A St. Louis-based startup that helps companies recruit employees with disabilities has raised fresh funding, including from a firm founded by the owner of two professional sports franchises.
The startup, Inclusively, has raised $4.3 million in a convertible note round, co-founder and CEO Sarah Bernard said. A convertible note involves a startup raising debt financing that can later become equity for the investors.
Launched in 2020, Inclusively has developed a jobs platform that helps companies find employees with disabilities, chronic illnesses and military veterans. Its software allows job applicants to choose and identify accommodations they will need for job interviews and on the job with companies.
Inclusively’s funding round includes two new investors in the startup, New Orleans-based Benson Capital Partners and Alexandria, Virginia-based Enable Ventures. Enable Ventures focuses its investing on “closing the disability wealth gap.” Benson Capital Partners' founder is Gayle Benson, owner of the National Football League's New Orleans Saints and the New Orlean Pelicans of the National Basketball Association. Bernard said Inclusively is in early discussions about having those teams use its jobs platform. Bernard said the funding found also included undisclosed existing investors in the company. Inclusively in 2021 closed a seed funding round.
With its new capital, Bernard said Inclusively will seek to automate and digitize more functions of its operations, such as its training courses for employers.
“We do a lot of those live, but being able to digitize those will really improve our margins,” she said.
Bernard said the capital will also help to expand its team to manage its client base.
Currently, more than 50 companies use Inclusively, including Microsoft, Dell Technologies and Maryland Heights-based World Wide Technology, it says. Companies sign up to use the technology through annual contracts, though most of its customers are on multiyear deals, Bernard said.
Inclusively, which has an office in downtown St. Louis at the T-REX entrepreneurship center, has a team of 27 employees. Earlier this month, Inclusively won a $100,000 non-dilutive grant through startup funder Arch Grants’ Growth Grants program, which gives follow-on funding to help previous Arch Grants winners expand locally.
