Fundraising Fox
STRE.ME
Techstars '21Fort Wayne, US · Founded 2018 · 2 employees on LinkedIn · 3 known investors
Find your way into STRE.ME
Sign up to see every warm intro you have to STRE.ME
- Paths you didn't know you had: your email and LinkedIn already hold routes to the STRE.ME team. We find them for you
- 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections: the friend-of-a-friend routes that take hours to manually find through your inbox or LinkedIn
- Answers now, not in days: momentum is everything in a raise. Skip asking around whether someone knows someone
Days of research, done the moment you sign in, with every route ranked by how warm it is.
STRE.ME is an active learning platform that transforms book insights and knowledge into sustainable habits through daily micro-lessons, progress tracking, and cohort-based support. It helps users apply what they learn consistently through small daily actions and community accountability.
Also known as Stre.me · STRE.ME
Investors · 3
How we know: the VCSheet dataset · research · elevateventures.com · Not right? Tell us
How we know: the Techstars portfolio · open dataset · Top 3000 Accelerator Startups (no YC) 2026-08 · research · elevateventures.com · Not right? Tell us
Also in the syndicate · 1
Company profile
researched Sep 2026STRE.ME is a Fort Wayne, Indiana software company founded in 2018 by Jack Patton (co-founder and CEO) and Anne Marie Labenberg (co-founder and chief equity officer). It began as an accessible strategic-planning service for small business owners, offering bite-sized, actionable strategy steps through a sequence of products: Value Shift for identifying strategic goals, Atlas for building a measurable work plan, and Compass for tracking and reporting progress. Much of this work was initially delivered via one-on-one coaching, with a stated plan to move workshops and tutorials online for broader geographic reach.
After customer discovery work, the company pivoted to a web application aimed at helping business leaders reduce the effects of implicit bias in the workplace, providing personalized and confidential insights for managing biases and giving HR and diversity leaders tools to train employees and to set, track and view progress against organizational outcomes. In this positioning the company emphasized healthcare organizations, where it framed bias and inequity reduction as a path to better patient satisfaction and outcomes, fewer premature deaths and avoidable health costs, and improved hospital profitability, and cited peer-reviewed research and documented results as the basis of its approach.
The company's current website describes STRE.ME as an active learning platform for individuals: it combines daily micro-lessons and micro-actions, progress tracking, and personalized reminders with cohort-based learning that includes interactive workshops, small-group problem solving, real-time support, and peer accountability. The stated aim is to help users apply insights from reading in a few minutes per day and convert them into lasting habits.
Founding story
STRE.ME was founded in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 2018 (listed as November 2018 in one founder profile) by Jack Patton, who observed that small business owners were caught in "the tyranny of the urgent" — working in their businesses day to day rather than on them — and built a service to make strategic planning accessible through bite-sized, actionable steps. Anne Marie Labenberg is co-founder and chief equity officer.
Business model
STRE.ME sells a cloud-based, web-delivered application to organizations and to individual learners. Earlier in its history the business was largely delivered through one-on-one coaching by founder Jack Patton, with products such as Value Shift (strategic goal identification), Atlas (measurable work plans) and Compass (progress tracking and reporting), and an intention to convert those engagements into online workshops and tutorials to reach customers beyond its local geography. Later descriptions characterize the offering as a SaaS platform for HR and diversity leaders to train staff, set goals, and track progress, alongside a consumer-facing active learning product that pairs self-serve daily micro-lessons with cohort workshops and personalized support. The current site markets entry via a free demo and a free introductory call.
Recurring software revenue from a cloud/SaaS application sold to enterprise customers, historically supplemented by coaching-style service delivery; the company has been classified under consulting, HR tech and SaaS with recurring software revenue.
Traction
The company reported corporate engagement with its cloud-based solutions and said the 2021 pre-seed funding would be used to onboard key customers and prepare for a further round. It has been recognized through the Elevate Ventures Community Ideation Fund (2019), a Fortitude Fund grant (March 2019) and participation in the Cox Enterprises Social Impact Accelerator Powered by Techstars (2021). Headcount was listed at 2 as of February 2024.
Latest developments
An external company-research profile listed STRE.ME at 2 employees as of February 2024, with a pre-seed stage classification and Techstars: Impact (2021) as its accelerator. The company's website currently markets an active learning platform built around daily micro-lessons, progress tracking and cohort support.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
STRE.ME is an early-stage, pre-seed, privately held company with a small team. It has been grouped with bias, inclusion and workplace-culture technology vendors such as Statera, STHRIVE, Aleria, Hued, BiasSync, tEQuitable, Upful.ai and Inclusology.
STRE.ME positions its combination of small daily actions, progress tracking and cohort accountability as a way to move learners past passive reading and the common obstacles of forgetfulness and distraction. In its workplace-bias positioning the company described its platform and mode of delivery as the first of its kind for markets with regulatory drivers, and pointed to peer-reviewed research and documented results, personalized and confidential insights, and measurable tracking for HR and diversity leaders.
Technology
A web-delivered, cloud-based application. Features described include daily micro-lessons and micro-actions, intuitive progress tracking, personalized reminders, cohort-based workshops and small-group support, plus, in its workplace-bias version, personalized and confidential insights and dashboards for training, goal setting and progress tracking. An external profile classifies its technology as AI and analytics.
Go-to-market
Early go-to-market relied on founder-led one-on-one coaching engagements with small business owners, local ecosystem visibility (including a speaking slot at Fort Wayne Start Up Week), and grant and accelerator programs in the Indiana startup ecosystem. Later the company focused on onboarding key enterprise customers, selling cloud-based solutions to corporations and to HR and diversity leaders, particularly in healthcare. The consumer-facing site converts visitors through a free demo and a free introductory call.
Individual learners seeking to apply insights from books; small business owners and busy leaders in its earlier strategic-planning form; and enterprise buyers, particularly HR and diversity leaders and healthcare organizations such as hospitals, in its workplace-bias form. A higher education leader is quoted as a user on the company website.
Geography
Headquartered in Fort Wayne, Allen County, Indiana, United States, with customers and exposure described as Americas-focused. The company has stated an intention to use online workshops and tutorials to reach small businesses across the country beyond one-on-one local coaching.
History
STRE.ME was launched in 2018 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with the goal of simplifying the business growth process and improving decision-making for busy leaders. It received a Fortitude Fund grant dated March 2019 and the Elevate Ventures Community Ideation Fund in 2019. Based on customer discovery research conducted after launch, the company pivoted to a platform helping business leaders reduce the effects of implicit bias, and in 2021 participated in the Cox Enterprises Social Impact Accelerator Powered by Techstars (also listed as Techstars: Impact). That same period it announced a $270,000 pre-seed round led by Techstars and Elevate Ventures. The company's current website presents STRE.ME as an active learning platform for turning book insights into applied daily habits.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Related companies · 6
Companies working in the same space as STRE.ME.
Timeline · 5
launches, deals, and filingsSTRE.ME announced a $270,000 pre-seed round led by Techstars and Elevate Ventures with participation from several angel investors, intended to fund onboarding of key customers and prepare for a further round.
$270K source ↗
STRE.ME took part in the Cox Enterprises Social Impact Accelerator Powered by Techstars in 2021 (listed elsewhere as Techstars: Impact, 2021).
Following customer discovery research conducted since its 2018 launch, STRE.ME pivoted from simplifying the business growth process and improving decision-making to a web application helping business leaders reduce the effects of implicit bias.
Founder Jack Patton's company STRE.ME received a Fortitude Fund grant, listed with a grant date of March 2019 in Allen County, Indiana.
STRE.ME received the Community Ideation Fund from Elevate Ventures in 2019.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- STRE.MEstre.me · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does STRE.ME do?
- Fort Wayne, Indiana software company offering an active learning platform of daily micro-lessons, progress tracking and cohort support.
- Who are STRE.ME's investors?
- STRE.ME's investors include Elevate Ventures, Techstars.
- Where is STRE.ME headquartered?
- STRE.ME is headquartered in Fort Wayne, US.