TEDCO, Maryland’s economic engine for technology companies, announced today its Seed Fund invested $400,000 in two technology start-ups. TEDCO’s Seed Fund invests in early-stage, technology and life sciences companies and includes gap financing.

“At TEDCO, we are committed to helping early-stage technology firms commercialize their innovative offerings to reach massive market potential,” said Jack Miner, chief investment officer. “The deep-rooted success of our ecosystem is reliant on the growth of technology start-ups like these, and we look forward to continuing to support the growth of Maryland’s entrepreneurs.”

The most recent round of seed funding came from its Technology Commercialization Fund. The following Maryland companies received $200,000 investments each:

• Truvelop, based in Baltimore City and led by career HR executive Lisa First-Willis, is a SaaS performance management and development solution. Truvelop offers a desktop and mobile app that provides an efficient way to manage performance and development continuously while improving manager and employee relationships. Truvelop utilizes data science and artificial intelligence to recognize employee performance patterns, predict employee outcomes, identify strengths and weaknesses to better inform management responses. Lisa has participated in TEDCO’s Women’s Executive Leadership Roundtable for the past two years.
  
• RallyBright, based in Bethesda and led by founder John Estafanous, is a SaaS team performance company that helps leaders and their teams perform better, strengthen their interpersonal dynamics, and reinforce the behaviors that drive organizational values. The RallyBright platform combines validated behavioral science models with proven team development tools to deliver data-driven insights and high-impact outcomes. It currently hosts customer teams from growing start-ups, unicorns, and household-name enterprise tech companies alike.

“We believe there is increased need and focus within organizations on the performance of their teams,” stated Frank Glover, lead director, TEDCO Seed Fund and director, Maryland Venture Fund. “We are pleased to partner with two companies, Truvelop and Rally Bright, that are helping companies with these improvement opportunities.”

For entrepreneurs applying for their first investment from Seed, all companies must have started operations within five years from the date of the application and investment.Click here for Seed Fund FAQs.

For information on how to access TEDCO investment applications for Maryland technology start-ups, please visit https://www.tedcomd.com/funding.

About TEDCO

TEDCO, the Maryland Technology Development Corporation, enhances economic empowerment growth through the fostering of an inclusive entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem. TEDCO identifies, invests in, and helps grow technology and life science-based companies in Maryland. Learn more at www.tedcomd.com.