Ferretly, an Easton, Md., startup using AI to screen the social media activity of prospective candidates and employees, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Houston, Texas-based Seed Round Capital, according to Crunchbase.
Founded in 2019 by former Hitachi executive Darren Lipscomb, Ferretly helps HR teams track potential employees’ social media activity to ensure it is in line with a company’s reputation and its brands. The company says it provides “forward-thinking technologies” — such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data — to improve “security and risk intelligence.” Its platform analyzes text and images from a person’s social media profile to identify “undesirable behavior” of prospective candidates and employees.
Sterling Growth
Last June, Ferretly said that it recorded a more than 230% increase in new customers and a corresponding revenue growth of over 300%. Ferretly also continued its global expansion, amid increased demand arising from remote and gig work, and reputational risk. It entered new markets including the United Kingdom, EMEA, and APAC.
“We couldn’t be more excited about our growth, and we see no signs of this momentum slowing,” said Lipscomb. “We are seeing significant expansion in the types of businesses seeking our social media screening services and this is happening across all industries and geographies.”
Ferretly also added more than 94 new partners that leverage its application programming interfaces (API) to offer its services. It also added new features, such as identification document upload, support for Reddit and TikTok, and word cloud, and new risk classifications for terrorism/extremism and sexual impropriety.
Through his career, Lipscomb has led multiple companies and founded one — Avrio RMS Group, which provides smart city solutions globally. Avrio was acquired by Hitachi, following which Lipscomb joined Hitachi Insight Group. He has also served as the CEO of Baltimore-based Hypersight. Lipscomb has an MS degree in Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech, with emphasis on decision support, system dynamics and statistical modeling.
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Seed Round Capital
Seed Round Capital, of Houston, Texas, was founded in 2020 by CEO Brad Jenkins and managing director Austin Hill. Jenkins is the founder of over half a dozen companies, including CloudNine and PaperChaser.com, and an active angel investor. He is a graduate of Texas A&M and holds a BBA in Marketing with extensive coursework in computer science.
Hill is also a serial entrepreneur. Prior to that he served the US Army in Iraq. He holds an MBA with honors from the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business and an engineering degree with honors from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
Seed Round has made 33 portfolio investments so far. Its recent investments include Work & Mother, Nuvothera, Milkify, Patient Sortal and Fila Manila.
