An AI social media vetting startup Ferretly has raised $2.5 million in seed funding and is launching a new platform designed to screen election personnel. Founded in 2019, Ferretly leverages AI to scan social media and publicly available online data to uncover potential risks and behaviors that traditional background checks may overlook.
The startup is the brainchild of Darrin Lipscomb, who previously founded software startups Pipestream and Avrio, which sold to BMC Software and Hitachi, respectively.
Lipscomb told TechCrunch that Ferretly is designed to help hiring managers ensure that the person they’re hiring aligns with their company’s values. The idea is to make sure you’re not hiring someone who’s making threats or sharing racist remarks online, just like you wouldn’t want to hire someone who’s committed a crime.
“It’s really a question of character,” Lipscomb said. “Your normal background check is built around the physical world, right? What crime occurred in the physical world? Now, as more people sort of become interconnected and move online, it was really about looking at the digital persona. We can glean some unique insights for hiring managers, about this individual, specifically their character.”
As we near the 2024 presidential election, Ferretly is debuting a new Election Personnel Screening Platform that screens candidates, poll workers, canvassers and other election personnel, in order to mitigate risks of disruptive behaviors.
The election personnel screening platform assesses digital red flags, including Inflammatory rhetoric or hate speech, disparaging or bullying behavior, questionable conduct like drug use, nudity or violence, and connections to extremist groups or individuals.
Ferretly recently enhanced its image classification tool to detect offensive gestures, such as the middle finger, and extremist symbols like Nazi insignias and terrorist group flags. The platform can also identify images of weapons, including firearms, sharp objects, and explosives.
While Ferretly scans social media platforms, it also scans web pages and news articles to highlight additional information.
After Ferretly conducts a scan of someone’s social media and publicly available data, the platform summarizes its findings in a report that allows hiring managers to quickly glean insights about the person. The report includes risk indicators, flagged content, and behavioral insights.
Ferretly says it follows all federal and state/provincial laws when it comes to pre-employment social media screening and protecting your data. Although the startup’s tool may seem creepy, it serves as a sobering reminder that everything you say online leaves a digital footprint. We live in a time where people are often fired for their social media posts, so it’s no surprise that a tool like Ferretly exists.
The startup has customers in 32 countries and over 1,000 clients across various industries. Some notable clients include Deloitte, Blizzard Entertainment and Paramount Global. The startup’s tools are also used by nonprofits, public sector organizations like police forces, and even political parties in the U.K., New Zealand and Canada.
Lipscomb says Ferretly also does quite a bit of influencer vetting, as brands want to make sure they aren’t hiring someone who has made hateful or threatening remarks online to represent their brand. The startup’s tools were also used by some NFL teams during the draft.
As for the new funding, Lipscomb says most of it will go toward marketing efforts to build awareness around Ferretly, while the rest of it will go toward research and development.
The funding was led by David Dickerson, Chairman and Founder of Accurate Background, a provider of employment background screening services.