Foundry Group leads fundraising for women-led Denver company

DENVER and BOULDER — A female-led, Denver-based employee enablement company has closed a $12.7 million Series A investment round led by Boulder’s Foundry Group and Renegade Partners of San Francisco.

Spekit Inc. announced the investment round this morning, but it actually closed last week, March 23, according to a Form D filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In addition to Foundry and Renegade, other participants in the fundraising included Operator Collective, Matchstick Ventures and Bonfire Ventures.

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Spekit was founded in 2018 by its CEO, Melanie Fellay, and its head of product and technology, Zari Zahra. Spekit is one of three women-led companies in the digital adoption, enablement and learning management system space, according to information that it provided in its announcement.

Joining the Spekit board are two female investors: Foundry group partner Jaclyn Freeman Hester and Roseanne Wincek, co-founder and managing partner of Renegade Partners.

“Spekit tackles two of the biggest barriers to growth in today’s SaaS-driven, remote work environment: driving the adoption of constantly evolving technology and empowering increasingly dispersed employees with the knowledge they need to be productive and successful in their roles,” the company wrote in its announcement.

“Between the quantum leap of SaaS adoption, accelerated rate of change and shift to remote work, the world looks drastically different today than it did a decade ago,” said Fellay. “Yet, when I looked at the way employees were being trained and enabled in their roles, there’d been little to no progress over that same timeline. We’re using more digital tools and increasingly complex workflows but the expectation remains that an employee will figure it all out with a PowerPoint presentation or LMS course. The solution became so clear,” she said.

Spekit saw 400% growth in 2020 as high-growth companies joined the platform, according to the announcement.

“We look for founders like Melanie and Zari, who are obsessed with solving challenging but significant problems in innovative ways,” Foundry Group partner Jaclyn Freeman Hester said in a written statement. “Spekit’s disruptive technology addresses a clear gap in the market by providing a comprehensive solution designed to mirror how individuals actually learn, absorb and retain knowledge. …  We are excited to welcome another Colorado-based company to the Foundry Group portfolio.”

Spekit will use the funding to advance the product, the company said.

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