Local software firm Woven scores $2.5M in seed funding

Woven, an Indianapolis-based firm that makes software to help high-growth engineering teams hit hiring goals, announced Wednesday it has raised  $2.5 million in a round of seed funding, led by Indianapolis-based High Alpha Capital with participation from existing investors and Elevate Ventures.

Woven’s software also is touted as a resource to help companies build remote teams, which has come into the spotlight with the fear of the spread of the coronavirus in recent weeks.

“The rise of remote teams has gone from a trend to a national imperative,” Woven co-founder Wes Winham said in a written statement. “We started Woven to ensure that every software engineer, no matter where they live, could find the right role for them. The rise of COVID-19 has made our mission even more pressing.”

The latest round of funding—which closed in January—will go toward helping the team expand Woven’s hiring platform, designed specifically for hiring remote software engineers, company officials said.

In January, Woven announced it had raised $425,000 in funding which was added to $140,000 Winham reaped from the sale of his previous company, PolicyStat, and invested into Woven.

Launched in early 2018, Woven is the brainchild of its three founders: Winham, Kyle Shipley and Anthony Panozzo. Over the past decade, all three helped lead software engineering teams at fast-growth startups, ranging from Silicon Valley-based Castlight Health to Indianapolis-based software company PolicyStat.

The firm, which has 10 employees, predicts having 17 employees by the end of this year and 34 by the end of 2021, Woven officials said. It is adding positions in sales, marketing, customer service and engineering.

“Woven has seen phenomenal growth over the past year, confirming our belief that hiring great software engineers is harder than it should be and showing clear signs that the tech industry is in desperate need for a product like Woven,” Eric Tobias, Woven board member and partner at High Alpha, said in a statement. “We’re excited to double down on our investment in Woven and continue helping them achieve their mission to remove bias from the hiring process.”

Located at The Union 525 incubator downtown, Woven helps customers run a credentials-blind, candidate-screening process. Instead of resumes, developers are chosen for interviews based on their performance in a one-hour software engineering simulation that Woven builds, administers and summarizes. Not only is the process fairer, it allows Woven customers to find “hidden gems they would have overlooked,” Winham said. As a result, one-third of the developers hired through Woven would have been screened out based on their resumes alone, he added.

Woven is working with several of Indianapolis’ fastest-growing software teams, including Lessonly, Springbuk and PactSafe, to help them find suitable engineering candidates.