Tech startup Unify Jobs of Cleveland raises $4.5 million
Summary
Unify Jobs of Cleveland, a startup that describes itself as an "equitable hiring technology company," announced it has raised a $4.5 million seed round.The round was led by North Coast Ventures, with participation from JumpStart Ventures and "several other well-established Cleveland-based investors," Unify Jobs said in a news release issued Wednesday evening, June 22.Unify Jobs is a spinoff of Unify Labs, a nonprofit founded and primarily funded in 2017 by Stephen McHale, Charlie Lougheed and Jim Hickey with a mission to "power inclusive prosperity by researching systems and technology that drive inequality, redesigning and launching alternative equitable solutions." Unify Jobs said in the release that its skills-based hiring technology, called FlashHired, was developed and patented "over two years and 35,000 R&D hours. The release noted that KP1 has "three key insights: not all economic growth is healthy, a knowledge economy can increase disparities, and there is a misalignment of labor to open livable wage jobs. "McHale a longtime Cleveland tech entrepreneur who with Lougheed built a company called Explorys, a health data analytics software company that they sold to IBM said Unify Jobs went into a six-month pilot phase after its formation in 2021. "We are excited to see such a strong team taking an innovative approach to hiring," said Todd Federman, managing director of North Coast Ventures, in a statement.