PairTree, a Seattle startup that facilitates adoptions, raised $5.1 million. The company launched in 2020 and has 4,000 adoptive families and more than 400 expectant mothers registered with the site.
The gist: CEO Erin Quick founded PairTree after she and her husband struggled to have their own baby and ultimately turned to adoption. The process was expensive, slow and disorganized. Quick found that both adopting families and birth mothers were at risk of exploitation.
Quick created PairTree to better protect adoption participants, dramatically lower costs and speed up the process. In its first year since publicly launching, the startup has facilitated more than 20 matches between adoptive parents and expectant birth mothers.
New initiative: The team plans to launch PairTree Home Study, a streamlined, online service for approving families for adoption.
The team: Quick spent 20 years in global brand marketing and was a co-founder of a Seattle-based brand marketing firm. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Justin Friberg is an engineering leader who was previously CTO at Record360, which was acquired in 2019. PairTree has nine employees.
Backers: The investment round was led by Trust Ventures in Austin, with participation from Urban Innovation, Founder Collective, Graham & Walker, WhatIf and Watershed. Last year PairTree raised $2.25 million and participated in Techstars Seattle.
Other recent startup investment news from the Pacific Northwest:
- Kymeta Corp., a Redmond, Wash.-based mobile connectivity startup, landed a new $84 million round led by longtime backer Bill Gates. The equity investment will be used to accelerate the production of its flat-panel antennas and set the stage for expanding its offerings for defense customers, as well as for users of satellite broadband services that are being offered from low Earth orbit. Read more.
- RightBound, a platform that helps companies increase their sales, raised $15.5 million. The round was led by Innovation Endeavors with participation from IBI Tech Fund. The Kirkland, Wash.-based company has raised a total of $27 million. It doubled headcount last year to more than 50 employees.
- LOANtuitive, a Seattle startup that runs a commercial real estate debt marketplace, came out of stealth mode this week. It raised a $1.1 million pre-seed round in October from Ascend.vc, UNderdog Labs, Revelry Venture Partners, Iterative Venture, and founders from DocuSign and LegalZoom.The company recently surpassed $2 billion in commercial real estate loan requests.
- Recruitment platform Crelate raised $5 million in new funding. Crelate, which launched in 2015 and has offices in Kirkland, Wash., and Maryland, reports that nearly 2,000 recruiting, staffing and consulting customers are using its tools. The investment comes from Five Elms Capital, which led its $5.3 million Series A round in 2019. Crelate has raised a total of $11.5 million.
