Seattle startup founder on the discrimination-busting advantages of VC fundraising during COVID

Tribute founder and CEO Sarah Haggard, seated, with some of her Tribute and personal support crew, from left to right: Elaine Jones, Tribute advisor; Joanie Parsons, Tribute PR and marketing advisor; Jane Boulware, Tribute business strategy advisor and CEO counsel; and Eileen Kollmeyer, former Microsoft colleague and informal mentor to Haggard. (Tribute Photo)

Sarah Haggard just raised an investment round remotely due to COVID-19 and found advantages compared to doing it in person — particularly given that she is pregnant and due with her first child next month.

Haggard is CEO and founder of Tribute, a Seattle-based mentoring app. She declined to reveal the investment amount, but talked about the unusual process of raising capital during this time.

“While some would say it’s harder to establish relationships while remote, for me personally, it saved me time and money not having to travel,” Haggard via email. “I was still able to build meaningful, trusted relationships through video calls.

“And best of all, I was able to raise while pregnant without it being a point of conversation (or worse, a discriminating factor),” she said. “I’d like to say in 2020 we’re past all of that, but there is still a huge double-standard for women when they go to raise. It’s even more pronounced for women who are pregnant.”

 I’d like to say in 2020 we’re past all of that, but there is still a huge double-standard for women when they go to raise.

More female startup founders have publicly shared their pregnancies in recent years, “blowing up conventional ideas that having a newborn and building a startup don’t mix,” The Guardian reported last year.

A recent survey from All Raise found that 52% of female founders are spending more than seven hours daily on caregiving during the pandemic, compared to 26% of male founders. But despite the discrepancy, female founders report no notable difference in negative impact to their revenue.

“Even with an outsized impact on caregiving responsibilities, the negative impact on business remains the same across groups, suggesting female founders may be more resilient and adaptable to change,” the All Raise report noted.

Haggard has had a busy 2020 already. In June, her pitch won the top prize and $140,000 at the Seattle Angel Conference XVII, making her one of very few female founders to achieve the honor.

The Tribute platform.

Haggard was a senior product marketing manager at Microsoft for more than a decade before launching Tribute in January 2018.

Tribute users create profiles and share professional and personal experiences within their workplace, allowing employees to find colleagues who have faced challenges they’re working through. The app can also match potential mentors and mentees.

One of the challenges of creating mentorships is the concern about the time involved. To solve that worry, Tribute offers real-time, peer-to-peer micro-mentorship that involves a single engagement, or people can sign up for longer term interactions that are managed and scheduled through the app. The idea is to create a more scalable network of support within a workplace.

Tribute users are seeking advice on wide-ranging issues, Haggard said, including professional questions about public speaking, imposter syndrome, promotions and job transfers as well as more personal issues, such as working from home with kids, returning to the workforce after kids, moving cities and listening with empathy.

The startup’s customers include Microsoft, Zillow and the University of Washington.

In March, Tribute hired Danielle Hill, former chief operating officer of the Riveter, to lead its customer success team. The company has moved Sarah Moore, its UX/UI designer into a full time role as its brand and product lead.

Investors in Tribute include Tapas Capital, 5H Values Capital (Geraldine Chin Moody and James Chin Moody), and Barry Russell, senior vice president of cloud at Seattle startup Qumulo.

Tribute was featured in a GeekWire Startup Spotlight last year.

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