ReFresh, an Australian workplace psychosocial operating platform, has raised AUD $2.5 million in seed funding to help employers identify, assess, and manage psychosocial hazards. The round was led by Black Nova Venture Capital, with follow-on investments from Antler and Archangel Ventures. The announcement comes at a critical moment as regulators turn their attention toward mental health risks and the free government survey People at Work winds down.
Seed Funding and Market Timing
The capital raise brings ReFresh's total funding past A$4 million, following a pre-seed round in December 2025 and early customer growth across financial services, government and ASX-listed technology companies. Founded by Harrison Kennedy and Taylor Laing, the startup was built across the Pacific before the cofounders met in person. The seed round closed roughly two weeks before the shutdown of People at Work, which around 160,000 workers and 5,000 organisations have used since 2020.
A Personal Mission and a Practical Platform
Kennedy, the chief executive, developed anxiety as a teenager after competing as a swimmer and international model, and later built the mental health media platform Really Mental. He said that reaching 25 million people with a mental health message changed nothing about the jobs that made them unwell. This experience drove him to launch ReFresh at 23 with a focus on work design rather than awareness alone.
Why Existing Tools Fall Short
Kennedy explained that most employers have a survey running somewhere, a policy document elsewhere, and a private incident spreadsheet with no way to show regulators how these records connect. People at Work could tell organisations what workers were experiencing, but it was never designed to show what the organisation did about it or what to fix. ReFresh provides a single system to identify hazards, assess and manage risk, and maintain inspection-ready evidence.
Privacy, Trust and Compliance by Design
Mental health conditions have become the costliest category of workers compensation claims nationally, at four times the average claim, and regulators are examining how workplaces meet their responsibilities. Cofounder Taylor Laing said the platform was built privacy-first because employees are asked to report some of the worst things happening to them at work. It includes anonymous reporting where needed, granular access controls, and AI that runs strictly in the company's own environment.
Investor Perspectives
Black Nova managing partner Matt Browne, who cofounded Donesafe, said traditional platforms were built for physical hazards with a clear location and date. Psychosocial risk involves workload, rosters and management decisions, so the assessment, controls and evidence are often wrong. Much of the funding will support ReFresh's tracking of regulatory change across Australia's nine work health and safety jurisdictions.
Customer and Market Momentum
Decidr AI head of people and culture Bianca Hill said ReFresh treats work design as the thing to manage and gives teams a way to see it, change it and show what they did. Antler partner Michael Kron described psychosocial risk as a new duty of care frontier for employers worldwide and said the cofounders bring unusual velocity and obsession. These early endorsements reflect the platform shift from awareness campaigns toward operational accountability.
ReFresh's seed round reflects a broader shift in workplace safety infrastructure as mental health becomes a compliance priority rather than an awareness exercise. With People at Work ending and employers facing stricter expectations across multiple jurisdictions, the demand for connected systems that produce defensible records is likely to grow. The startup's challenge now is to turn early traction and regulatory timing into a lasting operating system for psychosocial safety.
Source: Startupdaily