RALEIGH, NC March 26, 2024 – InnovationForce, the world’s first AI-powered Ecosystem Relationship Management (ERM) platform to democratize innovation, today announced its oversubscribed pre-seed funding round led by the Sondergaard Group with angel investments from the Skybridge Group, former Salesforce.com executive Jason Wild and 13 HBS Alumni investors from six countries.
“We were excited to invest because we liked the founding team’s combination of entrepreneurialism led by CEO Kim Getgen, who teamed up with her Harvard Business School professor Dr. Linda Hill, a world-renowned expert in innovation who has one of the largest validated innovation data sets on innovation culture amassed from 20 years of research,” said Peter Sondergaard of The Sondergaard Group. “This data is the perfect source for their AI engine to build a competitive moat around their SaaS platform and disrupt an innovation management market projected to hit $6 billion by 2030.”
Sondergaard brings his wealth of expertise and strategic vision as a former Executive Vice President of Research & Advisory for Gartner. He is recognized as a trailblazer with deep market knowledge of the innovation management market. In addition to Sondergaard, investors include 13 fellow Harvard Business School alumni from around the world who represent various industry verticals InnovationForce will target, from leading energy and pharmaceutical companies to management consulting firms and large financial institutions.
"InnovationForce is a North Carolina-based women and minority-owned startup delivering a proprietary AI-driven software solution working with utilities first, a key sector needing innovation to fight climate change," said Joe Germain, founder of Three Rivers Growth Advisors and former SVP of Product and Innovation at U.S. Bank. "Having navigated innovation initiatives within the highly regulated financial services industry, I believe the InnovationForce platform is poised to assist any industry seeking a more streamlined approach to innovation."
“I credit Kim and Linda for sticking to their core values and finding product-market fit in the tough utility market,” said former Salesforce.com executive and angel investor Jason Wild. “I applaud their perseverance, which is paying off with their loyal set of utility customers who are making decisions 85% faster while managing larger innovation portfolios. Thanks to InnovationForce, these utilities are tackling big challenges like grid modernization and decarbonization while individual innovators can drive industry-wide transformation that will lead the clean energy transition.”
“We have invested early in several tech companies that have had big exits and know how to spot a winning formula,” said Sanjay Mundra of the SkyBridge Group. “InnovationForce is one of those opportunities, and we were excited to see the validation the team received from Fast Company last week, listing InnovationForce as one of the world’s top 10 most innovative companies in the workforce solution category with major players like Zoom, Loom, Notion, and Shopify.”
“Having the support from this caliber of investors at an early stage has allowed us to reach our goals faster,” said Kim Getgen, InnovationForce's Founder and CEO. “They weren’t afraid to believe in us as women founders who are often underestimated and underrepresented. Thanks to our investors, we have what it takes to not only create a purpose-driven company but one that will have the staying power to serve the needs of these very large customers who believe that by democratizing innovation, they can help solve some of the world’s most pressing challenges in energy, infrastructure, human health and well beyond.”
If you want to learn more about InnovationForce or participate as an investor in a future round, please contact us here.
Read the Press Release here.
About InnovationForce
InnovationForceTM is on a mission to create technology that enables innovators to drive innovation faster. InnovationForce builds AI-enabled workforce and ecosystem collaboration software that measures, automates, scales, and democratizes the innovation process so that anyone can participate in scaling innovation rapidly. Through the use of its patent-pending Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology platform, innovator ecosystems can leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning to "Innovate for Good '' to drive industry-wide transformation and solve the world's most complex climate and infrastructure problems. InnovationForce was named a "World’s Most Innovative Company” in 2023 and 2024 by Fast Company; learn more at InnovationForce.io.
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