Bliinx, a Montreal relationship productivity and collaboration startup, has raised $1 million in pre-seed pre-seed money, led by AltaIR Capital, a San Francisco-based investment firm.

500 Startups, Panache Ventures and other angels joined the round.

Bliinx will use the funding to increase product development. The company said the new funding round came about after a pivot to a Microsoft 365 embedded solution. This created an uptick in adoption and engagement.

Related: From bartender to 500 Startups, Bliinx founder plans on disrupting client management

“We’re the only solution that lets users understand how they’ve interacted with contacts/companies without manually searching through dozens of tools or use a heavy CRM,” said CEO Fred Melanson. “Whether it’s for sales, marketing initiatives, project management or customer success, Bliinx automatically displays relationship history with contacts right from your inbox, calendar and Microsoft Teams.”

Bliinx was founded in 2019 to alleviate the pain of using heavy and complicated CRMs for business relationship building. The startup recently graduated from the 500 Startups Seed accelerator program.

The solution integrates directly into an inbox, calendar and Teams applications. It also aggregates all company interaction with contacts into one simple relationship timeline. The software analyzes this to recommend actions and follow-ups. Bliinx also acts as a centralized business rolodex, syncing all contacts a team has had.

Interestingly, Bliinx appears to be another example of how COVID-19 has altered demand for certain types of technology.

“We’ve seen an increase in demand for our solution because companies still need to do business development and manage projects with clients,” said Melanson. “However, it can be a challenge when working remotely. Staying on top of relationships with clients requires a lot of manual back-and-forth when working remotely.”