidates. The startup matches diverse, qualified candidates with non-technical, entry-level jobs in the tech space.
“As we learn more about talent through data-driven selection, data-driven screening, data-driven interviews, we’re focused on building a platform that lives internal to organizations for them to be able to recycle those candidates back through,” Thurman said.
This internal platform would be used by hiring managers and teams, allowing them to offer a different job to a previous candidate who wasn’t offered the original position they applied for. Thurman said this platform is especially important in health care where there are a lot of repeat roles.
The combined platform will also give hiring teams more data about candidates being interviewed internally and offer ways to communicate with these job seekers about career paths.
Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
As part of the acquisition, IIA Heathcare will acquire Gritly’s technology. Its co-founders Venkata Uddaraju and David Lopez will join the IIA Healthcare team as director of product and innovation and head of growth and partnerships, respectively. (Lopez was named a Colorado Inno Under 25 honoree in 2022.)
“This marks a pivotal moment, uniting Gritly’s detailed candidate profiles with IIA’s cutting-edge hiring technology,” Uddaraju said in a statement. “Together, we’re set to redefine the hiring landscape, ensuring a future where every hire is not just a fit, but a step toward greater success and more informed hiring decisions.”
In addition to this acquisition, IIA Healthcare announced it raised $1.2 million toward a Seed II round. This round is currently led by DEMI Fund, which has previously invested in the company.
“These companies are solving some of the biggest problems in the country right now,” Danielle Shoots, founding partner and managing director of DEMI Fund, said in a statement. “The founding teams of these companies are brilliant, creative and resilient beyond comprehension. I am so proud of them coming together in an offering that both reaffirms and increases their value in the market. We don’t fix systems by doing the same thing over and over again. We must be courageous enough to imagine a different way and then execute on it even when nobody believes in us. This [acquisition] is the perfect example.”
IIA Healthcare has been working to raise its Seed II round for the last six months, Thurman said. This capital will help the startup move toward a Series A round. Thurman added that acquiring Gritly gives IIA Healthcare a “good valuation uptick and a good way to round out” its product offering. The startup declined to share its current valuation.
The Seed II funds will go toward integrating IIA Healthcare’s platform with Gritly’s and go to market and sales growth, including hiring.
Additional funds will also allow IIA Healthcare to continue building and testing artificial intelligence tools. Thurman said the startup began internally testing AI tools with interview notes, summarization and candidate reselection.
Both companies have raised capital. Gritly was a recipient of the Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund in 2022, receiving a $100,000 grant. InterviewIA got a $150,000 grant last year as part of the Google for Startups Black Founders Fund.
IIA Healthcare has eight full-time employees and has raised close to $5.8 million to date.
