Fellow.app, the company by the serial entrepreneurs who founded Fluidware (acquired by SurveyMonkey), announced $6.5 million in seed capital and Shopify as its first customer. The round was backed by Inovia Capital, Felicis Ventures, Garage Capital, and a series of prominent angel investors.

Fellow.app—the software used by tens of thousands of employees at companies like Shopify, Vidyard, Tulip Retail, and North—was designed to help leaders manage their 1-on-1s, team meetings, feedback, and priorities in one intuitive cloud-based tool.

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“We fell in love with the product—how lightweight and easy to use it was and the fact that there finally was a great product built for managers,” said Aydin Senkut from Felicis Ventures.

Aydin Mirzaee, Fellow.app’s CEO, says the product solves a problem he encountered while building his previous company:

“We learned from software for every aspect of our business, from sales to marketing, to customer success. However, as our number of reports grew, we wondered: Why isn’t there a great app for managers of people?… We interviewed industry leaders to determine the traits that make someone a great manager and built our learnings into Fellow—an app that helps managers become exceptional leaders.”

When sales and marketing professionals get hired, they get access to tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Marketo. According to Mirzaee, Fellow.app is the equivalent tool for managers of people.

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“For far too long companies have ignored manager training and productivity tools,” said Karamdeep Nijjar, partner at Inovia Capital. “Fellow is poised to capture this up-and-coming market.”

Fellow.app’s beta period began with 200 Shopify employees, who provided the feedback necessary to build a truly compelling product. Now, all Shopify employees around the world use Fellow.app to manage their work interactions and exchange peer-to-peer feedback.

“Fellow has been a game changer for us,” said Brittany Forsyth, Shopify’s Chief Talent Officer. “I love how easy it is to use. It intuitively builds into my day-to-day rhythm, and the natural flow of Shopify, making it so much simpler to have valuable conversations.”

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