Julie Saltman, CEO of Standd. (Standd Photo)
Standd, a Washington D.C. startup that builds software to help lawyers and investors review deals, won the top investment prize at a new competition created by Seattle firm First Row Partners.
The inaugural Ensemble Fund launched earlier this year, aiming to help educate a new crop of angel investors while providing capital to early stage startups.
First Row spent six weeks reviewing 125 applications and ultimately handed the winning investment award to Standd, a Techstars Seattle grad that was founded last year and uses AI-fueled technology to streamline the deal review process.
The Ensemble Fund is designed to both spur a new group of startup investors and provide founders with valuable advice on their pitches and fundraising strategies.
Minda Brusse, founding partner at First Row, said she was surprised and delighted at the momentum coming out of the new program, which included 17 investors, half of which were women.
"So many of them are asking us to run it again because of the relationship building, organized and facilitated learning experience, and curated investor group," Brusse said.
Standd will receive more than $160,000 as part of the winning prize. The company is led by CEO Julie Saltman, a former lawyer and adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. She co-founded Standd with Joell Stocchero and Stephen Solka.
"Their team put a lot of thought into making this process transparent and helpful for founders – and that thoughtfulness paid off," Saltman said. "Especially as a company working in the diligence space, we gained quite a few insights from working closely with our diligence team."
"From the outset, our team was very impressed by how purposeful and transparent the Ensemble Fund process was," Saltman wrote on LinkedIn. "As a company focused on the diligence process, we enjoyed working closely with our diligence team over the last several weeks as we progressed to the finals."
Founded in 2019 by Brusse and Yoko Okano, First Row Partners invests in pre-seed tech companies primarily in data and software. Brusse told GeekWire that the connections and relationships coming out of the Ensemble program will have "long-term impacts."
The program is also providing funding to three other finalists: Zenblen, Nowadays, and ZILA BioWorks.
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